Urban Ecoist

Maybe all remember the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing (or maybe not, Michael Phelps…), and if you do remember than perhaps you also recall that the city of Beijing went to some lengths to curb its air pollution during the course of the Games.

Well, the data is being analyzed by some researchers that want to see what kind of tangible reductions in particulate pollution came with that olympic effort to cut back on industrial and automobile emissions.

Atmospheric scientist Jan Cermak of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and a a mysteriously unnamed colleague looked at the aerosols in the atmosphere above the city of Beijing from the years 2002 through 2008. They used satellite data, which could measure the aerosol levels, but not the true location in terms of high-atmosphere or lower ground levels. Wind patterns, weather reports, rainfall, humidity — these factors were all taken into account to determine what the aerosol levels would have been during the Olympics and what they actually were from July to September 2008.

And guess what? It really didn’t matter what Beijing did. The city achieved some reductions in aerosol levels, but really nothing to get excited about. And why, you ask? Because so much air-bourne pollution came in to Beijing’s skies from other regional sources.

It turns out that the Chinese only achieved a modest reduction in aerosols. The researchers report in a paper in press in Geophysical Research Letters that pollution-control efforts reduced the overall amount of aerosols in the atmosphere by about 10% to 15%. That small change highlights the importance of factors such as wind direction in determining local pollution, says Cermak. In spite of the reduction in local emissions, winds from the south and southeast sullied Beijing’s air by bringing in pollution from distant industrial areas, he says. — Science Magazine News

You see, that’s the funny thing about air-bourne pollution. It doesn’t stay still like land-based pollution. Oh, wait, land-based pollution doesn’t stay put, either. It leaches into the water supply. Huh, maybe we should just try harder not to pollute in the first place.

Naw, that will never work.

Still, the numbers show that Beijing did achieve a 10 to 15 percent reduction in aerosols above the city. Am I the only one who thinks that is a good start? Too bad the Chinese only did it for three months. Who knows what reductions could be achieved with a long-term cut in emissions?

air pollution, Olympics, China, Beijing, emissions, aerosols, atmosphere

Ah, nuclear power. It could be the greatest thing ever, except for all that radioactivity.

March 28, 2009 is the thirtieth anniversary of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station a bit south and downriver of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was a partial meltdown of the second reactor that released so many curies of radioactive materials. It’s how many curies that are still a point of contention. Officially, the numbers are low and no one was hurt; but one study has shown higher incidences of cancers in the area . The higher numbers could be unrelated, maybe even higher because newer tests find it earlier, so that’s inconclusive for many people. But would it be so hard to maybe do some more studies?

A New York Times article from 1981 reported that the State of Pennsylvania concluded that the accident had no effect on infant deaths around the time of the accident, despite admitting that numbers of deaths went up in the six months following the meltdown, jumping to 1.9% from a normal 1.3%. That may not seem like a big number, but that equates to six out of one thousand babies. Nobody likes dead babies, especially when it could have been prevented.

I am not saying that perhaps the scope of the danger involved was dismissed or covered up, but I’m also not saying it wasn’t. If you look up a chart on the rise of the nuclear power industry around the world, you see a definite plateau in the number of nuke plants starting just a few years after the accident at Three Mile Island, right around the time Chernobyl happened.

And as if the accidents were not bad enough, the idea of nuclear power as “clean” power is a bit of a myth, which undercuts the whole package of nuclear power generation. You see, nuclear power creates more than just water vapor (which is actually a “greenhouse gas”). It creates all kinds of long-lasting toxic waste that you don’t want in your backyard.

But it’s ok if it’s someone else’s yard…

I’m not trying to be coy. Just saying that nuclear fission-based power is not the answer we need to power the future responsibly.

nuclear power, Three Mile Island, TMI, nuclear plant, radioactivity, waste, Chernobyl, fission, accident, meltdown, reactor

File this one under dire news…

Less than two weeks after the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who despite all my fears has turned out being one of the better governors out there — I may just yet change my mind about actors going into politics) declared a state of emergency in the state of California due to drought, a new report details that California will be hit hard by rising sea-levels in the next century.

Maybe California should start building more desalination plants like the proposed Poseidon desalination plant below.

First, it is true that California is suffering under drought conditions. The US Drought Monitor shows an improvement this past week, but that improvement is from “exceptional drought” to “severe drought.” Click here to go to a nifty 12-week animated drought map of the US. But for the month of January and February, the northern “ice cap” of the High Sierra’s presented a dangerous situation for a state that must support not only a huge population, but also a major agricultural region in the Central Valley.

California’s state water board is busy crunching the data on conservation efforts underway, including the Governor’s request for voluntary residential reduction in usage and if need be, the state may have to impose water rations.

Secondly, the Pacific Institute has released a report on possible impacts of sea-level rise on the California coastline, a popular spot for not only residential areas but also waste dumps. If the dire predictions of the IPCC come true, California could expect losses in the billions when it comes to property and infrastructure lost.

And the bad news is that most of the available climate models used by the Pacific Institute do not take the possible melting of Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets into account, so the estimates of a 1.5 meter rise in sea levels may be a little on the low side.

Geez, poor California…If an earthquake doesn’t destroy the coastline, global warming will.

governator, California, Schwarzenegger, drought, state of emergency, sea levels, global warming, agriculture, infrastructure, climate change, Greenland, Antarctica, water, rationing, Pacific Institute, High Sierras, earthquake

Ok, so normally, I am not one to count on celebrities to either a) do something or anything important enough for me to care about or b) tell me how to think about things that I may already care about. However, as this is a site with a focus on all things sustainable, I have made an exception in Mr. Brad Pitt’s and Make It Right NOLA’s case.

So, in my first installment of “green” celebrity news…I bring you…Brad Pitt.

Enough about making grandchildren envious already, and nice shiny suit there, Brad. Oh, and you forgot that top button, too. Ok, I got that out of me…

Visiting D.C. within just a few weeks of his frequent co-star, George Clooney’s visit, Pitt’s star power was kept as secret as humanly possible in the cesspool of Washingtonian politics. But according to the AP story about the visiting “dignitary”, “The Power of Pitt drained entire congressional offices of their female employees and quite a few male aides as well, all of whom could be picked out by the way they suddenly appeared in the Senate’s doorways and halls, nonchalantly cupping cell phones and cameras at their sides and hanging around waiting news crews.”

Pitt was in Washington (Angie is also shooting a movie there, so he was in town already) to talk with the people in power about affordable, sustainable housing. If you didn’t know, Pitt is the starpower behind an effort in New Orleans called Make It Right NOLA (click on that link to read more about Make It Right). MIRNOLA is working to design and build green housing in the Lower Ninth Ward, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and an area home to a predominantly low-income minority population.

While on the Hill, Brad Pitt met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about “nationalizing” Make It Right’s ideas and designs for more American cities that have been afflicted by disasters, both natural and man-made (hello, Detroit, Michigan).

Brad Pitt, NOLA, New Orleans, Make It Right, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Lower Ninth Ward, affordable housing, sustainable housing, George Clooney, green building, green design, low income

Within days of getting my email from the Great Sunflower Project asking me to confirm my mailing address for my free sunflower seeds, I also get news that the Natural Resources Defense Council is campaigning to get the EPA to suspend use of and review its approval of the pesticide imidacloprid, a “moderately” toxic pesticide that works on the neurotransmitters in insects.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I often lambaste the EPA for its shortsightedness when it comes to approving chemicals for use in industry and agriculture (and pharmaceuticals and consumer use) without any true long-term testing. And in the case of imidacloprid, the NRDC is asking that something as simple as multi-generational studies on how this pesticide affects honey bees.

Imidacloprid was first patented and put into use in the late 1980’s. The pesticide is a neonicotinoid, which is based on the chemical makeup of nicotine. Imidacloprid works on a an insect’s nervous system, after the insect ingests the chemical after feeding on a plant’s sweet juices. A neonicotinoid blocks a receptor in the brain and causes an excess amount of acetylcholine. The excess creates paralysis and then death in the victim.

France has banned imidacloprid, sold thereunder the name Gaucho, for use on sunflowers since 1999 after one-third of all the country’s honeybees dies after a season of wide-spread usage. The French further banned the chemical on sweet corn, and last year, decided not to approve its use at all. Germany banned imidacloprid and its 8 neonicitinoid cousins last year after a huge die-off of honeybees following an application of the pesticide, clothianidin. Furthermore, imidacloprid’s maker, Bayer, is being sued by various groups, from farmers to local and national environmental groups.

What you can do

You can write to the EPA calling for action. Click here for the NDRC action site to send a pre-written letter to the Office of Pesticide Programs.

Also, buy organic produce and support farmers that eschew chemical pesticides.

EPA, pesticide, agriculture, imidacloprid, neonicotinoid, honeybees, colony collapse disorder, bees, toxicity, chemicals, organic, France, US, Gaucho, corn, farming, Germany, banned, Europe, clothianidin, acetylcholine, brain, nervous system, insects, plants

A new study came out that finds that by cutting pollution in your city, you can live longer.

More importantly, the study found that life expectancy increased by 3 years over the last 20 years (approximately) in 50 cities across America. It may be in all cities, and I’m sure you could draw that conclusion; I only add the 50 cities because that is what the study included. The researchers behind the study analyzed data sets comparing life spans and levels of particulate pollution from 1980 and 2000. As pollution levels dropped, life expectancy rose. Seems simple enough…

Actually, to put a finer point on it, your life was extended by 5 months because of a drop in air pollution. How they came up with five months, I don’t know, but wait, the article mentions that factors such as “such as changes in demographics, income, migration, population, education and cigarette smoking.” So I guess due to all those factors, we urbanites in the 50 cities included in the study are living 2.72 years longer than we did back in 1980. The air pollution accounts for 15% of that increase.

Neat.

Some of the very dirtiest cities saw an increase in life expectancy of 10 months due to the reduction in air pollution, thanks to the Clean Air Act. Although even relatively clean cities show a benefit to public health standards from additional reductions in air pollution levels.

This is good news for many reasons — longer, healthier lives for one — but this is good timing for all those who are trying to undermine the intentions of the Clean Air Act by ignoring some pollution and/or not enforcing limits on things that are produced by burning, say, gas or coal. Hopefully, with a new Administration and a new EPA administrator, the EPA will start regulating such things as carbon dioxide, and then new studies will show us in twenty years how we lengthened our lives by doing so.

Just a thought.

air pollution, health, life expectancy, cities, urban, America, US, Clean Air Act, pollution, particulates, gas, coal, public health

Like how I rhymed that…

I got an email from the Sierra Club today. Reading through it, I clicked on a link to a really scary report from the Environmental Integrity Project. Seems the Tennessee Valley Authority may not be all that truthful about the recent “leakage” at the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant in Alabama.

No!! A member of the Big Coal not being truthful. I can’t…nay, I won’t believe it.

The Environmental Integrity Project went through the TRI’s (Toxic Release Inventory) of both the Kingston Fossil Plant and the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant. TRI are just what they sound like, an inventory of all toxic (by the Environmental Protection Agency standards) substance released over the course of a year and these reportings are required by law. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some industrial entities don’t lie about their releases. That is how companies end up paying fines, if and when the EPA starts enforcing rules.

The TRIs from the Widow’s Creek coal-fired power plant tell a very different story from what the TVA said the day the leak was discovered. The TVA claimed that the dump site that leaked was simply relatively safe gypsum.

Now to be fair, that could be true. I am not privy to the exact location of the leaking waste pond. However, I did check out the location of the Widow’s Creek plant on Google Earth, and there are quite a few holding ponds. One of which is a sickly green color that is oozing into another different green pond. Incidentally, that green pond looks like it is close to what I think is Widow’s Creek, which is harder to find since it looks like it may have been manipulated by the Plant. What is worrisome is just how closely the ponds are situated in relation to not only Widow’s creek (which looks pretty small), but also the very large Tennessee River.

But truly, the most frightening thing to me — and maybe I’m not the only one here — is the large amounts of toxic releases that are allowable by the EPA. Truly staggering numbers of both air and water releases of things like arsenic, lead, mercury. There was over a billion tons of mercury emissions coming from Widow’s Creek in four years (1998-2002).

It is no longer acceptable to ignore the considerable amount of toxic substances that we spew onto the land and into the water and the air. Widow’s Creek is not unusual and there are many, many, many facilities around the United States pumping out similar numbers of compounds that are making us sick. Widow’s Creek supplies the electricity for 650,000 homes according to the TVA’s website. No matter where you live, you are consuming power that has to come from somewhere. Find out where, and find out how dirty it is and just how close it is to your home and your child’s school. Then maybe we will start looking beyond the empty promise of clean coal[sic].

At what cost progress? And we are only going to be needing more energy…

Widows Creek, Fossil Plant, fossil fuels, emissions, toxins, toxic substances, coal, energy, electricity, Tennessee Valley Authority, Tennessee, Alabama, Stevenson, Google earth, Kingston, clean coal, schools, homes, pollution

It is not often lately that I can applaud the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency. But today, it was announced that another agreement was reached between the EPA and three major manufacturers of sulfuric acid. The three companies — Chemtrade Logistics, Chemtrade Refinery Services, and Marsulex — will pay civil penalties for pollution emitted that violated the Clean Air Act in addition to the combined $12 million in new pollution controls that the companies will install to curtail harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide.

Remember sulfuric acid…it makes acid rain. We don’t hear as much about acid rain anymore, do we? A lot of that has to do with the Clean Air Act. And certain industries are better than others at cleaning up after themselves, but the acid production industry has not been held all that accountable until recently.

“The companies are expected to reduce harmful air pollution by an estimated 3,000 tons per year, which is well over half of their annual emissions,” said Granta Y. Nakayama, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Today’s settlement will improve air quality for millions of people.”

“This settlement is the product of our sustained effort to bring all sulfuric acid manufacturers into compliance with the Clean Air Act,” said Michael Guzman, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division. “We are pleased that the cooperative effort among us, our state counterparts, the Northern Arapaho Tribe, and the defendants resulted in this victory for the environment.”

Between January 2010 and January 2013, at its four production facilities in Beaumont , Texas ; Shreveport , La. ; Tulsa , Okla. ; and Riverton , Wyo. , Chemtrade will upgrade existing pollution control equipment called scrubbers to meet new, lower emission limits for sulfur dioxide. At its facility in Oregon , Ohio , Marsulex will improve chemical processing equipment, which will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by no later than July 2011. Finally, Marsulex will install a new scrubber at Chemtrade’s sulfuric acid plant in Cairo , Ohio , to meet lower sulfur dioxide limits by July 2011. — EPA

Sulfuric acid production burns sulfur (or sulphur, if you prefer) to produce sulfur dioxide (SO2). SO2 readily combined with water to produce H2SO4, otherwise known as sulfuric acid. Concentrated sulfuric acid is used in many industries like fertilizers, steelmaking, ore refining, petroleum refining, and it’s even used in making nylon and detergents.

Reductions in sulfuric acid emissions will come from new scrubbers and lower allowance limits. The new short-term limits that the companies have agreed to finally follow are from 1.7 pounds to 2.5 pounds of SO2 per ton of product, according to the EPA.

The civil penalty comes from modifications made at Chemtrade and Marsulex that increased emissions, and since neither company bothered to gain proper permits to do so or the required scrubbers to limit those emissions, they effectively violated the Clean Air Act. The fines will go to the Federal government ($460,000) and the rest will go to the four states where the six manufacturing plants are located.

Good job, EPA, doing your, um, job?

Clean Air Act, sulfuric acid, sulfuric dioxide, acid rain, Chemtrade, Marsulex, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, federal, government, emissions, pollution

This is one of those news stories you hear, and you just shake your head in disgust.

Maybe if the Coal Industry had spent all those clean coal advertising dollars on building better containment areas for the enormous amounts of toxic waste that clean coal is producing, these spills would not keep happening.

It was reported this morning that yet another TVA coal-fired plant has suffered a spill of its coal by-product. And this spill happened in a holding pond that was seriously just inspected and as of December 31st, was deemed safe.

The Tennessee Valley Authority that runs the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson, Alabama has claimed that the spill is smaller than the Kingston spill in Tennessee last month. And this spill’s waste is mostly gypsum, which is a naturally occurring benign substance used in the manufacture of dry wall and cement. It can also be used to promote coagulation in tofu, adding calcium. Just in case you didn’t know that, tofu-nuts.

However, by early afternoon, the “spill” was renamed a “leak.” The TVA now says that it was a pipe that was leaking and they did not know how long it had been leaking. Hmm, shouldn’t that have been discovered during the recent inspection?

The TVA also claims that the gypsum leak did not significantly leak out into Widow’s Creek (appropriately named for its close proximity to a coal plant, if you ask me), but instead remains in the holding pond. Normally, the gypsum is held in that pond and then dried out and sold to companies that make cement.

On the same day that the leak at Widow’s Creek was discovered, another story came out that the Kingston Fossil Plant had two previous leaks that were not adequately repaired before the major coal ash spill a few days before Christmas.

That TVA sure is doing good work…More coal-fired plants, please. [super sarcasm]

coal, ash, spill, leak, gypsum, Alabama, TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, Widows Creek, Kingston, Tennessee

I have covered this topic again and again, and sadly the consequences of coal mining and coal-fired electric generation plants have come home to roost…actually 15 destroying homes in the roosting process.

Thankfully, no one was killed or seriously injured in the accident. However, the toxic effects of the coal fly ash spill are still being debated by those responsible, of course.

Here’s a great quote from a New York Times article that rehashes the debate over coal ash and its dangers.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued no warnings about the potential chemical dangers of the spill, saying there was as yet no evidence of toxic substances. “Most of that material is inert,” said Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the authority. “It does have some heavy metals within it, but it’s not toxic or anything.”

Oh, that “it’s not toxic or anything” is really reassuring, isn’t it? And what’s with that “most of the material”? What else is there besides the supposedly inert, non-toxic material?

Fly ash is a by-product of burning coal to produce electricity. And the same icky stuff that is found in coal is concentrated in the coal ash, so if you are worried about the heavy metals in coal, you should really be concerned about the heavy metals in coal ash.

And those heavy metals are…

arsenic

lead

selenium

chromium

nickel

vanadium

beryllium

cadmium

barium

molybdenum

and don’t forget the good ol’ radioactive substances in coal and fly ash like uranium, thorium, radium, and radon.

The biggest threat that most of the aforementioned substances pose is when they are inhaled or ingested. Almost of those substances are carcinogenic or carry other threats of developmental damage to animals and humans. Once that sludge dries, it will become air-borne dust. And obviously, it has already been introduced into the water supply.

Inert, maybe. Not toxic, hardly.

And when you add most of those heavy metals to water, it is a dangerous situation, indeed, whether you boil that water or not.

Fly ash is called fly ash because it used to be the by-product that flew off into the sky from coal-fired plants. The Clean Air Act put a stop to that, and the fly ash had to be captured by the plants. Unfortunately, there is that old law of matter not being created nor destroyed, and the fly ash had to go somewhere. Coal-fired plants simply built some earthen dams and made their own landfills. However, that was hardly the solution as whenever it rained, fly ash leached into groundwater supplies.

Another 2007 E.P.A. report said that over about a decade, 67 towns in 26 states had their groundwater contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps.

For instance, in Anne Arundel County, Md., between Baltimore and Annapolis, residential wells were polluted by heavy metals, including thallium, cadmium and arsenic, leaching from a sand-and-gravel pit where ash from a local power plant had been dumped since the mid-1990s by the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. Maryland fined the company $1 million in 2007. — NY Times

I hate to keep pilfering from the NY Times, but here is a really good graphic to give you an overview of how fly ash is produced and a map of the Kingston fly ash spill. Click on the image for a bigger view and better detail.

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