Fowl Exhaust

If you ever find yourself in the Gainesville, Georgia area and you're struck with a sudden irresistible curiosity to learn about local environmental and agricultural issues, then Debbie Gilbert at the Times is your go-to gal. Today she reminds us the city's not called "the poultry capital of the world " for nothing, answering that age-old question that everyone who's ever waited at a stoplight behind one of those eighteen-wheel chicken trucks has asked herself: Is it OK for me to breathe this?

[R]esearchers at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health recently analyzed the types of bacteria that end up on (and inside of) cars that drive behind chicken trucks. Johns Hopkins is located near the Delmarva Peninsula, a region that comprises portions of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia and has a high concentration of poultry farms. Researchers drove for 17 miles behind chicken trucks with their cars’ air conditioning turned off and the windows rolled down.

Afterward, they found elevated levels of bacteria on surfaces both inside and outside the cars. They also tested the air in the cars and found increased concentrations of airborne bacteria.

Some of these bacterial strains were resistant to three common types of antibiotics used to treat infections in humans. Those drugs also are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use as feed additives for broiler poultry.

However, the study provided no evidence that anyone has ever gotten sick from driving behind a chicken truck.

I was raised with much stronger concentrations of the nasty stuff, and the exposure hasn't made me chronically ill yet. In fact, my daddy said they used to put chicken manure on the top of my head, and that's the reason I'm as tall as I am now. When I do get sick, my family usually blames my "worminess." They're right; I'm pretty wormy, but maybe I had too much nitrogen growing up. (By the way, that's not me in the picture.)

If the thought of motes of chicken bacteria flying in your face didn't make you a little nauseous, then read this: Coal Mining Debris Rule Is Approved. Why not dump mountaintop rock and dirt in nearby streams and rivers? I mean, they're just sitting there doing nothing, indolently purling away.