My farm (1/4 section ) in Dawson Creek had a bad problem with white muscle disease in my sheep. It affects lambs who die within days of birth unless they are hit with a big Selenium/vitamin E shot a couple of days after birth. The ewes also have to be fed selenium in their salt ration. It is usually attibuted to a lack of Selenium in the soil. My soil tested with lots of Selenium in it! Big mystery. One day I was up flying (no! in my ultralight) and got waaay up there. I have only one instrument on it which is a piece of string tied to a flying wire. (you old pilots will know the rest of the joke) so I dont know how high I was. Anyway it was spring and the leaves were just out on the trees. As I turned over the farm I caught a glimpse of something not quite right on the ground. It looked like a huge funnel pointing toward the west.
I rented one of the club's tri-pacers the next weekend and went out hunting (no, not for moose, for funnels). As I got almost up to 9,000 feet, I saw the "funnel" of brown, pointing toward the west, and followed it toward Chetwynd. The brown funnel (trees that had not gotten their leaves yet) I saw it pointed directly to a large natural gas "scrubbing plant" busily belching out poisonous sulpher, heavy metals and other assorted gases. My farm was directly downwind of the pollution.
I sent my soil and hay to the agricultural research station in Alberta for analysis and it turns out I had a high level of sulphur in my soil which was supressing the plants ability to absorb the selenium in the soil. Voila! The so-called "clean" natural gas energy supply is only clean in the big cities, all the poisons get belched out into the air in the remote regions of our planet.
some wise man once said "Thou Shalt Not Screw With Mother Nature"
Stan