Reading a csv file

[hopesfall]

If I have the following in a comma separated value file, how could I check the value of each row's second element?

// example of my comma separated value file
blue, heavy, 135, mike
green, heavy, 140, caleb
yellow, light, 50, roger
green, medium, 95, darnel

I want to retrieve each row's second value (i.e. heavy, light, or medium). How could I accomplish this?

Thanks