Blue Baby Syndrome and Nitrates

Recently there has been a lot of fuss in Iowa about water quality. There is even a lawsuit going on and I bet many of you don't even know about it. Since we started using anhydrous ammonia as fertilizer there have been many environmental implications. One of them is nitrogen run off into our water supplies, mostly the rivers. These cannot be filtered out that easily and when the concentration is high enough end up in our drinking water. A common illness associated with nitrate poisoning is called blue baby syndrome. This is an issue that concerns pregnant women in Des Moines recently. Here is an article outlining the current nitrate issue. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2016/09/29/elevated-nitrates-linked-cancers-birth-defects-environmental-group-says/91228894/
This syndrome occurs when hemoglobin Iron(Fe+2) is oxidized to methemoglobin(Fe+3) and it cannot transport oxygen to the rest of the body. This causes cyanosis and a pale blue color in the skin of infants. The relation between this and nitrate infected water has been known since the 1940s. The following is a scholarly article about how it affects babies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1638204/pdf/envhper00308-0137.pdf