SELMA, Ind. (AP) — Farmers' efforts to increase corn yields are putting some Indiana residents in harm's way, state officials say.
The state chemist's office received 24 complaints last year about crop dusters hitting people or their homes with pesticides while treating fields.
Dave Scott, pesticide program manager for the chemist's office, told The Star Press that aerial pesticide applications have risen in the last five years as corn prices have spiked. Growers hoping to increase their yields have hired people to apply fungicide, and the chemicals can only be applied from the air.
Selma, Ind., resident Sheri Stewart said she was hit with pesticide recently by a helicopter flying low over her house. She she's worried about the chemical's effects.
"I am a cancer survivor. I try so hard to avoid this stuff. I don't smoke or drink, so it's very upsetting to be poisoned in my own home. It was coating my house and it also hit me," she said.
Stewart said she heard a helicopter flying close to her house and stepped outside to check it and got sprayed.
"Our property seemed to be the turn-around spot for him, so he flew over our house many times, at times so low he couldn't have been 10 feet over our roof," she said.
James Olesen of Yorktown told WTHR a plane spraying crops in a field next to his property line drifted over and hit his house.
"At that point I said, 'Hurry up and get inside. Close the doors. Just get inside,'" Olesen said.
Scott said the chemicals will have labels warning against exposing people.
"People are not used to seeing this many planes in the air. That's not the history in this state. Some people are alarmed by how close they are to their properties. In other cases, guys are not being careful and keeping on target."
In one of the cases last year, an applicator for a Covington, Ind., helicopter firm was fined $250 for failing to follow label instructions. In another case, a Portland, Ind., firm was fined $1,250 for applying pesticides without a license after a resident complained that chemicals from an aerial application on a farm field damaged trees and other plants on his property.
Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com
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