Concerned about Emissions..... Gardening off a Busy City Road?

Hi all!

Long time lurker here. I just got a house off a 4 lane intersection - cheaper than rent. We don't have nearly as much traffic as many of the huge US cities, but I have been hit in the face with truck exhaust a few times when exiting my house. This got me thinking...

If I were to grow food in my front yard, should I be concerned about toxicity from emissions? Are there any strategies to reduce the emissions and still use the space for something other than carbon farming?
Has there been any research on this topic? I've taken a quick look but haven't found anything.

Details:
-I'm willing to pay for toxicity tests or go full on scientific study - any resources for that?
-My front yard is to the south, hence wanting the veggies there. I've got about 30 ft of frontage to the road; the yard isn't huge. If toxicity is an issue I'm hoping for a permaculture solution so I can still produce some food there.
-I've looked in to indoor air quality and am getting several plants from this NASA study: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930073077


Fun side note: We have a black locust in the back that was 2 ft this spring and is now around 12 ft (early/mid September). I'll move some BL sprouts to the front for a temporary barrier and carbon sequestration. They grow like weeds here!

Thanks in advance!

I generally accept that if I am smelling a thing, bits of that thing are entering my body through my nose. This is true of everything, from vehicle exhaust to farts.

I would be concerned enough to take mitigating steps, not only for the air, but the ground as well. Exhaust particulates don't just drop to the soil surface, but they also don't just blow away. If we can have third-hand smoke from cigarettes clinging to our skin and clothing, surely it's obvious that something must stick there, too.

If I were doing such a space, let's say as a tiny, intensive market garden, I would mark out my beds, probably raising them a bit, and dig out the paths between them. I would then replace the soil with wood chips gotten from an urban arborist (there are even apps that let local arborists know that you have somewhere for them to dump a truck load). I would make up some compost, brew compost extract, and apply it regularly on the wood chips. A fungal slurry after the soil microbiota get working in the chips would be a good idea, too.

Surrounding your grow beds with compost extract and fungal slurry inoculated wood chip paths will essentially create barriers of voracious soil life that will absorb, spread out, and break down contamination, including hydrocarbons and heavy metals on an ongoing basis.

If you want to test anything, I would make sure that the fungi you make your slurry with are recognizable and edible (though I wouldn't eat them right away, or perhaps ever, depending on the levels of ongoing contamination), and then harvest and test those babies. Most fungi that I know of uptake excess heavy metals readily, so if you were to test mushrooms until the levels of heavy metal contamination were negligeable, you'd know then that the rest of your soil was safe for the production of food.

In terms of your outdoor exhaust experience, you could try some low food hedges on the perimeter. Anything scented that you add to it will improve the smell, and anything green and with a lot of surface area to it will tend to make the exhaust and other pollution adsorb onto its surface.

In any case, good luck, and let us know how you proceed.

-CK

I don't know if this is biologically accurate, but it seems to make sense to me:

Avoid growing leaf-centric produce in favor of fruiting or root crops - any gaseous or sooty emissions that would enter through the leaf systems would have to travel through the entire plant(and hence be partially filtered/remediated) before getting to the part of the plant you would eat?

I think I am just more accepting of many others here. lol.

Probably comes with living in the middle of real urban sprawl with high density. Seven million people around me. That number only ever moves in one direction. I am living in quite the luxuriously sized urban lot here (over 500m², where standard urban lot here is just over 300m²) but I can't escape 7 million people. It isn't possible to escape this civilization driving 100 km in any direction.

I look at it this way- regular conventional food, including all the common grains, fruits, and vegetables, plus a lot of animal feeds and everything else people eat, is SOAKED in pesticide, fungicide, and herbicide. Organic is definitely a lot better, but still might be using stuff that isn't great. Plus all that food is picked up by smelly tractors, and forklifts, and put in smelly warehouses, and transported on smelly trucks into a smelly parking lot, where it is offloaded into your local store where you go buy it and probably put it into your smelly car to get it home, before you prepare it and eat it.

If I grow stuff, and use NOTHING dangerous on it- regardless of the local car exhaust, or construction dirt, or my neighbour's chlorine pool-  it cant possibly be worse than what I can buy to eat. Plus my city water is treated and often smells like chlorine, because it has to be treated. I bathe and drink in this. Plus I breathe these chemicals when I walk outside, or open my house windows.

Maybe someone wants to say my little urban garden veggies are no good because they can't be completely "natural." Good for them! I will eat my damn veggies, and they are definitely fresher than what I can buy.

I say grow your veg, wash it nicely (which you should always do regardless) and accept that if you live in an urban environment, there is a tradeoff to the freshness and cleanness of the air you breathe and water you drink, and that relates to the food you eat. :) Such is our lives, friend.

Yes, and be glad that leaded gasoline was outlawed in the 70s.  It looks like the vast majority of car exhaust now is not great to breathe, or for global warming, but not heavy enough to drop to the soil and not dangerous if it did.

I would get a soil test anyway, to see how plants will do, and to see if your land was used for anything "fun" in the past.  And if the exhaust is bothering you, maybe you can plant a non-edible hedge to block wind and noise from the road.  But I wouldn't worry too much about it.