so here is something i havnt fully thought out yet so please bear with me. im just sort of pitching it to see how it bounces.
here in seattle we have the duwamish river which is severely polluted. its so bad its poisoning the puget sound and making the soil in surrounding areas toxic. residents of these areas are advised not to plant gardens directly in the top soil but use raised beds only. recently i heard of a dog that died because it dug in the dirt too much.
there are however some nice green belts along the river with various vegetation growing. some of that vegetation would be edible where it not growing next to what amounts to an industrial waste site and you certainly would not want to drink the water.
if someone came to seattle and was exploring along the duwamish they might be tempted to take a drink or pick some edibles.(granted none of the green belts are very large and may not invite much "exploring" but still...) if they somehow were not made aware of the dangers they could be in trouble.
another example which is less dangerous these days, but still not 100% safe is lake washington. a big problem in lake washington, believe it or not, was refuse from massive amounts of migrating canadian geese. for a while it was advised not to swim in lake washington.
so my loosely formed idea is to have people describe areas they are familiar with that might not be safe to forage along or to drink water from due to dangerous levels of pollutants.
what do you think?
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