Environment

January 11, 2021 - The Guardian (UK)

'There’s a red flag here': how an ethanol plant is dangerously polluting a US village

For the residents of Mead, Nebraska, the first sign of something amiss was the stench, the smell of something rotting. People reported eye and throat irritation and nosebleeds. Then colonies of bees started dying, birds and butterflies appeared disoriented and pet dogs grew ill, staggering about with dilated pupils.

There is no mystery as to the cause of the concerns in Mead, a farming community so small that its 500 residents refer to it as a village and not a town.

After multiple complaints to state and federal officials and an inquiry by a researcher from the University of Nebraska, all evidence points to what should be an unlikely culprit – an ethanol plant that, like many others around the United States, turns corn into biofuel.

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The Guardian (UK)