No exemption for poisons

By Bob Watson

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With most of Iowa's livestock now being raised in factorylike, industrial settings, rural residents and rural schools are being subjected to the poison sewer gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, to the explosive and greenhouse gas methane, and to particulates.

Concentrated animal feeding operations, or

CAFOs, which include confinements and open feedlots, act like sewers and poorly operating wastewater digesters. They create sewer environments. But unlike carefully monitored industrial or municipal sewers, CAFOs are unregulated. They can and do constantly produce poison gasses, which are blown into the rural neighborhoods every day.

This is legal because the state and federal governments have exempted confinements and feedlots from all regulation concerning these poisons and particulates. Rules that normally would protect the public from the harmful health effects of these industrial technologies do not apply to agriculture. Rural schools - and schoolchildren - receive no protection from industrial poisons produced by agriculture.

The essential question we are asking: Who is responsible for schoolchildren's health when they are required by law to be on school property?

In our effort to find a solution to this problem in our county, we have gone to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, our local county board of health, and the Iowa Department of Public Health - which checked twice with the Attorney General's Office. In each instance, when we asked who might be responsible for these children's health, we have been told essentially that no one is. Apparently these poisons are not considered poisons when they are coming from industrial agriculture.

Studies have shown that negative health effects normally associated with exposure to hydrogen-sulfide, ammonia and particulates are higher in rural Iowa than most anywhere else in the United States, as a percentage of population. We used to raise most animals outside on pasture. Up until a few years ago in Iowa, we raised more animals per year outside versus what we raise now in confinements and feedlots. We didn't have these health problems in rural areas until we started using CAFOs - confinements and feedlots - with their inherent poisons and particulates.

So, who is responsible for children's health when their playgrounds and classrooms are inundated with poison sewer gasses and particulates? Do we accept the Orwellian decree from the State that these really aren't poisons when they come from industrial agriculture, and those children's health problems don't really exist?

We have been amazed and disappointed at this response - or really the non-response - from government officials to our inquiry. The harmful effects to human health and the environment from this modern petrochemical industrial model of agriculture is probably Iowa's most urgent peace and justice issue. It is despicable that children can be sacrificed for a model of agriculture that enriches a few corporations and leaves the rest of us living with the shattered remains of a once-vibrant farming culture.

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