Given Will’s post about neighbors and their sketchy lawn management (i.e., the use of chemicals which should be clearly notated) I started looking up some of Iowa’s larger pollution issues.
The Des Moines Register had a number of pieces raising concern about Iowa pollution levels, including an article titled “How toxic is Iowa’s air? It’s hard to determine“ which made me want to get into my car with a gas-mask and immediately drive to someplace less polluted, except the article didn’t give me any solutions (dammit!).
The also had an article on Jun 14th, Iowa air pollutants push federal limits that stated:
The air across Iowa is so polluted that the state is perilously close to violating new federal limits aimed at protecting human health. Yet Iowans have no way of knowing what chemicals they are breathing because of a limited – and often inaccurate – system of monitoring pollution statewide, a Des Moines Register investigation found.
The article has some wonderful quotes like:
But a top environmental advocate said what Iowans are breathing today is worse than people think.
And a WTF-inspiring quote from Cathy Woollums, senior VP at MidAmerican Energy Co.:
“[pollution] comes from everything,” she said. “It comes from lawn mowers. It comes from automobiles. It comes from boats on the Mississippi River. Those are the types of things that we haven’t seen impacted as larger industries are more and more regulated. We are getting to levels that we have to look at the smaller things.”
Ok, I guess that’s true and yet the population in Iowa is small enough that residential pollutants are (with the exception of lawn-care) probably not anywhere near the scale of commercial effluents. Also there *is* regulation (ever tightenining) on consumer devices also – emmissions controls on automobiles and consumer motors, for instance.
Then there are the confidence-inspiring quotes (from the “How toxic is Iowa’s air? It’s hard to determine” article) like:
Iowa DNR inspections rarely find problems
and
“We’re probably as good as any state when it comes to (monitoring),” he said. “But without continuous emissions monitors on every source, we’ll always have some uncertainty in the estimates.”
which are perhaps meant to be sarcastic? I’m not sure what to make of them.
If you’re interested in some cool chart-porn/info-graphics, the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Pollution Map is pretty slick, and points to a couple of not as horrendously health-robbing pollutants in Fairfield.
This is all just food for thought, and maybe we’d better start injesting a teeny bit of some pollutant each day to start building up some immunity 
I've been a bit shocked that leaf burning is allowed in town. Not sure how harmful or polluting it is, but when leaf burning is in effect, I find the air a little less breathable.
And that's all aside from the issue of agricultural dust, which can be a huge problem as well.
(continued from previous comment)
This is where the rubber meets the road, and a million stories ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Enemy_of_the_Peop... , to cite one from 1882) have been done since the Industrial Revolution started on the conflict between civic boosterism and public health.
Of course, economic concerns predominate in a materialistic society, and I'm afraid in the case of Dexter, we're just going to have to get used to more lead in our pencils until the level of human consciousness is high enough to figure out solutions to the insoluble situations created by low levels of consciousness — it would cost too much for Dexter to reduce emissions, making them non-competitive, and possibly forcing them to move to Mexico, like other foundries have done:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Foundry+transfers+t...
During late Fall my allergies are crazy bad. Someone told me it's all agricultural dust from harvest.
Sorry, bad text and links in previous post, which should read:
If you look at the lead emitters map for Iowa, you will find a giant red blob denoting lead emissions from the Dexter Foundry in Fairfield. At 10,200 lbs/yr, that amounts to more than 10 lbs of lead per person/year:
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/lead/lead_emit...
Funnily enough, the Ledger article on this only said Dexter emitted 10 lbs/year (not per person), and never followed up on the story — think this might have something to do with the fact that Dexter is the last of the large manufacturers left in Fairfield?
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=1988391...
Richard thanks for the links (btw I deleted your other comment which you corrected here).
Sundar and I have talked about doing a story on the lead emissions in Fairfield. You're welcome to post an article if you have the time and energy. I'll take some photos for it – let me know.
10 lbs a year per person sounds frightening – how concerned should we be as residents? Is this the type of issue that cannot be ignored in the Mayor's "Go-Green" plan?
I am not currently a Fairfield resident, but am partaking of the lovely air quality in the LA metro area. So I can't see my doing an article that would be meaningful for FF residents, but the science is all there on lead: don't ingest it — which is why we went to the trouble to remove it from gasoline, paint, etc.
Fairfield used to have a lot of large manufacturing concerns, but Dexter, with ~750 employees according to http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=... , is the last large mfg. employer, and Ed Malloy and other city leaders/press are understandably not about to get green on 'em, especially in the current economic panic, and given that Dexter is entirely well within current legal limits for mfg. emissions of lead. (continued in next comment, because of guidelines limiting post length)