Rating: 
Summary: What a story! ...will be interesting to see how it ends.
Review: I am a relatively young reader (27 years), and like many young people today, I am apparently and admittingly naive about what environmental atrocities are still legally going on in the US (let alone the rest of the world). I was previously of the opinion that "all that bad toxic waste stuff" used to happen when I was a kid! RCRA, CERCLIS, and the NPL Superfund Program, to me, symbolized a change in the way companies dealt with waste. There was an unprecedented enforcement of laws enacted to stop big industry and small-time polluters from engaging in unhealthy practices. Add my naivity about current practices to the fact that I am currently an environmental consultant (although one who mostly deals with petroleum issues)and you can see my frustration. I am frustrated for the protagonist becuase I would have felt the same things as she, but I would've fought my battle with more science and less rhetoric. Less emotional, more methodical. Yet, that doesn't make her battle any less real or worth fighting. If it hasn't already begun, then this book will instigate and generate REAL tox studies, REAL reporting, and non-partisan results. We will start to see legitimate fate and transport models of heavy metals through soil, roots, and into food. Hopefully, the inorganic fertilizer makers who prefer to keep ethics in their lives and heavy metals out of their fertilizers, will become models of their industry. Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: A sad book
Review: I was just getting into Fateful Harvest when September 11th hit. I had to force myself to finish reading, because suddenly the book's theme seemed so trivial and self-righteous. What difference does it make whether organic farmers use animal waste or other farmers use industrial waste? Is one type of waste "better" than the other? The question seems so trite right now. Our food supply seems like something to be thankful for right now, not something to create more fear about. This book simply saddens me now. Surely there are more important things to campaign for these days.
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Summary: THE TRUTH HURTS; "FATEFUL HARVEST" UNVEILS THE TRUTH!
Review: In this fast moving information age, we have become used to hearing of environmental controversies only when it is convenient for the media. With FATEFUL HARVEST, a proven investigative reporter conveys the painful truth that has been hidden by chemical companies for decades. DUFF WILSON is hardly a fly-by-night writer and his credibility outweighs the reviews elsewhere here that dismisses his words as "sophomoric" and "one-sided." In fact, WILSON goes far beyond some books that investigate; he goes coast to coast making sure his facts are straight and balanced. So it becomes obvious that the negative reviews written here are likely from industry dogs. Government officials who first ignored the findings and claims of PATTY MARTIN in Quincy, Washington were simply following the bureaucratic pattern of ignorance and non-action. But an unrelenting MARTIN and others held their ground and the chemical companies like CENEX were caught with conclusive evidence of their crimes. DUFF WILSON has fairly and accurately revealed what all of us have suspected for some time, that corporations use their financial and political power to hide their dirty little secrets. Now the truth is out and what makes this different than the colorful story of ERIN BROCKOVICH and PG&E in California is this is a national tragedy, a national crime. PG&E's poisoning was regional, yet just as criminal. FATEFUL HARVEST will certainly engage you, it will shock you and it has opened the books on an issue that will change how our foods are farmed and fertilized. If you believe the words of naysayers, then you're obviously in favor of the big companies that dumped this toxic waste on the farmers. Read FATEFUL HARVEST and you'll know that the truth hurts. Just ask the tobacco companies about the truth.
Rating:
Summary: POWERFUL!
Review: It is simple. Read the book. Decide if you want to eat your food with some toxic fertilizer sprinkled on by corporate-terrorists. Do your research and then decide what you are going to do about this horrendous insult to all life and the land around the world. This issue leaves me mourning for our world. Thankfully there are still dedicated people like Duff Wilson that uncover the scoundrels that have no conscience except for the dollar. Rachael Carson blew the whistle on DDT and now Mr. Wilson is blowing the whistle on toxic waste fertilizers unwittingly being used by farmers and gardeners everywhere. Wake up EPA!
Rating:
Summary: Fateful Meeting
Review: My eyes raced through Duff Wilson's "Fateful Harvest" spotting characters I know from an issue with which I have been acquainted for some time. Quincy Washington's Patty Martin could be Herculaneum, Missouri's Leslie Warden. Both women are bravely fighting a lonely battle to stop stupid men from poisoning innocent people. Patty, snarfing out the truth about hazardous waste being turned into fertilizer as doggedly as Hercule Poirot unknowingly crosses paths with a toxic issue in Missouri.
Leslie Warden, stubborn like Patty, is trying to save the people in her town, where the Doe Run a lead smelter is contaminating the homes and may be contributing to the early deaths of the people in Herculaneum.
When I read in "Fateful Harvest" that "baghouse dust" being used to make fertilizer, my heart sank to below my feet. A baghouse is a filter for a smelter to trap fugitive dust particles of lead, cadmium, arsenic, zinc and other heavy metals. The smelter has other "waste products" like black acid, a witches brew of sulfuric acid and heavy metals. Doe Run just about gives this away to Frit Industries in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. Bingo! This company that Leslie and others are fighting because it's poisoning their town is suddenly in the middle of Patty Martin's fight. She is trying to convince the American people that Doe Run and a myriad of other dirty businesses are solving their toxic waste disposal problems by feeding it to all of us. If that is not the most stupid idea, a more hideously stupid one is that the EPA and Congress are allowing this to go on. It is totally LEGAL!!!
The Doe Run and Frit connection is only one of many. Read Duff Wilson's excellent expose to find out if a company near you is doing you dirt. Then talk to the farmers and neighbors in your community to alert them to the danger in our food supply. This book may save our lives and our civilization!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book is excellent. Everyone should read it and find out what is in our food.
Rating:
Summary: Get Ready to be Appalled
Review: This book is horrifying. You will not want to believe what goes into fertilizer (radioactive materials, lead, and poison to name a few "ingrediants")! But, as consumers, we need to inform ourselves about this deadly and disgusting fertilizer . If you miss reading this book, you will miss out on some important facts that you will never find out about otherwise. Do yourself a favor -- and protect your health -- by reading this book. Then, put your anger into action and write some protest letters.
Rating:
Summary: Convincing, Controversial, & Very Readable
Review: This is a deeply disturbing true story of a somewhat naive rural housewife who meets the rough & tumble of environmental politics head-on. It changes her life in unforseen ways, as well as those around her -- including the author, a seasoned investigative reporter who lets us inside his head. Readers should not demand absolute proof of health effects from toxic waste in fertilizers. The evidence marshalled by this book is convincing enough that real policy changes should result. In any event, it's obvious that we ought not to be taking toxic waste collected from smokestacks and dumping it on the food supply. The real scandal that Duff Wilson uncovers is the industry amorality and government complicity in this outrageously stupid practice of using toxic waste as plant food. Beware those who say there's not enough proof of harm -- that's what the cigarette companies argued for decades.
Rating:
Summary: Convincing, Controversial, & Very Readable
Review: This is a deeply disturbing true story of a somewhat naive rural housewife who meets the rough & tumble of environmental politics head-on. It changes her life in unforseen ways, as well as those around her -- including the author, a seasoned investigative reporter who lets us inside his head. Readers should not demand absolute proof of health effects from toxic waste in fertilizers. The evidence marshalled by this book is convincing enough that real policy changes should result. In any event, it's obvious that we ought not to be taking toxic waste collected from smokestacks and dumping it on the food supply. The real scandal that Duff Wilson uncovers is the industry amorality and government complicity in this outrageously stupid practice of using toxic waste as plant food. Beware those who say there's not enough proof of harm -- that's what the cigarette companies argued for decades.
Rating:
Summary: Don't eat my dirt
Review: This is a story of how mining and manufacturing companies have successfully lobbied to and succeeded in poisoning croplands with their toxic wastes. It makes no difference how nasty or radioactive the mix, the minute it is mixed with fillers and placed in a bag with a fertilizer or soil amendments label the industries were home free--no regulation, no problem. It is certainly curious that it took so long for this to come out. There is an international treaty to prevent toxic waste dumping abroad that the U.S. has not signed. After the treaty was created Greenpeace activists noticed that the definition of "hazardous waste" was changed. "In other words rather than trying to eliminate hazardous wastes, governments are trying to eliminate hazardous waste definitions." The story broke, though, not because of some international activist organization, but because the bright and persistent mayor of a small agricultural town with a fertilizer plant was concerned about the health of local school children. By the time the townspeople demanded that she shut up, it was too late, the press was on the scene. Recounting this much of the adventure takes us about two-thirds of the way through the book. From there on the author carries on alone moving from the local level to the national level. His newly developed sources confirmed that this was not just a local problem of renegade "recylcers" near Hanford Washington, but a nationwide set of standard operating procedures uniformly practiced by the largest U.S. Corporations. The next step was not too hard, the author went to a home and garden store down the street, bought twenty kinds of fertilizer and had them analyzed for fourteen toxic metals. He went to the companies that made the really toxic ones like NuLife and Ironite. NuLife was so toxic it would have to be disposed of in a fenced landfill with double plastic lining, until, that is, it was labeled as fertilizer, then it could go in a child's sandbox. A Washington state warning bulletin was issued concerning Ironite. Five of the fertilizers tested "cleaner in toxic metals that the background level in the soil" including MiracleGro. The test results are listed on www.seattletimes.com as part of his first article. The press services carried it, the New York Times ignored it. Heavy metals do not biodegrade, they bioaccumulate. The land get sicker and sicker each year until the land is barren as happened to some farmers in the Mayor's town. This toxicity induce immune deficiency diseases that are reinforced year after year. Hundreds of companies legally dump hundreds of millions of pounds of toxics via the fertilizer backdoor. Lead content in fertilizer, for example, may be one hundred times what would be considered safe if measured in residential. One pilot study found that 14 million pounds of this waste is carcinogenic. The biggest offenders were Frit Industries (a Superfund site) and Bay Zinc. Richard Camp, Jr who owns Bay Zinc now has to duck catcalls of "baby murderer." Also W.R.Grace&Co. sells vermiculite which contains eighty times the amount of asbestos allowable by worker safety standards. When the mayor was voted out, they did the State of Washington a big favor, now she can work full time with activists at a higher level to bring change. Washington became the first state in the nation to have a (watered down to be less than Canadian standards) law that monitors, regulates and labels fertilizers. If you have internet access you can read the labels on-line at www.wa.gov/agr/. If you happen to be in a store reading the label to make a buying decision, too bad, no information is required there. "What should be done next? I think we need real oversight and testing and disclosure and change. Part of the answer may be found in nature. Why not seek to remove the toxins as our legacy to the land, or at the very least, limit them to the natural background level of the soil? Roughly a third of our fertilizers would pass that test today. What is sold as fertilizer simply ought to be cleaner than dirt." The book is well-footnoted and has a quality index. It is well-paced with lots of human interest too. A good read.
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