The Bad Air Sponge

WAUKESHA - A town of Delafield man was sentenced to serve nine months in the county Huber jail and two years on probation Monday, after a menagerie of animals was found in the Highway 18 home he and his wife and daughter had. George Kozlowski, 50, pleaded no contest last fall to three counts of mistreating animals after authorities responding to a 911 hang-up call found 19 dogs, nine cats, a squirrel, a skunk, two turkeys, four exotic birds, three ducks, 10 chickens and a raccoon at the home. A criminal complaint said there was feces in the house and a “toxic” odor.

Kozlowski also was fined $100 plus costs for a non-criminal citation for disorderly conduct. That matter was originally a misdemeanor but it was downgraded after Kozlowski completed a domestic violence counseling program.

But industry leaders say many complaints come from people opposed to factory farming, not because of excessive odor

By GAVIN OFF

January 2, 2025 | 5:16 p.m. CST

GREEN CITY — In a place where strangers wave to each other through the passing windshields of their pickups and neighbors tend to their neighbors’ crops for no more than a thank you, finding an unwelcome guest in this quiet town might seem unimaginable.

But several families in Green City, a blink-and-you-missed-it town surrounded by farms and wild sunflower fields in Sullivan County, say they’ve been fighting an obnoxious guest for 13 years.

Some residents have moved.

Others have complained.

Since 2000, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has received more than 1,700 odor complaints against concentrated animal feeding operations, according to a Missourian analysis of records held by the state agency. Missouri is home to 450 of these operations, including 21 large enough to have their odors regulated.

Residents of Sullivan County in north central Missouri have registered more than one-third of the complaints against the feeding operations, which typically house thousands of animals.

“Hope you had a good Thanksgiving,” read a 2004 complaint. “Be glad you’re not here this morning. The hog odor would about bring your turkey back to life.”

Animal farm odors present the state with one of its most complicated environmental problems, said Leanne Tippett Mosby, deputy division director of the DNR’s Division of Environmental Quality.

The state must protect the interest of animal producers, who provide jobs, economic benefits and food for hundreds of residents. Meanwhile, it must also protect the interests of their neighbors, who say farm odors cause health problems and simply make their lives miserable.

“I know it’s a political hot potato,” said Mark Fohey, vice-chairman of the Missouri Air Conservation Commission. “You can do whatever you want, and you’re basically going to piss off one or the other.”

Complaints registered

Of the more than 1,700 odor complaints since 2000, residents filed nearly 1,400 of them —— about 80 percent — against Premium Standard Farms, according to the state database of complaints. Premium Standard, a pork-producing heavyweight, operates in five northern Missouri counties.

Small-farm owner Rolf Christen, 53, and his family have filed about 400 complaints against Premium Standard in 6 1/2 years — the rough equivalent of one every six days.

Christen’s home outside Green City sits four miles south of Premium Standard’s Green Hills farm and eight miles northwest of Premium Standard’s Valley View farm. Combined, they house some 200,000 hogs.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Resource Conservation Service, 200,000 hogs produce about 650 tons of feces a year.

Winds carry the rotten egg-like smell across town, residents say.

A couple times a week, Christen said, the stench blows across picturesque corn, hay and soybean fields to his small home under towering maple trees.

“People move from the city to the country because of clean air and clean water,” Christen said. “Right now we live in the middle of a cesspool.”

Christen is one of about 270 Missouri residents mentioned in two ongoing odor nuisance lawsuits against Premium Standard Farms.

“Ill-smelling odors, hazardous substances and/or contaminated wastewater have escaped and continue to escape from the defendant’s swine factories onto the plaintiffs’ properties and thus have substantially impaired and continue to impair the plaintiff’s use and quiet enjoyment of their properties,” the lawsuits read.

According to the lawsuits, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, odors from the feeding operations can cause nausea, vomiting, headaches, breathing difficulties and irritated eyes, noses and throats.

A January report released by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services says some studies have shown that odors exacerbate the pre-existing health problems of nearby residents while affecting their overall quality of life.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported in 1996 that the odors could affect a person’s mood and physical well-being.

“To me, that suggests it’s something we should be concerned with because as a society we want to protect all our people,” said Peter Thorne, professor with the University of Iowa’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Health.

Counter argument

Some say the odor complaints are the work of disgruntled neighbors who simply dislike corporate agriculture.

State records, they say, prove it.

According to the Department of Natural Resources database, two families — the Christens of Sullivan County and the Torreys of Putnam County — have reported 59 percent of the complaints.

Christen admits that even a light odor makes him feel disrespected, like being slapped in the face by a neighbor.

Leslie Holloway of the Missouri Farm Bureau said some residents have it out for certain concentrated feeding operations.

About 40 people have complained about odors from Premium Standard’s facilities, according to the database. Spokesman Jason Helton said that for each complainant, Premium Standard has scores of neighbors who get along well with the company.

“A handful of folks may not be representative of the five counties we operate in,” he said.

Only 10 times have DNR officials cited a farm for excess odor emissions. Supporters of the big feed lots say the low number suggests that most complaints are illegitimate.

Some researchers said that’s often the case.

“Odor tends to be the verbal complaint where there’s a lot of underlying issues,” said Colin Johnson, an environmental specialist with Iowa State University.

Johnson said the feeding operations are the target of complaints because their owners are often community outsiders and because the lots compete with small-farmer owners over land, workers and prices.

Tracking the smell

Sitting on his backyard patio one Sunday afternoon with his dog, Susie, at his feet and a cup of hot tea in his hand, Christen, who came to the United States from Germany in 1980, delighted in the day’s cool, odorless breeze.

“We’re very appreciative of nice mornings, beautiful afternoons,” Christen said.

He just wishes there were more of them.

Week after week, hog odors blow across his 1,800-acre farm, through his small chicken coop and over his barn to his home, Christen said.

John Mabry, director of the Iowa Pork Industry Center at Iowa State University, said depending on the topography and weather patterns, it’s possible for odors to regularly settle in one area.

“It could happen,” Mabry said. “If the odor rises and there is a consistent trade wind, it could potentially deposit in a particular location. I’m not sure how probable that would be.”

According to the EPA, the odors are generated from three sources: confined animal buildings, manure storage and treatment facilities and land application of animal waste.

Many Missouri farms, unlike others in top hog-producing states, store their animal waste in gigantic outdoor lagoons where winds can take hold of the smell.

Steve Boone, with the Department of Natural Resource’s Macon office, has the monumental task of helping track down the smells, which often vanish as quickly as they arrive.

Because the department does not have the manpower to look into each complaint, it has failed to conduct a post-complaint odor inspection nearly 900 times since 2000.

Instead, Boone said, it’s common for state regulators to inspect a complaint days or sometimes weeks after the state fielded the call. To increase their chances of finding an odor, inspectors go out when weather conditions mirror those at the time of a complaint.

“I think it’s very difficult to do it that way,” said Steve Hoff, professor of agriculture and biological engineering at Iowa State. “The smallest changes in the weather pattern can put a receptor in or out of an odor plume.”

Mabry said too many factors determine an odor’s strength and ultimate destination for state officials to predict when and where the smells might pop up. Factors include everything from wind speed, humidity and solar intensity to topography, the makeup of the hogs’ diet and the maintenance operations at the farm.

Johnson said some of the most effective ways of eliminating farm odors include planting trees around the animal buildings, regulating the hogs’ diets and storing their waste in indoor underground pits instead of outdoor lagoons.

“When the winds come across that lagoon, they lift the volatile compounds, the odors, continuously,” he said.

Capturing odors

Jack Parrish moved to Putnam County in 1990, three years before Premium Standard entered the state.

By 1998, after dozens of complaints to the Department of Natural Resources, Parrish screwed his windows shut. He grew tired of shifting winds blowing the sharp, pungent smell into his home.

Unlike Christen, Parrish has largely given up on complaining. He has filed 46 complaints since 2000, including two in 2006. Not one resulted in a violation.

“It’s like beating your head against a brick wall,” said Parrish, 58. “Your head swells up and starts hurting. Why continue?”

Christen said the Department of Natural Resources would receive dozens more complaints if residents believed their calls would make a difference.

When they do inspect odors, officials use a device called a scentometer to measure a smell’s strength. If two air samples taken within an hour of each other contain a dilution of at least seven parts of clean air to one part of odorous air, inspectors bag a third sample to send to an independent lab in Minnesota.

There scientists measure the odor to ultimately determine whether Missouri officials should issue a violation. The regulations apply only to large operations.

The Department of Natural Resource’s Tippett Mosby said about half the odor samples sent to the lab result in violations.

In July, department officials recommended to the Air Conservation Commission that the state stop sending samples to the olfactory lab and rely solely on the scentometer to determine odor violations.

“Laboratory olfactory is expensive ($500/sample), creates logistical challenges (mailing samples, sample holding times) … and may not be scientifically valid because of concerns with chemical reactions with the container,” the report read.

Neighbors of the big operations said the change, along with immediate post-complaint inspections, would result in more odor violations and thus better compliance with Missouri laws.

Conservation commissioners, however, declined to vote on the recommendation, saying they needed more scientific information before making a decision.

But Christen said he has all the information he needs. He smells it almost every week.

“To me, I think it’s an atrocity,” Christen said. “I invite PSF officials here. I will wine them and dine them. But they have to sleep with their windows open.”

By STEVEN M. ELLIS, Staff Writer

A police officer’s personal experience hanging a similarly sized object from his rearview mirror gave him an objective basis to believe that an air freshener hanging from another driver’s mirror obstructed the driver’s view in violation of state law, the Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.

Holding that the officer’s belief that Mark A. Colbert’s view was blocked by the air freshener was objectively reasonable based on personal experience, the court upheld the admission into evidence against Colbert of 11 methadone pills and a misappropriated credit card discovered in the car during a subsequent search.

Agent Scott McCrossin of the Los Altos Police Department stopped Colbert after observing a flat, tree-shaped air freshener hanging from Colbert’s rearview window. McCrossin thought that the object, which was 4.75 inches tall and 2.75 inches wide at its widest point, was wide enough to obstruct Colbert’s vision in violation of Vehicle Code Sec. 26708.

He later testified that he knew an air freshener of this size could obstruct a driver’s view, because he had hung a similar-sized object from the rearview mirror in his personal vehicle which had obstructed his view, and that he was aware of an accident that had been caused by something hanging from a rear view mirror. McCrossin said that this led him to the conclusion that air fresheners in close proximity to a driver’s face, even small ones, obstructed the driver’s view of objects such as vehicles or pedestrians.

McCrossin stopped Colbert, who was accompanied by his nephew. Colbert was on parole, so McCrossin conducted a search and found a credit card bearing a woman’s name and a plastic bag containing 11 methadone pills, which Colbert said were “vitamin pills.”

Colbert and his nephew denied knowing the woman listed on the card, which had been reported lost two days earlier, so McCrossin arrested Colbert and soon observed that he appeared to be under the influence of a controlled substance.

Colbert was charged with possession of methadone, misdemeanor appropriation of lost property, and being under the influence of a controlled substance. He moved to suppress the evidence from the traffic stop, claiming that no air freshener was hanging from his mirror, and that, even had it been, the officer’s belief that Colbert’s view was obstructed was not objectively reasonable.

Colbert relied on People v. White (2003) 107 Cal.App.4th 636, where the court of appeal held that a police officer who stopped a car under similar circumstances did not have an objectively reasonable belief of obstruction because the officer neither testified to such a belief, nor identified any specific or articulable facts to support it.

However, a magistrate distinguished the case, concluding that McCrossin’s testimony established that he had an objectively reasonable basis to believe that Colbert had violated the law and upholding the search, and Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Rise Jones Pichon upheld the magistrate’s decision.

Colbert pled guilty to the three counts, and was sentenced to two years in prison. He then appealed, renewing his challenge to the denial of his suppression motion.

However, the Court of Appeal agreed with Pichon and the magistrate, and affirmed Colbert’s convictions.

Writing for the court, Justice Nathan D. Mihara rejected Colbert’s argument that White controlled.

“The evidence before the magistrate in this case contained precisely what was missing in White and did not include any of the evidence that supported the defense argument in White,” he said.

Mihara wrote that McCrossin’s testimony about his personal experience, unlike the testimony of the officer in White, provided specific and articulable facts that supported an objectively reasonable conclusion that the hanging air freshener violated the law.

He also noted that, in White, the defendant presented testimony from a civil engineer that the air freshener covered less than .05 percent of the windshield and would not obstruct the vision of a 6-foot-tall driver, and testified himself that the air freshener was not an obstruction.

“[U]nlike in White,” he said, “there was no evidence presented by the defense that the air freshener did not obstruct the driver’s view.”

Colbert’s attorney did not return a call seeking comment.

A spokesperson for the attorney general said that the court had “concluded properly.”

Mihara was joined in his opinion by Justices Richard J. McAdams and Wendy Clark Duffy.

The case is People v. Colbert, H031479

Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company

Associated Press - December 18, 2024 3:04 PM ET

MILWAUKEE (AP) - Consumer products giant S.C. Johnson & Son has sued Scottsdale-based Dial Corp. for patent infringement on a new air freshener that emits three scents.

Racine-based S.C. Johnson makes Glade and Oust air fresheners.

The company filed the suit this month in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in Madison. It did not specify damages.

The company asked that Dial’s new product, called Renuzit (ree-NEWS’-it) Tri Scents, be prevented from hitting the market next month.

S.C. Johnson said in court filings that it will suffer irreparable harm if Dial goes to market with the product. Dial bought the Renuzit brand from S.C. Johnson in 1993.

But a Portuguese company that joined S.C. Johnson in the suit holds the patent on technology that allows air fresheners to emit three scents.

Air fresheners are a $1.72 billion industry in the United States. An estimated 75 percent of homes use them regularly. According to a September 2007 report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), most common household air fresheners contain potentially noxious chemicals that degrade the quality of indoor air and may even affect hormones and reproductive development, particularly in babies.

As part of its “Clearing the Air” study, NRDC researchers tested 14 brands of common household air fresheners and found that 12 contained chemicals known as phthalates. Only two, Febreze Air Effects and Renuzit Subtle Effects, contained no detectable levels of phthalates. Products testing positive included ones marketed as “all-natural” and “unscented.” None of the brands tested listed phthalates on their labels.

Phthalates are “hormone-disrupting” chemicals that can be particularly dangerous for young children and unborn babies. Like some other man-made chemicals, phthalates can affect normal hormonal processes-those that control brain, nervous and immune system development, reproduction, mental processing and metabolism-by blocking them altogether, throwing off the timing or “mimicking” natural hormones and interacting with cells themselves, with very unhealthy consequences. The State of California notes that five types of phthalates-including one commonly used in air freshener products-are “known to cause birth defects or reproductive harm.”

Despite these issues, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate the use of phthalates or require the labeling of phthalate content on products. Other governments take the phthalate threat more seriously. The European Union forbids the most harmful phthalates in cosmetics or toys, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to soon sign similar legislation for his state.

NRDC bemoans the fact that the U.S. government does not test air fresheners for safety or require manufacturers to meet specific health standards. “More than anything, our research highlights cracks in our safety system,” says Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior NRCD scientist. “Consumers have a right to know what is put into air fresheners and other everyday products they bring into their homes,” she says, adding that the government should keep a watchful eye on potentially dangerous products.

In conjunction with the study, NRDC-along with the Sierra Club, the Alliance for Healthy Homes and the National Center for Healthy Housing-is petitioning federal agencies to start assessing the risk air fresheners pose to consumers by testing all products now on the market. And NRDC has already begun working directly with some manufacturers to find ways to eliminate phthalates from these products.

NRDC recommends that consumers be selective and purchase only air fresheners that have the least amount of phthalates. Better yet, the group suggests consumers first try to reduce household odors by tending to their root causes or improving ventilation rather than masking them. “The best way to avoid the problem is to simply open a window instead of reaching for one of these cans,” concludes Solomon.