In South King County and Pierce County, WA (south of Seattle), the basic advice is to not grow any food directly in the ground without having your soil tested first for arsenic. There was a copper smelter in Tacoma for decades, and now everything basically within a 20 mile radius is contaminated.
The point is, there was a lot of nasty industrial activity in this country pre Clean Air Act. Everyone should be concerned and get their property tested IMO, especially if you have kids. I'm not trying to be alarmist; it doesn't affect my day to day life, it's just something to know. I still grow veggies in my garden, I just use raised beds and dirt from bags from Home Depot.
Among other things (including a nuclear meltdown):
> On 11 December 2002, a Department of Energy (DOE) official, Mike Lopez, described typical clean-up procedures executed by Field Lab employees in the past. Workers would dispose of barrels filled with highly toxic waste by shooting the barrels with rifles so that they would explode and release their contents into the air. It is unclear when this process ended, but for certain did end prior to the 1990s.[29]
https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/...
https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/dirtalert/?lat=47.349229&lon=-12... (not exactly a circle due to the topography and wind patterns of the area)
The point is, there was a lot of nasty industrial activity in this country pre Clean Air Act. Everyone should be concerned and get their property tested IMO, especially if you have kids. I'm not trying to be alarmist; it doesn't affect my day to day life, it's just something to know. I still grow veggies in my garden, I just use raised beds and dirt from bags from Home Depot.