Notice that no where in the article does it say that there is any evidence that anyone has been harmed by heavy metals in food crops. Just the standard "It is possible that..." and "studies have shown..." . How about starting with a problem, before you offer solutions. Are our hospitals full of people suffering from heavy metal poisoning of unknown origin? Please follow the logic of Jon Frum's First Theorem of Safety:

If a substance can cause adverse health effects, and

If there has been exposure to said substance, then

The adverse health effects should be staring you in the face.

From which follows:

If you don't have unexplained illness, then don't worry about causes.

Right, because an ounce of cure is worth a pound of prevention, and a stitch too late saves nine.

Right?

True story about prevention.

Funny you should mention it though -- the author elides the arguably central issue, the externalities *causing* much of these deposits in agriculture. It's simply breathtaking in its sloppiness that the author's article didn't look upstream a bit and see what might be done to decrease the amount of toxic and potentially toxic material in our atmosphere that is generating these problems in both organic and conventional systems.

I think it's more basic than that. The author never quantifies the levels of heavy metals we're talking about. As in: what's a hazardous level and how close are we getting to it? That's an obvious starting point, which this author missed.

Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he avoided that kind of info, because otherwise his article would be much ado about nothing.