Interesting News from the health desk

From Environmental Health Perspectives comes an article praising California (always the leader in alt.tech) for tougher legislation to reduce air pollution. One method described is using B20 in tractors that manage the fields. Unfortunately, New Holland and John Deere only recommend (and therefore will only cover you for) using 2-5% biodiesel blends. Obviously, the greater the biodiesel use, the greater the benefit to the environment, save for NOx, a problem that is still being worked on. On the brighter side, in 2005, John Deere started shipping its tractors with a B2 blend in the tank. Significant!

The real point of this post, and another reason to promote alt.fuels, is this quote from the article, "A 1989 report by the California Air Resources Board noted that grapes, cotton, oranges, lemons, and beans grown in 1985 levels of air pollution lost 16-29% in yield and size as a direct result of smog." Not too many agricultural areas suffer from smog like SoCal, the geographical focus of this piece, but for those that do...