Hello

and some 'clean' office businesses. There is a farm stand, but it's about
450 feet away and does not share the actual building or the dumpsters.

450 feet is sometimes not enough. I have had to expertize a "sudden
death" syndrome in a poinsettia and african violets grower's nursery.
Nearest farms were around 1 mile from their greenhouses.
Unfortunately, some herbicides can travel even longer distances with
the help of the wind.

Dazomet, trifluralin, thiocarbamate family, sulfonyl urea ones, all
are highly persistent, and possibly carried out by wind. The
poinsettia grower was affected by oryalin.

In the poinsettia/AV case, trifluralin (Treflan (tm) ), used in many
countries, is so volatile that some commercial labs pack their tissue
culture boxes with a trifluralin-wetted pad in a sealed plastic bag to
induce polyploidy.

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles...ifluralin.html

Symptoms were a lack of growth, chlorosis of the new leaves, die back
of the older ones, flower duration less than a day or two.

Once a nursery has been hitted by that gas or similar ones, it is
totally and definitely impossible for the plants to fully recover, by
that way.

He should try to know whether the farm used that kind of products,
their insurance company name, and try to set up a deal. Most of those
cases are solved with a non-disclosure agreement and payment, and all
that I was involved in, without any exception. 10 people have that
problem, only one notice it, so the company prefers to pay full
strenght than to face a court with 10 plaintiffs. It's the life ! But
I am sure plenty of business have been unknowingly ruined by some sort
of chemical "problem".

One of my questions for her had to do with the proximity of the RR tracks,
which I knew were right around her location. As it happens, the tracks are
very close to the rear of the building, and there is a stream between the
building and the tracks. All of which leads me to wonder what might have
spilled out of one of those frequently passing freight cars. If I were in
their shoes I'd be on the phone to the EPA, asking for testing of water and
ground samples.

It is possible as well. Regarding air testings, they are extremely
difficult to carry out, and the results are impossible to explain. CP
chromatography allowed us to study several hundreds samples of air (
within 50 miles of corn and various farms), all of them had various
levels in nanograms or micrograms of trifluralin, and many others
chemicals. Trifluralin was used 2 years ago for the last time before
we took the samples.

We do not know the lower real permissible limit of most of them. As an
example, EC regulations now allow for 100 ppm lead in the compost,
because most manufacturers can no longer produce products with a lower
content. We do not exactly know about human safety, but it is
"assumed" to be safe.