Urban Gardens in Baltimore

Environmental justice advocates have raised concerns regarding the harmful effects that heavy metals and other contaminants from neighboring environmental hazard facilities may have on urban farms. CEEJH has conducted two separate studies to track environmental hazards and urban farm locations; assess proximity of urban farms to sites that emit heavy metals and other pollutants; and determine the likelihood of urban farms and hazardous sites to collocate with communities of color and low socioeconomic status populations in Baltimore. Analyses indicated that contamination of urban farms in Baltimore City is a possibility due to proximity considerations: more environmental hazards were found in census tracts featuring an urban farm than those that did not; low-income communities of color featured environmental hazards sited in close proximity to an urban farm; and a higher concentration of environmental hazards with heavy metal or unknown contamination was found in historically industrial areas. This work demonstrated that urban planning should consider proximity to current environmental hazards, sociodemographics of the community, and the history of sites before implementing urban farming.