North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Andrew Bell <acbell@iastate.edu>]

At 10:22 AM 6/7/2006, you wrote:
> Farmers in my state (Nebraska) have the same clueless attitude towards
> chemicals. Years ago a crop duster sprayed the wrong field by mistake,
> when a farm wife was in it. She and her husband joked that they got
> "free"  coverage on their field. Next year she was dead of cancer. I've
> also seen farmers in their pickups out in fields while the spray plane
> flew right over them, spraying.

This probably doesn't need saying, but I'll say it anyway.

These kind of anecdotal reports tend to frighten people - perhaps 
unnecessarily.  Certainly one should encourage safe practice with 
pesticides, but to imply that a woman's cancer was necessarily caused by a 
careless exposure is itself careless.


-- Andrew Bell
acbell@iastate.edu