Friday, May 12, 2017

"How farmers put apples into suspended animation"

BBC:
These nearly oxygen-less rooms, which are also temperature and humidity-controlled, can be gigantic. “Where I live in Washington state, there is capacity for half to three-quarters of the fruit produced here,” Mattheis says. That's storage for two to three billion pounds of apples, all told.

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These suspended animation chambers for apples occasionally make the news when someone thinks they'll be alright if they just hold their breath while on a quick visit inside. In 2013, two workers on the Earl of Selbourne's apple farm on Blackmoor Estate in Hampshire in the UK were found dead in the controlled atmosphere storage room, and in 2015 the manager who sent them in without proper breathing apparatus was convicted of manslaughter.