It was Earth Day 2013; we were closing on our first house. We were so excited this day had arrived when it did because I was three days overdue with our first child. Nine days later, on May 1, I gave birth to a healthy boy who has brought energy and numerous belly laughs to our home since his arrival. Fast-forward six months later…

​

Our beautiful, healthy boy is trying his first food, avocado, and he loves it! Over the course of the next couple of months he is introduced to carrots, butternut squash, and beets from our garden. We had grown everything from seed that summer. We harvested, pureed, and stored what felt like endless amounts of baby food in the freezer for our son. Fresh vegetables from the soil we had tilled and worked with from April until September. We were so thrilled about feeding him such healthy, homegrown foods. Fast-forward two months later…

​

I decided to have our 8-month-old son scanned.  I was so pleased to see that his systems were functioning well and that he had no nutritional imbalances. I was beaming, until…lead? There it was, underneath the heavy metals category of his report. How could my 8 month old, who had barely been exposed to the world have lead it his tiny little body? This continued to concern me when I recalled my husband’s scan from a few months previous. He also had lead come up on his scan. What was going on? Could it be the paint in our house? No, the paint was too new. Could it be the water? No, we have some of the best drinking water in the state and use a filter. I was stumped, until I realized the potential problem. 

 

Could it be the food from our garden?  I collected and sent in a soil sample from our garden to a local soil testing facility.  As I had suspected, it contains high levels of lead.  I immediately stopped feeding our family any vegetables from our garden.  By-bye to all that pureed baby food.  My next step was getting our son on his regimen, which would help remove the lead toxicity from his body.  After completing his regimen two months later I had him scanned again to ensure that the lead toxicity was gone, and sure enough it was!  

​

I later found out that the area we live in was once very industrial.  Without the test results, we never would have known that lead was an issue in our garden.  We would have continued to feed our son the pureed veggies that we planted and harvested with such good intention.  The scan helped us to unveil a hidden danger in our own backyard, which allowed us to stop a problem before it became an issue for our son’s health.

​

​

​