The article was printed after a reader prompted the newspaper to "warn" Georgians about chemicals that are allegedly being sprayed from airplanes over the town from high altitudes - which may be the cause of health problems among unsuspecting residents.
Chemtrail believers allege that chemtrails differ from typical contrails (emitted by jet aircraft and consisting largely of water/ice crystals) in that they remain in the sky much longer and their spreading looks different from that of contrails.
To find an answer as to who would be spraying harmful chemicals over George, we approached Chris Badenhorst, general manager of Flight Training College at George Airport. He said as an instructor and a pilot for 20 years he has never heard of malicious chemtrails before.
He confirmed that there are currently also no crop sprayers in our area. "The only time that chemicals may be released in the air would be in an emergency situation when an aircraft is forced to dump fuel to reduce its weight before landing. Domestic flights are not affected by this and in any event, depending on the type of aircraft, it would more than likely dump fuel over the sea, and even then this is very rare."
Air pollution
Badenhorst said however there is significant air pollution in the area. "It is sad to see over the years of flying in the area that we have begun to see the smog so often seen at big cities. When flying in Mossel Bay we often find a blackish soot on the leading edges of the aircraft and in the George area we find a brownish dust forming on the leading edges. To blame pilots for maliciously leaving chemtrails by aircraft as the cause of asthma would actually be suggesting an act of terrorism. The George Herald has reported in the past on factories in George which have plumes of black smoke billowing out of the factory chimneys. With this in mind perhaps we should look more to local manufacturers who are seen to billow out pollution during the day and more so at night. Evidence of this is seen when we get inversion layers during winter. On a morning flight the George skyline is just a brown haze."
Concerns
Badenhorst’s concerns may be linked to those of Georgian businessmen, Lourens van Niekerk and Amor Venter who contacted the newspaper after the chemtrail article, saying that there must be pollution in the air that is caught up in rainwater which affects its quality.
Van Niekerk, a former groundwater drilling contractor, said impure rainwater may eventually affect our ground water. Both men showed samples of rainwater that they think were polluted from substances in the air.
Van Niekerk, a keen mountain cyclist, had also collected samples of a yellowish, powdery substance from the edges of rain puddles along a cycling trail in the forest near Witfontein during June last year. "When I cleaned my rainwater tank, yellow rings were left behind along its sides."
After seeing photos of the samples, Civil Engineering Director Harold Basson instructed that a lab official visit the premises where the samples were collected.
Rainwater from Lourens van Niekerk’s water tank. In the small bottles are samples of a yellowish, powdery substance that he collected from around the edges of rain puddles near Witfontein. He believes it may be as a result of air pollution from factories.
ARTICLE: ALIDA DE BEER, GEORGE HERALD JOURNALIST
