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Biofuels and North American Agriculture – Implications for the Health and
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DOI: 10.1080/10599240802454569 · Source: PubMed

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 Journal of Agromedicine

ISSN: 1059-924X (Print) 1545-0813 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wagr20

Biofuels and North American Agriculture –

Implications for the Health and Safety of North
American Producers

Paul D. Gunderson PhD

To cite this article: Paul D. Gunderson PhD (2008) Biofuels and North American Agriculture –
Implications for the Health and Safety of North American Producers, Journal of Agromedicine,
13:4, 219-224, DOI: 10.1080/10599240802454569

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Published online: 18 Dec 2008.

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 Biofuels and North American Agriculture – Implications
WAGR

for the Health and Safety of North American Producers

Paul D. Gunderson, PhD
Original Research

ABSTRACT. This decade has provided North American agricultural producers with opportunity to
not only produce fiber and food, but also fuel and other industrial products. The drivers incenting this
development could be sustained well into the future, therefore workforce safety and health implica-
tions are likely to persist for some time. Within production agriculture, the ‘feedstock growth and har-
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vest cycle’ and ‘transport’ sectors possess the changing exposures experienced by workers. The
Conference explored the following exposures: distiller’s grains and bio-processing byproducts, spent
catalyst, solvent brine, microbial agents, genetically modified organisms, discharge effluent, H2O
dilutes, change in cropping patterns and resultant use of different seeding and harvest technologies,
pests (whether target or non-target), and rural traffic resulting from concentrated movement of mas-
sive quantities of biomass and grain. Other issues of a more general public health nature such as water-
shed implications, other environmental impacts, emissions, uneven economic development potential,
public safety issues associated with transport of both fuel and other industrial products, and rural
emergency medical service need were explored. And, agronomic impacts were noted, including tillage
change, potassium buildup in soil, nutrient depletion, sedimentation and erosion of tillable soil, and
local esthetics. It was concluded that rural venues for formation and exploration of public policy need
to be created.

KEYWORDS. Biofuel, biofuel drivers, biofuel life cycle, biofuel & the human food chain, biofuel
& rural environments, biofuel & rural public safety

INTRODUCTION this State of the Union address,1 President Bush

The basic foundation for the biofuels industry
of today was laid early in the last century when
Henry Ford powered his Model T vehicle with
ethanol derived from cereal grain. Since that
time, numerous enhancements to the ethanol
energy conversion process have occurred, with
an initial surge in industrialized process devel-
opment occurring during the last energy crunch
of the 1970s, and a current surge spawned by
both escalating domestic demand for fuel and
political instability across the Middle East. In
called for a renewed effort to wean the United
States off imported sources of fuel.
With America on the verge of break-
throughs in advanced energy technolo-
gies, the best way to break the addiction to
foreign oil is through new technologies.1
Our nation’s farmers have been called upon
to produce fiber, food, and fuel at unprecedented
levels of production efficiency. No historical
template fits the current scenario, therefore,

Paul D. Gunderson is affiliated with the Dakota Center for Technology – Optimized Agriculture, Devils
Lake, North Dakota.
Address correspondence to: Paul D. Gunderson, PhD, Dakota Center for Technology – Optimized Agriculture,
1801 College Drive N, Devils Lake, ND 58301 (E-mail: Paul.D.Gunderson.1@LRSC.NODAK.EDU).
Journal of Agromedicine, Vol. 13(4) 2008
Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com
© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1080/10599240802454569 219
 220 JOURNAL OF AGROMEDICINE
agricultural producers will have to chart their
enterprise course without the benefit of previous
precedent. And, they will have to do so in the
presence of remarkably unstable market forces
that have resulted in both enormous opportunity
and furious policy debate over the future course
of both American agriculture and biofuels pro-
duction. Clearly, however, workers in agricul-
tural enterprises deserve access to safe worksites
as they respond to these new expectations.
The domestic biofuels industry is presently
anchored upon two production streams: cereal
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grain production and conversion to ethanol, and
production of oilseed and processing into biodie-
sel. The industry is functionally in 26 states with
additional capacity poised to come on-line across
the balance of this decade for both streams.
Currently 8.3 billion gallons of ethanol and 1.6
billion gallons of biodiesel are being produced.2
In addition, new processes have emerged for con-
version of sugar beet and sugar cane crops into
ethanol, and the first commercial-grade cellulosic
plants are presently ramping up to full-scale
production. While scientific debate surges over
the environmental and efficiency curves of the
industry,2–6 future breakthrough technologies
capable of harnessing the potential of cellulosic
biofuels (cellulosic biomass, also known as scien-
tific venues as lignocellulosic biomass, which is a
complex composite material consisting largely of
cellulose and hemicelluloses, primarily structural
carbohydrates bonded to lignin in plant cell
walls) can be expected given the expanding
investment in biological research stemming from
the genomic revolution7,8 and diligent searching
for new production efficiencies. At a minimum,
further development of these fuels on an indus-
trial scale will require, in the case of ethanol,
high-performance energy feedstocks and micro-
bial processes, both to break down feedstocks
to sugars and to ferment sugars to ethanol.8
Additional efficiency in the biodiesel arena will
largely have to accrue as genomic structures of
oil crops are modified to amplify desirable (and
other novel organism) traits. These developments
will certainly lead to additional technological
change in production practices on U.S. farms, for
this nation’s farmers have demonstrated again
and again their ability to deftly adjust to emerging
market opportunities.9,10
The Current Situation
A precise future trajectory for production
agriculture cannot yet be mapped. However,
Table 1 suggests parameters that are likely to
play a pivotal role in the response of U.S.
farmers to the need for production of copious
feedstocks for conversion to energy, as well as
fiber and food. And produce they will, for the
U.S. is the world’s “gold standard” in welcom-
ing agricultural innovation.11 The emergence of
new customers, enfranchised by rising standards
of living, has created a worldwide gap between
crop supply and demand - an all but unexpected
development.11 To that must be added renewed
policy interests in (1) domestic sources of
energy which are immune to unstable political
and economic development, and (2) protecting,
via tariff manipulation, domestic producers of
cereal grain, oil and sugar crops, and biomass in
the name of “national security.” Additionally,
demand for nonfarm commodities such as iron
ore, nickel, copper, uranium, and other precious
and semi-precious commodities has surged, cre-
ating volatility within commodity futures
exchanges, and providing for speculative cover
of crop production cost. Further, new production
technologies such as precision agriculture have
come of age, providing alternative uses for the
most productive cropland areas of the world.
New and emerging gene technologies have
boosted an agricultural producers argumentum for
TABLE 1. Drivers Incenting Domestic U.S.
Agricultural Production
Drivers Resulting workforce
implications
New customers (largely Intensified production of
Asia) agricultural food products
Additional fuel needed for Higher (and varied)
domestic security agricultural production levels
Increased nonfarm
commodity demand
New technology Change in agricultural
development workforce exposures
New crop genomics Change in agricultural
workforce exposures
Steep import tariffs on Production of crop biomass
biofuels expanded
New crop financing Acceleration of worksite
mechanisms procedure change
 Original Research
dealing with weather drought, increased produc-
tion requirements, need for biorefinery-friendlier
crops, and direct production of pharma-crops.
Pharma-crops are crops which are designer-
engineered to produce specific enzymes, proteins,
hormones, or other desirable traits which are
then used in human or animal food chains, clinical
treatments, human cosmetics, or other consumer
and industrial processes/products. Finally, the
western world’s seed and agrochemical produc-
ers have introduced their own farmer-friendly
financing mechanisms, thereby bypassing other
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established sources of agricultural credit, in turn
hastening adoption of new crop technologies.
Taken together, these developments possess the
potential for introduction of both technologies
capable of reducing agricultural worker expo-
sures, as well as changing, and in some instances,
intensifying exposure due to change in agricul-
tural work practice.
Biofuel Life Cycle
On a generic basis, biofuel emerges from
an energy conversion process that begins with
on-farm or forestry production of biomass
products that can be converted to energy.
Figure 1 indicates that other processes includ-
ing transportation, synthesis into fuel and
other derivatives (distillers grains, polymers,
FIGURE 1. Biofuel lifecycle.
(Source: U.S. Department of Energy. Biomass program, 2008. Available from: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass).
221
enzymes, etc.), additional refining, and trans-
portation occur as the biofuel output is read-
ied for domestic use. This life cycle is not
new, rather it has been a part of production
agriculture since the late 1970s. What is new
is the demand for these products on the world
marketplace which has fueled domestic
research and production. For contemporary
production agriculture, the “feedstock” and
“transport” sectors are where workers per-
form all the tasks associated with production,
harvest and transport of grain, tubers, cane,
and cellulosic biomass. These sectors possess
the changing exposures experienced by agri-
cultural workers.
What Worker Health and Safety Issues
are Under-Researched?
The Conference provided a forum for explo-
ration of worker impact(s) and emerging policy
issues.12–15
RESULTS
Linda A. Benjamin, PhD, U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), summarized key product
processing features of both grain-based ethanol
and biodiesel.12 She noted the FDA has analyzed
 222 JOURNAL OF AGROMEDICINE
the carry through of mycotoxins, pesticides,
heavy metals, dioxins, enzymes, yeasts, defoam-
ers, solvents, and antibiotics in distiller grains
given that distiller grains are handled by industry
and agricultural workers that could also make
their way into the human food chain via
livestock and poultry diets. Low residue levels
(0.2−0.5 ppm) of selected antibiotics (n = 24)
have been detected in distiller grains, however,
the risk to agricultural workers is presently
unknown. Other impacts of importance to public
health include potential to degrade to toxic
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metabolites, further promotion of antibiotic
resistance in non-targeted microbes, and unin-
tended growth promotion. Other processing
byproducts such as H2O, sulfur, salt, and geneti-
cally-modified organisms untouched by heat and
other pre-treatment methods may persist and
pollute plant discharge effluent and watershed
settling areas. Detectable levels in distiller grains
are sulfur = 0.6–1.3%; salt = 0.4−1.0%; ash =
4.4%; H2O = 4 gallons of water used for each
gallon of ethanol produced. Additional analysis
pertaining to other compounds is underway at
the Food and Drug Administration.
Biodiesel production presents a different
milieu relative to human health effect. Spent
catalyst, salts, methanol, soap, and free fatty
acids persist through the refining process and
methanol and glycerin are produced in copious
quantities. Both are unsatisfactory in even trace
levels within the human food chain and glyc-
erin presents another handling risk to industry
and agricultural employees given the process-
ing aids used during biodiesel manufacturing
and its propensity for gelling. Aside from all the
above, fire/explosion risk resulting from pres-
ence of heat or open flame near glycerin holding
tanks and surge pipelines is real, with obvious
risk to both workers and fire suppression
personnel.
Ron Yoder, PE,13 University of Nebraska,
explored the environmental effect of both etha-
nol and biodiesel production, noting that air
quality is impacted due to the preprocessing
stage where grain handling, hauling, and grind-
ing typically occur, as well as gassing-off of
solvents (typically hexane) other volatile
organic compounds, CO2, and solvent brine.
Water is needed in vast quantities for both
processing streams, and the potential for aquifer
depletion, unintended pollution resulting from
chemigation of the waste stream upon agricul-
tural acreage, and nitrate loading of agricultural
soils is real. Other unintended consequences,
largely of a non-public health impact include
diversion of acreage into domestic cereal grain
crops to fuel the biofuel industry. Worker expo-
sure concern does result from the latter, for any
significant change in cropping patterns results in
different levels of use of technology for seeding,
suppression of target pests, and harvest of both
grain and biomass.
Jon Bailey,14 Nebraska Center for Rural
Affairs, reviewed the publically-acknowledged
benefits of biofuel development for rural
America. He identified a number of persistent
issues, including extraordinary uneven eco-
nomic development within and across rural
regions, loss of local revenue benefit due to
absentee plant ownership structures and non-
transparency of stakeholder risk/relationships,
significant water usage and rights issues, soil
nutrient management concerns emerging from
monocultural crop incentives, potential loss of
biological diversity, loss to cropping of fragile
ecosystems, short life spans of current techno-
logical approaches to refining biofuels, traffic
safety issues around large plant sites, and a
national unwillingness to promote public pol-
icy favoring sustainable smaller-scale biofuel
development broadly distributed across rural
America.
Roy Spalding,15 University of Nebraska, pre-
sented findings of an analysis of public safety
issues associated with biofuel processing and
transport. Since, by law, ethanol must be laced
with up to 5% petrol (the resultant product is
termed “d-ethanol”) prior to transport from a
biorefinery, any involuntary discharge presents
considerable risk to public health. Analyses of
three such releases in southern Minnesota and
central Nebraska suggest that the ethanol plume
remaining in soil profiles is gone in 2 years or
less, while benzene remains for much longer
periods. Ethanol was detected in the groundwa-
ter at all discharge sites and methane accumula-
tion occurred over several years, consistently
approached supersaturation (1000 × the MDL),
and explosive levels were always encountered.
 Original Research
National protocols for remediation need to be
re-drafted, for anaerobic degradation is possi-
ble, but volatile organic compounds persist for
very long periods of time in the absence of such
remediation.
The breakout sessions explored public policy
and worker health and safety impact resulting
from corn-based ethanol production only. From
an environmental perspective, shifts in global
land use, water required to grow cereal grain,
conversion of set-aside acreage to crop produc-
tion, potassium buildup in crop soil, nutrient
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depletion, sedimentation and erosion of tillable
soil, and air quality issues surrounding grain
storage depots and ethanol processing facilities
will require new research and altered
approaches to remediation of public health
effect(s) and management of inputs. There are
also externalities to using cereal grain for
energy conversion: rural infrastructures such as
emergency medical services, acute clinical
facilities, and road transportation networks will
require attention as preparedness for unex-
pected emergencies occurs, rural employment
opportunity changes but the impact is very
uneven across rural communities, local aesthet-
ics may change, and national need for food
stuffs may collide with need for biofuel, driving
food costs upward. The incentives to grow
cereal grain for energy conversion may lead to
increased health risks among workers in
production agriculture unless adoption of new
tillage practices are accelerated. In addition,
workers in the energy plants could experience
respiratory effect and slips and falls unless
preventive measures are in place to forestall
emissions.
CONCLUSION
It is clear that the biofuel age is here, and
likely in its infancy within our nation. Given the
public debate over its present course and uncer-
tain future, it will be mandatory to forge new
public policy relative to environmental issues,
plant worker safety, permissible levels of co-
product residues, and deployment of politically
acceptable incentives for biomass production and
conversion. Development of new manufacturing
223
processes which do not rely on human biologi-
cals for conversion of cellulosic structures to
starch or prevention of mold or fungi develop-
ment will have to occur as soon as possible so
that the public’s health is not further endan-
gered. Additionally, public safety issues must
be addressed, new remediation protocols for
involuntary discharges need to be drafted, and
longer-term other methods for transport of bio-
fuels will have to be developed and deployed
that place less reliance upon the nation’s rail-
road and trucking industries. Finally, a venue
for public exploration of policies which pro-
mote sustainability, respect for rural social and
cultural heritage, biological diversity, and
stakeholder transparency must be launched.
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