Speakers clash on health ills of field fires

Eric Bowers first leapt onto a pick-up truck tailgate and lighted a grass-field burning torch at age 7 or 8.

Since then, he often has stood in a swirl of field burning smoke, and it hasn't hurt him yet, Bowers said Friday at a hearing before the House Health Care Committee, which is considering a ban on field burning.

"The best thing about it is: I've got asthma," Bowers said. "I've been in some pretty thick smoke and not one time have I ever had a reaction to field burning smoke."

Bowers and the Oregon Grass Seed Council went head-to-head with a Eugene doctor, a nurse and a pair of lawmakers at Friday's hearing.

An intense crowd of about 120 blue-suited professionals along with plaid-shirted farmers filled the committee hearing room plus an overflow hearing room to capacity.

Health Care Committee Chairman Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, was taken aback by the number of people who turned out to speak. He initially planned to hear one hour of testimony, call for a vote and then pass the bill on to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.

Instead, he wondered out loud whether he should schedule another hearing. When asked a little later, he shrugged and said, "I haven't decided."

Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, who launched the bill, said research done in the 16 years since the Legislature last considered field burning points to serious illnesses linked to smoke exposure: aggravated asthma, chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function, irregular heart beat, heart attack and premature death.

"There have been deaths in both Idaho and Washington that have been directly linked to exposure to field burning smoke," Holvey said. "Fine particulates lodge deep in the lungs, and the body's defenses are unable to remove them."

The Lane County Medical Society, the Oregon Medical Association, the Oregon Lung Specialists, the American Lung Association of Oregon, the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, the Eugene City Council and the Lane County Board of Commissioners all are backing Holvey's bill.

Eugene lung specialist Dr. Robert Carolan said the connection between field burning and deteriorating lung function is clear in his patients.

"You can see the smoke and you smell it and then the telephone starts coming off the hook," he told the committee.

Carla Hervert, a nurse who works in cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation at Sacred Heart Medical Center, said she came to the hearing to give voice for her patients, who have asthma and emphysema.

When grass seed farmers burn their fields in August and September, some of her patients have to skip therapy and remain home indoors, she said.

"If they do come in, they come in wheezing or short of breath. They have to use more oxygen. They're carrying their inhalers. They're shaky. Often they develop bronchitis, and they have to see their physician," she said.

Dave Nelson of the Oregon Seed Council industry group said the smoke is more of a nuisance than a health threat - and he's been hearing complaints from Eugene since 1967, when a Eugene lawmaker first brought the issue to the Legislature.

"It's been an ongoing contest for all of those many years," he told lawmakers, later adding that Eugene-Springfield residents complain on days the smoke isn't all that bad. It's like: "I can see the smoke. I don't like it. I'm going to complain," he said.

Nelson pointed to state Department of Environmental Quality work that shows field burning contributes 2 percent of the particulate to the Willamette Valley air in the summertime. The particulate load is below Environmental Protection Agency standards.

He also cited Oregon hospitalization statistics that show more people with asthma need emergency help during the wintertime, when grass seed farmers don't burn their fields.

He cited a Silverton doctor - head of the Marion-Polk Medical Society - who treats grass seed farmers and says they're a healthy lot.

Holvey said the DEQ's 2 percent figure isn't relevant because its a 24-hour average and exposure in a field burning cloud is short, intense and harmful.

Linn County resident Holly Higgins said exposure in her neighborhood on Mount Tom isn't so short - smoke often stays all day.

Her neighborhood, like other rural towns, gets heavy smoke because state officials work to send the plumes away from Eugene and Springfield.

"There's 50,000 of us that live in rural areas in the Willamette Valley," Higgins told lawmakers. "We are throw away communities."

Higgins cited an American Lung Association finding of 2,000 peer reviewed articles linking particulate pollution, illness, hospitalization and premature death.

She said grass seed farmers will become aware of the harm just the way parents who smoke cigarettes around their children eventually do.

"Do I think that (farmers) are consciously saying every time that they light a field that I may cause permanent lung function damage to children? No. This is a practice their fathers have used and their fathers have used and on and on. But the medical research is irrefutable and undeniable now," she said.