Confinement deaths show dangers

In all sectors of the United States where the toxic sewer gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, and the explosive and greenhouse gas methane, exist in closed spaces, the controlling regulations are the OSHA-enforced federal 'Confined Spaces Regulations,” except in agriculture.

It is unfortunate that wastewater technology - in this case, poorly designed and poorly operating anaerobic digesters, called hog confinements - has been inappropriately transferred to industrial agriculture without the education, regulations, and safety procedures and equipment that are required by the Confined Spaces Regulations.

Without the protections provided by regulations, and with no reporting requirements, these accidents are more common than most people know, and many could be prevented.

Corporate agricultural apologists would have you believe that hog confinements are just agriculture as we have always known it, just bigger and better, and therefore don't need regulations.

The first explosion of a hog confinement was in 1969. You would have thought someone might have asked what this technology really was, and why a confinement would explode.

Due to illnesses and deaths from these sewer gasses, wastewater industry regulation and design standards do not allow normal work spaces to be built in proximity to confined spaces, and no one is allowed into a confined space unless all procedures and equipment are in place. And yet, people in the ag sector, mostly unaware of the dangers from these gasses and with no requirement for education or safety equipment, are told this dangerous sewer environment is the best and healthiest way to raise meat animals.

Those toxic sewer gasses (euphemistically referred to as 'odor” by industrial ag proponents) constantly are blown out of the confinement and into the surrounding neighborhoods and larger environment. If the fans quit, the pigs inside will die. And yet, we allow those dangerous sewer gasses to be exhausted into neighborhoods affecting the people who live there.

Iowa studies have shown significant increases in respiratory ailments in neighbors of confinements, including asthma, from ammonia exposure, and in central nervous and digestive system ailments from hydrogen-sulfide exposure.

Waste from pigs on pasture decomposes into its harmless and beneficial forms within a few days. Waste from pigs in confinement buildings is stored in an anaerobic (no oxygen) condition for six months to a year. That confinement waste 'cooks” and ends up being five times more polluting than raw, untreated human waste. With 20 million hogs at any one time in Iowa, that is equal to 100 million people living in Iowa, collecting but not treating their waste, and dumping it on the land and calling it manure.

Anaerobic digestion of confinement pig waste creates toxic compounds, including the aforementioned hydrogen-sulfide, ammonia, and methane, and volatile organic compounds. Recent studies show that MRSA and other antibiotic resistant organisms can colonize and infect people living in proximity to confinements and fields where confinement waste is spread.

Humans domesticated pigs some 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. We didn't have these particular life-threatening and human health problems until we started using wastewater technology to raise pigs. Corporate ag apologists have done such a good job of mythmaking surrounding industrial agriculture that many people think it is normal to have agriculture that pollutes our water, air, soil and environment, and endangers our health.

This recent post-World War II, Green Revolution/GMO/Confinement and Feedlot model of agriculture depends on toxins to work, and creates more toxins as it works. There are crops and cropping systems that exist today that could be put in the farm bill now that would clean up our agriculture, and Iowa, almost overnight. That 'clean” agriculture would build soil, reduce flooding, provide habitat and reduce the Gulf dead zone, all without sacrificing our food or manufacturing needs.

Whether this farm bill change happens depends on people saying no to this dangerous and polluting corporate model of agriculture, and yes to clean agriculture - no matter what the corporate ag apologists tell us is good for us.

' Bob Watson, of Decorah, is an environmental activist who makes his living in the wastewater industry. Comments: bobandlinda@civandinc.net