04/07/08 The Air We Breathe

The Air We Breathe. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. What is in the air we breathe? Well that would really depend on where you are at any given time. Standing on the street corner or out in the middle of the country you can be exposed to any number of things in varying amounts. Washington State is currently studying the air we breathe with the idea in mind that pesticides may be suspect. HANSEN: Organophosphate pesticides can be harmful if people are exposed at high enough levels. We have not had any indication that there is a problem or that anybody's being exposed but research is a good thing. It never hurts to check and see and make sure that things are working the way we believe they are. That's Heather Hansen, executive director of Washington Friends of Farms & Forests. She says that the project in Washington is loosely modeled after a project in California but with a couple of key differences. HANSEN: The researchers in California worked very closely with the community and with the agricultural industry, put the monitors up in public places, in parks. Told everybody where they were and why they were there. In Washington the decision was made to put the monitors on private property and keep their locations secret. While the California study was done with community cooperation, Hansen says the Washington study seems to be operating on a covert level. HANSEN: It seems things have been kept very secretive. They've not allowed industry to participate. They have brought in activists from activist organizations and included them. So right off the bat it just sets a bad tone. More tomorrow. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.