Hacker News Reader

Plants for sure absorb things they don't need, and that are toxic to themselves and to us.

Roads used to be full of gasoline drip, heavy metals from exhaust and such. Plants would suffer but absorb it and pass it on to you if you eat them.

Nowadays not so much. Specifically around 200 times less so. Not worth consideration.

Whatever comes from the road is usually baked by the sun, so no nutrients left there. No need for that.

I can't come up with another way of analysis for this claim without it being more specific, but generally, no, that's not working today.

My childhood experiment actually comes in handy! I can confirm at the least that planting half of the same batch of seeds close to a road's (the tarmac's) edge next to it, and in a forest, my grass seeds grew much worse next to the road.

Also I was told to never eat berries growing from a bush close to a road since they are more dirty.