Blue-Baby Syndrome

Once a week, an employee of the City of Salem Oregon unlocks a metal jacketed post a few houses north of us. Inside is a water spigot and water valve. The employee then goes to his van and gets out his test gear. What is he testing? Water. Oregon is blessed with wonderful life-giving mountain stream water. Our water is of the highest quality. But we keep testing it, just to be sure.

Well, you say, isn't that the case throughout the United States? No. For example, should you live in Iowa City, Iowa, you would be very concerned about Methemoglobinemia, also known as Blue-Baby Syndrome. Nitrates in drinking water have the potential of killing infants under six months. When the concentrations are high, pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants under six months are advised to drink bottled water. Nitrates come from fertilizer and feed lot runoff. The ground water and river system of the mid-west are full of it.

Actually, we don't get off scott free in Oregon, either. Even lawn fertilizers can contaminate ground water. Our growers use nitrogen fertilizers, too. We just don't have the high intensive farming they have in the mid west.

Nitrogen fertilizers keep food prices down. But as it turns out, we end up paying the price somewhere else.