WNYC did a whole series on industrial pollution in New Jersey: http://project.wnyc.org/toxic-nj/

As said, you will hardly find a block in JC without contamination, when I started paying more attention and researching, I read that there used to be a large chromium smelting facility close to liberty harbor and the furnace slag was widely used as cheap fill in construction across all of JC.
http://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/hhazweb/crsumm.pdf

just look at that map. True - environmental cleanup has been going on, but I would still not plant a vegetable garden in JC. And lets not forget that a waste number of residential water pipes (connections from water main to individual homes) are still lead in JC...

Thanks all for the responses. I guess it would make sense that new development (or redevelopment, for that matter), at least for residential use, wouldn't be approved if it was unsafe, but I figured I would ask.

@borisp - I remember reading a similar article on that when I was living out in CA. Very interesting - the unfortunate chance of getting cancer or another disease is just so complex that it is difficult to pinpoint what the actual cause is.

I'm glad I did stumble on this forum, seems like a lot of good info and discussions especially for people that are new in town.

you'll be hard pressed to find much land in JC that doesn't have chromium contamination. Look around and all of the veg gardens are in raised beds for a reason. The powerhouse area has a long history of being an industrial neighborhood, due to its proximity to a rail spur and the old waterfront rail yards where newport now is, so contamination is rife. Fortunately, a requirement of the redevelopment that brought you there is that all such land must be cleaned up (per DEP, etc.), so I see no reason to worry.

This is a good link about the cleanup on rt 440 with up to date progress and history. Didn't find one about Downtown.

http://www.jerseycitychromiumcleanup.com/

Hello, this is my first post on here. I just moved to JC from the west coast - I grew up out in the NJ suburbs but wanted to move back to the area. I moved to downtown in the Powerhouse Arts district. I was out walking around, and I noticed that the open area on Warren St, between 1 st and Bay, had a sign up saying some Environmental Cleanup is going on. So I dug into it online a little bit and found this: http://www.padnajc.org/pedestrian-path-park-renovation/

That's really the only thing I could find on this. Obviously, hexavalent chromium is quite toxic and dangerous. If you've ever seen Erin Brockovich it's scary what it can do. I know that we do not get drinking water from around here, but anyone have any more info on this? It seemed from the neighborhood association that they are not done remediating the area. I guess I'm a bit surprised given all the new development right in the immediate few blocks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!