Driving home the other day, we realized something: crop dusting doesn’t stop poisoning 3rd parties just because the growing season is up. In fact, when the nutrient-deprived soil, similar to the dust bowl, starts to get kicked up by the 80 MPH wind we had had, the air quality from that dust will have dropped down to about zero with not so great visibility. They claim the half-life of many of these toxins and forever chemicals breaks down before food hits table, but I can claim from the throws of experience first-hand that windy days you feel malaise and there do appear to be endocrine system signs of stress.
This is a shared experience for many of the people who call the prairie farmland home, though most are simply resigned to this fate. The area reaps much of its income from the corn and other crops grown here, though I can’t say what portion of this goes straight to big food without helping local economies.
So farmers who don’t rotate their crops deplete the soil, the soil becomes more dusty, the dust ends up caking where it does. Food to table, foot into mouth.
The locals are resigned to their fate. They don’t seem to allow themselves to notice or if they do mind, it’s not something which is often discussed. It’s just what they grow here, it’s just part of life here.
Go into the average basement and they’ve got the fancy reverse osmosis while many more also have Berkey’s. This might do the trick for a while, but I doubt if they maintain their systems as often as necessary and drawing new filters probably has a pinch of carcinogen, themselves, until the water coats everything with a thin film as with all new plumbing.
Venture over to a restaurant, however, and the tap water - coffee, tea, soda is probably not filtered to save money. Bring your water from home or risk contamination.
And contaminated the water is. Nebraska rates of cancer are alarmingly high. Forever chemicals reside in the water here. Nitrates. It’s just part of life here.
Head on up and over Scottsbluff pass, into the Wildcat Hills Nature Center. Sample their drinking water. Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, these effects are cumulative…
Compared to the town’s water, “it’s delicious,” I say to the gal at the desk.
“tests positive for Nitrates,” to paraphrase
“Way up here at the pass on the well?”
“Yup”
Then also is the fungus. Perhaps an under-disclosed consequence of big farming being fungicide-resistant strains of fungus. Yuck. Imagine trying to get rid of this in a residence next door to a crop which experiences aerial spraying?
I call the municipality about the spraying that is drifting into neighborhoods built on top of the corn, a trespass if it drifts isn’t it? I orate my complaint. “Oh I used to work with them,” he says. ‘Was it the yellow or white plane?’
Nothing will change, I knew, and hung up the phone.
Then there’s an acquaintance who I will call friend of mine at one of the thrift stores in Nebraska tells me his endocrine system is causing him a lot of problems. I wonder how he’d fare health-wise relocating somewhere else? But where would he go? This is his home now, a long-time transplant of NY.
A gluten-free diet helps with food allergies, I’m told. If it’s not on your skin when you shower, in your air when you breathe, in your walls when you breathe, in your water when you drink, maybe allergies to the corn is just genetics for townies around here? Surely that’s all that’s going on?
