By Derek Spellman

dspellman@joplinglobe.com

NEOSHO, Mo. — It was a day to showcase new products and services as well as just talk with people.

More than 80 exhibits crowded into the Neosho High School gym and lobby area on Friday for the first day of the city’s annual Business and Industry Review. The exhibits represented a gamut of operations that included businesses, industries, health care, real estate, non-profit organizations and service groups.

Deborah Kenny, an independent distributor of EcoQuest International Inc. products, for example, came to the review to show people a lineup of health-related products, principally air- and water-purification systems.

“My job is to help people,” Kenny said Friday night.

Among the EcoQuest products she showed people: an air-purification system people can hang around their necks like a necklace that helps purify the air immediately around the wearer, helping to prevent them from contracting colds, the flu or allergies.

Another product: Laundry Pure, a device that hooks up to a laundry machine that treats water with “silver ions for killing odor-causing bacteria, and the cleaning power of oxygen and bubbling peroxides to break down and lift away grime, without the need for detergent or hot water,” according to the company.

The technology, Kenny said, eliminates the need for detergent, kills germs without bleach and cuts down on energy costs by eliminating the need for hot water.

Some of the exhibitors came for educational purposes.

David Hendrix, manager of the National Fish Hatchery in Neosho, said the hatchery principally came to share information about projects.

“It is a good chance to give people an update on the hatchery,” he said.

Hendrix was on hand to let people know about the new $3.88 million visitors center that is planned for the hatchery.

“This year, we are all fired up to be one of the leading producers of endangered pallid sturgeon,” Hendrix said.

Some of the exhibitors attended the review just to get to interact with the community.