Dear listers,
We are a NGO working on urban agriculture. We are trying togather scientific information on the potential urban pollutants that couldaffect fruits grown in an urban environment (specifically on lines of trees along roadsides with no barriers). We would like to get a list of potential pollutingsubstances, their legal limit concentrations defined by food safety standards and thedifferent ways that these pollutants could reach the fruits of different plantvarieties. We are particularly interested, but not only, into persimmons(Diospyros kaki) of which our city is plentiful. We intend to analyse samples but having a limited budget weneed to select a short list of pollutants to analyse. Among the candidates there are PCBs, PCDD/F, PAHs, Benzeneand heavy metals (Cadmium, Lead, Zinc, Copper, Mercury, Arsenic, others?). There is a relatively rich literature on heavy metals thatseems to show that fruits are not so much affected by heavy metals (compared toleaf vegetables): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=24507151 While for other compounds such as PCBs, PCDD/F and PAHs we only found so farvery limited literature like these two papers: PCB and PCDD/DF: https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=9&SID=N2qKOQ9O97r1Xzed35c&page=1&doc=3 PAH: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095671350200052X The area of concern is Parma, North Italy (Po riverplain), a town affected by fine particulate and nitrogen dioxide pollutioncoming from traffic, industrial agriculture, farming and industries. Some concerned trees are also nearby the railway. Any suggestion on literature and on which contaminants we should look for would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Kind regards Francesca
