Scientists fear 'dead zone' will grow
Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, March 10, 2008
Ramping up corn production to make ethanol will make the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico even more lethal, according to a Canada-U.S. study that links biofuels to an environmental problem.
Ramping up corn production to make ethanol will make the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico even more lethal, according to a Canada-U.S. study that links biofuels to an environmental problem.
Run-off from corn fields is all but sure to increase the zone of oxygen-deprivation water in the Gulf that is toxic to fish, says geographer Simon Donner of the University of B.C. and lead author of the report published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It is going make what was already a difficult problem pretty much impossible to solve," says Donner, who has a long interest in agriculture's impact on the environment.
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