Iowa is mentioned
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Subject: CAFO Air - NY Times Article
Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 10:04:47 -0500
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The New York Times <http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1012>
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May 11, 2003
Neighbors of Vast Hog Farms Say Foul Air Endangers Their Health
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
PAULDING, Ohio, May 8 -- Robert Thornell says that five years ago an
invisible swirling poison invaded his family farm and the house he had
built with his hands. It robbed him of his memory, his balance and his
ability to work. It left him with mood swings, a stutter and fistfuls of
pills. He went from doctor to doctor, unable to understand what was
happening to him.
The 14th doctor finally said he knew the source of the maladies:
cesspools the size of football fields belonging to the industrial hog
farm a half-mile from the Thornell home.
"I never related it to the hogs at all," said Mr. Thornell, who is now 55.
A growing number of scientists and public health officials around the
country say they have traced a variety of health problems faced by
neighbors of huge industrial farms to vast amounts of concentrated
animal waste, which emit toxic gases while collecting in open-air
cesspools or evaporating through sprays. The gases, hydrogen sulfide and
ammonia, are poisonous.
The waste is collected in pools because the concentration of hogs is so
high that it must be treated before it can be used as fertilizer.
Livestock trade officials and Bush administration regulators say more
study is needed before any cause and effect can be proved. But Dr. Kaye
H. Kilburn, a professor at the University of Southern California who
studies the effects of toxic chemicals on the brain, said evidence
strongly supported a link between the farms and the illnesses.
In Iowa, one of the country's two biggest pork-producing states (North
Carolina is the other), state environment officials started conducting
air quality tests for hydrogen sulfide and ammonia at six neighborhood
locations around hog farms last month. Brian Button, an air information
specialist with the state, said preliminary data showed that 22 times in
April, the gases exceeded the state's recommended air standards of 15
parts per billion of hydrogen sulfide and 150 parts per billion of
ammonia, averaged over an hour. The highest level recorded for hydrogen
sulfide was 70 parts per billion, a level that would have exceeded the
air standards for at least six other states.
Dr. Kilburn, who runs a business diagnosing neurological disorders, said
that over the last three years he had seen about 50 patients, including
Mr. Thornell and his wife, Diane, who had suffered neurological damage
he judged to be a result of hydrogen sulfide poisoning from industrial
farms. The Thornells are considering a lawsuit based on his work.
"The coincidence of people showing a pattern of impairment and being
exposed to hydrogen sulfide arising from lagoons where hog manure is
stored and then sprayed on fields or sprayed into the air" makes a
connection "practically undeniable," Dr. Kilburn said in an interview.
Industrial farms often house thousands, if not tens of thousands, of
hogs, which generate millions of gallons of waste each year. Runoff and
water pollution have been the focus of many of the government and
academic studies of such farms' environmental impact.
In comparison, little has been done by federal or state environmental
officials to monitor or limit air pollution from these farms. The
Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have
formed a joint committee to look at farm air pollution.
Around industrial hog farms across the country, people say their
sickness rolls in with the wind. It brings headaches that do not go away
and trips to the emergency room for children whose lungs suddenly close
up. People young and old have become familiar with inhalers, nebulizers
and oxygen tanks. They complain of diarrhea, nosebleeds, earaches and
lung burns.
Paul Isbell of Houston, Miss., started experiencing seizures after a hog
farm moved in down the road. Jeremiah Burns of Hubbardston, Mich., now
carries a six-pound oxygen tank with him. Kevin Pearson of Meservey,
Iowa, carried a towel in his car because he vomited five or six times a
week on his way to work. Julie Jansen's six children suffered flulike
symptoms and diarrhea when farms moved into their neighborhood in
Renville, Minn. One of Ms. Jansen's daughters was found by Dr. Kilburn
to have neurological damage. She has problems with balance and has lost
some feeling in her fingers.
Public health officials have been cautious in drawing a clear link from
hydrogen sulfide to neurological damage, though they say low-level
exposure has been connected to fatigue, loss of appetite, headaches,
poor memory, dizziness and other health problems.
"In community exposures, when they are exposed to a mixture of chemicals
-- hydrogen sulfide included -- there have been neurological effects
reported as well," said Selene Chou, who manages the hydrogen sulfide
toxicological profile for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry, a sister agency of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
"Based on what I see, there could be neurological effects, but we don't
know at what low level of chronic exposure," Ms. Chou said. "That
information is badly needed, because communities have experienced these
effects."
The agricultural industry, backed by some government officials, contends
that these health effects are at best poorly documented. They say that
scientific studies have relied too much on the testimony of the people
with medical problems, and that there is no way to prove that those
problems are directly attributable to the farms.
"The health concern issues raised by the residents are totally
unfounded," said Ron Prestage, an owner of Prestage Farms, the target of
two suits filed by Mississippi residents. "There has never been a
neighbor of a farm who has come forward with any documentation of a
health problem of any kind."
Ohio pork producers agree.
"I do not think there is any way that it can be proven that that hog
farm, which is a half-mile away, has any effect," said Dick Isler, the
executive vice president of the Ohio Pork Producers Council, who said he
knew about Mr. Thornell's case. Mr. Isler said studies showed that "any
time you are more than a hundred feet away it is not a problem."
Residents say they do not have difficulty proving that they are ill --
their medications and oxygen tanks demonstrate that. They acknowledge
that for many symptoms, the link to the farms is circumstantial. But in
the most extreme cases, they say the evidence of a link is clear.
Bush administration officials are negotiating with lobbyists for the
large farms to establish voluntary monitoring of air pollution, which
will give farm operators amnesty for any Clean Air Act violations while
generating data that will enable regulators to track the type and source
of pollutants more accurately.
"We are negotiating with industry to work on capturing better
information as to what emissions factors are in play," said J. P.
Suarez, who is in charge of enforcement for the environmental agency.
Growing layers of lawsuits, government reports and regulatory tussles on
the state and federal levels are signs of increasing tensions. Some
1,800 residents of Mississippi have filed class-action lawsuits against
factory farms, and the state health agency has put a moratorium on new
ones. In response to citizen complaints, a few states, including Texas
and Minnesota, have set pollution standards aimed at the farms. Iowa's
state environmental agency recently announced that it would institute
new pollution regulations affecting the farms. But the state
legislature, under industry pressure, nullified those regulations last
week, saying they were overreaching.
State and federal efforts to regulate the water pollution from factory
farms may actually cause the farms to divert chemicals into the air, the
National Academy of Sciences says. Farms have adopted the practice of
spraying liquid manure into the air when cesspool levels get too high, a
practice that creates mists that are easily carried by the wind.
When Mr. Thornell first became ill, he said, he thought he had suffered
a nervous breakdown. Unable to go back to work as a schoolteacher, he
retired on disability at 53. For two years, he had no idea what was
happening. Then he learned about Dr. Kilburn's research while watching
television. He sent an e-mail message to Dr. Kilburn, who told him to
come to Pasadena for a diagnosis.
The Thornells, who had never been to California, drove all the way, with
a stop at the Grand Canyon. The diagnosis for both Mr. Thornell and his
wife was irreversible brain injuries from the hydrogen sulfide gas.
Mrs. Thornell said her husband had lost his energetic smile. Now he
speaks slowly and often loses his train of thought. He does not drive
far from the house by himself, because he often gets lost.
"It's like I have a 2.1 gigahertz body with a 75 megahertz mind," Mr.
Thornell said. "I feel like collateral damage."
Mrs. Thornell added, "It's the price we pay for cheap food."
Over the last 20 years, the industrialization of agriculture, especially
the emergence of large-scale livestock farms, has raised concerns about
pollution in rural areas.
"It is no longer the mom-and-pop operation it used to be," said Viney
Aneja, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at North
Carolina State University who has studied factory farms' air pollution.
"This is a factory. Treat it as one. It should be under the same
constraints as a chemical operation."
Some former government employees said industry pressure had limited
their ability to study and combat the problem.
Former Environmental Protection Agency prosecutors said they started
looking at air pollution from factory farms in 1998, but political
appointees issued a directive in early 2002 that effectively stymied new
cases. "You had decisions about enforcement that were being made on the
political level without any input from the enforcement," said Michele
Merkel, a prosecutor who resigned from the agency in protest.
Eric Schaeffer, the former director of civil enforcement at the
environmental agency, said Agriculture Department officials tried to
exert influence to protect the industrial farms. "They essentially
wanted veto power," he said.
Lisa Harrison, a spokeswoman for the environmental agency, said, "Given
the sensitivity of air emissions issues, headquarters is directly
involved in the decision-making process." She said enforcement decisions
were made within the agency, and enforcement was continuing.
At the Agriculture Department, officials have reclassified research
topics relating to industrial farms and health, including
antibiotic-resistant pathogens, as "sensitive." As a result, at least
one scientist, James Zahn, has left the department. "It was a choke hold
on objective research," said Dr. Zahn, who had studied swine and
bacteria until he left last fall. "Originally we were praised for the
work we were doing. All of a sudden we were told, no more antibiotic
resistance work."
Internal department e-mail messages made available by the Natural
Resources News Service show that Dr. Zahn's superiors barred him from
presenting research at a conference in Iowa in 2002. A message from a
supervisor advised Dr. Zahn that "politically sensitive and
controversial issues require discretion."
Julie Quick, an Agriculture Department spokeswoman, said that Dr. Zahn
was discouraged from speaking about his research because he is not an
expert on how the compounds in swine manure affect human health.
Disputes within regulatory agencies seem distant concerns to the
Thornells, who have been advised by Dr. Kilburn to move out of their
home. Their neurological damage is irreversible, but they can prevent it
from getting worse, he told them.
"If I could sell the house, I would move in a second, but I don't know
where to go," Mr. Thornell said. "I've lived here for 44 years. This is
home to me."
Copyright 2003
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