Corn Ethanol is Killing the Gulf of Mexico, Too
by Stacy Feldman
Each summer an oxygen-starved, lifeless “dead zone” swells in the Gulf of Mexico from the toxic nitrogen fertilizer that runs off farms in Midwestern corn country.

But now that dead zone is expanding -- dangerously. And it’s starting to put the health of a nearly $3 billion fishing industry and an entire ecosystem of aquatic life at risk.

Last year the dead zone covered an area the size of New Jersey -- 7,700 square miles.

The culprit? The USA’s corn ethanol boom. That’s the conclusion of new research published in the Proceedings of the National Journal of Sciences.

It was carried out by two professors, geographer Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia and atmospheric scientist Christopher Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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