ABSTRACT
Sustainable food production has become a crucial issue in the current agricultural system to endure the growing global population and urbanization. In this scenario, urban agriculture has recently received a considerable attention worldwide for local fresh food production and sustainable cities promotion. This agricultural system is regarded as one of the key strategies to attend the high food demand in the coming years. However, urban agriculture has a serious threat: natural and anthropogenic sources of pollution that release into the (peri)urban environment a hazardous cocktail of organic and inorganic contaminants. Cities are densely populated, so the likelihood of human exposure to pollutants is high. Besides human exposure to urban pollutants from the air, the consumption of vegetables grown on polluted urban soils or even having intercepted metal-rich atmospheric particles is another potential route of pollutant exposure. The chapter will discuss the different factors involved in urban agriculture, the major pollution sources of urban agriculture as well as their potential human health hazards. Likewise, the authors identify, in the last section of their chapter, areas of emerging research in this kind of promising agriculture.
