Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret is a nonfiction book written by Duff Wilson, who was a reporter for the Seattle Times. The book began as a series of newspaper reports, which made the issue a "national focus". Fateful Harvest focuses on Quincy, Washington. It was awarded Book of the Year from the press group Investigative Reports and Editors. It details Wilson's investigation into the recycling of fly ash, tire ash, flue dust, tailings, phosphoric acid from car factories, baghouse dust from recycling plants, zinc skimmings from galvanizing industries, and assorted other industrial byproducts with heavy metals and other chemicals into plant fertilizer based on the agronomic benefits of their alkalinity (sold as lime) or their micronutrients—zinc and manganese. It was reasoned that plants growing in alkaline soils do not uptake the metals as easily. The problem was brought to Wilson's attention in 1996 by Patty Martin, the mayor of Quincy, Washington, and Wilson and a small group of farmers conducted the investigation. The issue of heavy metals in fertilizer is sometimes mistakenly confused with biosolids, though there may be some crossover. Source: Wikipedia (en)