Urban and peri-urban agriculture is becoming increasingly important as a source of income and food for the urban population in South Africa. This study was prompted by concerns of city authorities that soil compaction in horticultural fields that used conventional tillage practices with tractors was, not only limiting the performance of fruit and vegetable crops, but also affecting the quality ...

Butter is a readily collected, integrative and inexpensive sampling matrix for the spatial mapping of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) at the national or regional scale. As air-plant-animal transfers generally supply the POPs reaching butter lipid, this study used butter for an initial evaluation of the occurrence, levels and distribution of POPs (selected organochlorine pesticides and PCBs...

PURPOSE To study the gastric and colorectal cancer mortalities and their relation to the urban-industrialization in Baixada Santista, located in the southeastern region of Brazil. METHODS Selected from the registries of the State System of Data Analysis Foundation (SEADE) were 1105 deaths due to gastric cancer (ICD 153 - 154) and 690 due to colorectal cancer (ICD 151) that occurred from 1980 ...

Soil Fungi May Help in Lead Remediation Lead contaminates soil in many urban areas. Investigators have discovered that lead can be transformed by multiple soil fungi into a stable form known as chloropyromorphite, suggesting a potential new tool for cleaning up soil lead contamination. This ability of the fungi may help them to survive in contaminated locations. The authors write that “fungal m...

Events of the 1990s seem to have given the small farm a new lease on life. Organic agriculture offers a means of producing considerable profitability on very small areas even if many small farmers are of necessity only part-time farmers. Opportunities off the farm, however, have enabled owners of small parcels to farm them profitably, or at least sustainably. Urban agriculture is now a respecte...

Prescribed burning is a significant source of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the southeastern United States. However, limited data exist on the emission characteristics from this source. Various organic and inorganic compounds both in the gas and particle phase were measured in the emissions of prescribed burnings conducted at two pine-dominated forest areas in Georgia. The measurements of ...