THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAY 11, 2003
Neighbors of Vast Hog Farms Say Foul Air Endangers Their Health
By JENNIFER 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."
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."
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