Beyond Green Blog

March 1, 2010

Who Needs Clean Water Anyway?

Another entry in the New York Times fantastic "Toxic Waters" series came out Sunday. This latest one is about the slow but tragically effective weakening of the Clean Water Act:

Thousands of the nation's largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act's reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.
The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation's largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
"We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states," said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. "This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek."
"This is a huge deal," James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. "There are whole watersheds that feed into New York's drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected."

All this despite the dangerous rise in pollutants in our drinking water. Meanwhile, Congress has been trying to engineer a fix in the form of the Clean Water Restoration Act, specifically by removing the word "navigable" from a description of waterways subject to regulation under the CWA. But guess who is among the lobbying groups leading the charge against reform? Our good friends in industrial agriculture, the American Farm Bureau. They are lobbying directly and through corporate front groups like the perniciously named Waters Advocacy Coalition. And here's what an AFB spokesman had to say to the New York Times:

"If you erase the word 'navigable' from the law, it erases any limitation on the federal government's reach," said Mr. Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "It could be a gutter, a roadside ditch or a rain puddle. But under the new law, the government gets control over it."

The article also suggests that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson could issue a ruling that would clear up some of the confusion regarding the EPA's jurisdiction. She has so far refused, preferring to wait for Congress to act. But with the GOP doing an awesome impersonation of a brick wall, it's hard to see the legislation moving forward any time soon. Perhaps Ms. Jackson might reconsider. It's only our water, after all.

Labels: health, politics, pollution, water

February 22, 2010

A Better Plastic?

If you've been watching the Olympics, you might have seen an ad for Sun Chips that features its "compostable bag." The plastic in the bag is derived from GMO corn and made by Cargill. The ad neglects to mention those inconvenient truths, though it does claim that its bag will break down in home compost "under ideal conditions."

Even worse, with the possible exception of the Sun Chips bag, corn plastic generally will not break down in home compost, even under ideal conditions -- it's only compostable in "industrial-scale" composting systems. So for those of you who live in San Francisco, which actually has municipal composting, that's all well and good, I guess. But for the rest of us, this stuff is still plain, old [genetically engineered] garbage.

But now researchers in the UK may have just fixed all that:

Scientists at Imperial College London are working on bioplastic packaging - made from trees and grass - that can break down in home composting bins.

The polymer developed by the scientists is made from sugars that come from the breakdown of fast-growing trees and grasses, or agricultural and food waste.

The scientists from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council purposely focused on non-food crops - many common bioplastics come from corn or sugar cane waste - and using low-energy and low-water processes.

Very cool. Keep an eye on this stuff. It could really be the packaging of the future.

Labels: energy, farming, food, health, pollution

January 28, 2010

Frack, Baby, Frack

With all the excitement over fracking -- the process of freeing huge amount of natural gas trapped within rock formations such as the Marcellus Shale by injecting water and chemicals at high pressure -- in Pennsylvania and New York, it's tempting to forget that the environmental cost to getting the gas out of the ground may turn out to be severe. In NY, the concern is radioactive contamination of New York City's upstate water supply. In Pennsylvania, the problem is more mundane -- constant industrial accidents (via Pro Publica):

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania's environmental officials fined Pennsylvania-based Atlas Resources after a series of violations at 13 wells, including spills of fracturing fluids and other contaminants onto the ground around the sites. And just last week the agency fined M.R. Dirt, a company that removes waste from drilling sites, $6,000 for spilling more than seven tons of drilling dirt along a public road.
The reports come on the heels of a string of other incidents that have killed fish in one of the state's most prized recreational lakes and released toxic chemicals into the environment.
The Atlas spills are significant because they are among the latest and because they happened repeatedly during the routine transfer of fluids. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection fined [1] Atlas Resources $85,000 for the offenses, which took place between May and December of 2009. Many of the spills were discovered by DEP inspectors.
..."If you look at this series of violations -- it's not only that there are multiple violations," said DEP spokeswoman Helen Humphreys, pointing to the fact that the same three violations were turning up at each site. "This is a pattern, and it's a problem."

Newsweek has a nice piece on the dangers of fracking fluids -- the stuff they inject into rock to bust the natural gas out -- and the fact that, despite their highly toxic, often corrosive, nature, such fluids were exempted from clean water regulations by Congress back in 2005. The NYT also covered a series of drilling-related spills in Pennsylvania a month ago.

But no matter the technique, Pennsylvanians should know by now that extractive industries have a tendency to poison the environments they exploit. The state has been actively cheerleading the industry (although given the potential windfall also strangely resistant to taxing it -- Gov. Rendell seems to prefer putting the tax burden on casino gamblers). But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, especially where hydrocholoric acid, benzene and diesel fuel (favorite ingredients for frackers everywhere) are concerned. Like the saying goes, frack around too much and there's sure to be trouble in the end.

Labels: health, local, politics, pollution, water

September 29, 2009

It's Always Raining in Philadelphia

Or so it's seemed the last few months. And rain can be fun, except when it overloads your stormwater system and causes raw sewage to pour into your rivers. It took Grist to alert me to what's going on in my own backyard but now I know that Philly's got a plan:

Philadelphia has announced a $1.6 billion plan to transform the city over the next 20 years by embracing its storm water - instead of hustling it down sewers and into rivers as fast as possible.

The proposal, which several experts called the nation's most ambitious, reimagines the city as an oasis of rain gardens, green roofs, thousands of additional trees, porous pavement, and more.
The plan is a radical departure from the highly engineered tunnels and sewage plant expansions cities have traditionally opted for.

"This is the most significant use of green infrastructure I've seen in the country, the largest scale I've seen," said Jon Capacasa, regional director of water protection for the Environmental Protection Agency, which has the final say on whether the plan passes muster.

"We commend Philadelphia for breaking the ice," he said.

Apparently, cities around the country are waiting to see if the EPA gives the plan the greenlight; if so, this could be the start of a nationwide trend. And all it took was a little shift in perspective:

"Instead of figuring out how to manage this pollution, maybe we should be looking at how to prevent it in the first place," said Howard Neukrug, director of the Office of Watersheds in the Water Department. "Let's break down some of the barriers against nature and deal with rainwater where it lands."

The idea now is to "peel back" the city's concrete and asphalt and replace them with plants - with rain gardens, green roofs, heavily planted curb extensions, vegetated "swales" in parking lots, and mini-wetlands.

One of the most radical departures for city planners is this shift from "management" to "prevention." Instead just accepting that the city has to vastly increase its built infrastructure to handle the huge amount of stormwater runoff that currently exists (the prospect of which was, among other things, prohibitively expensive), Philly decided that it would attack the problem at the source. It's funny how that subtle shift in mindset leads to such a radical shift in policy. If we can apply this kind of thinking to other things like car usage or, oh, I don't know, carbon emissions, maybe we can make some real progress.

Photo credit: Cynthia Greer

Labels: infrastructure, local, pollution, smart_growth

September 16, 2009

Plastic Power

Let's accentuate the positive today, shall we? The NYT's Green Inc. blog is reporting that a startup has an operating plant in the DC area that can convert used plastic (i.e. garbage) into usable fuel:

Entrepreneurs have been trying for years to turn low-value wastes into high-value products. Waste plastic is among the lowest in value, and gasoline or diesel fuel the highest, but machines to do that conversion usually consume a lot of energy and get gummed-up by leftover material that they cannot convert.

Now a company in Washington, D.C., is trying out a new way -- heating the plastic to a very carefully controlled temperature range, with infra-red energy.

The company, Envion, is expected to cut the ribbon on Wednesday morning on a $5 million plant that it says will annually convert 6,000 tons of plastic into nearly a million barrels of something resembling oil. The product can be blended with other components and sold as gasoline or diesel.

"We are the world's largest oil consumer and the world's biggest producer of waste," said Michael Han, chairman and chief executive of the company.
This process will convert one to the other for about $10 a barrel, he said.

An important element to the conversion is that the process is electrically powered -- no fuel is burned on-site to run the converter -- so that a renewably-powered plastic-to-gasoline facility is inevitable.

This is quite a game-changing development given that we're drowning our land and choking our seas with plastic -- much of it not recyclable. This process offers at least the hope that we'll find a way to stay afloat.

On the other hand, it's worth observing that plastic represents a fairly stable way to sequester carbon. By turning it into fuel and then burning it, we're putting even more carbon into the atmosphere. But if this scales massively and ultimately is able to displace conventional oil production (itself a carbon-intensive process) we might be looking at a real win-win. See! I stayed positive all the way to the end.

Photo by meaduva used under a CC license

Labels: carbon, energy, pollution

September 14, 2009

Water Woes

There's a lot that's discouraging in part two of the NYT's "Toxic Waters" series. Choosing one's lowlights from a list that includes children whose teeth have been eaten away by contaminated water or who get rashes from their bathwater (not to mention cancer), or whole communities (in America, mind you) that need to have fresh water trucked in is an unpleasant task. Things are, it seems, surprisingly bad and getting worse:

[I]n recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

Indeed, the NYT offers a handy map-based guide to water polluters in every state. But you don't really need the map -- the dots of individual polluters are so dense that they make a state-shaped blob of pollution. Sigh.

But to me the most discouraging development in the article is learning that, even now, top government officials seem more intent on making excuses than on making change. Here's EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson:

"Do critics have a good and valid point when they say improvements need to be made? Absolutely," Ms. Jackson said. "But I think we need to be careful not to do that by scaring the bejesus out of people into thinking that, boy, are things horrible. What it requires is attention, and I'm going to give it that attention."

You know what, Ms. Jackson? This article scares the bejesus out of me and it seems pretty clear that things are horrible -- I don't want attention, I want action. Where's the sense of urgency?

It's lacking because we seem to have governments at the state and federal level that walk on eggshells around corporations. But I don't think it's only because of corporate campaign contributions -- it due to a far more pernicious reason than that. Ronald Reagan trained a generation of Americans that government was part of the problem. And now even Democrats are mindful of rocking the boat. The only burden that seems to matter is the corporate burden -- we can act, as long as it's okay with the affected industry. It's the "opt-in" approach to regulation. It worked so well in finance and health care. Why not apply it to those pesky environmental laws as well.

But action is also lacking because Americans just aren't making much noise on these kinds of issues. Oh, sure, it's easy to find people blind with fury over death panels and our Kenyan-born President. But clean air and water? Meh. I do think it odd that so many people in this country operate under the delusion that a corporation would act in anyone's interest but its own. Yet that does seems to be the assumption of many -- how else to explain the apathy?

I once heard it said that no true, major structural reform ever happens until people get out into the street to demand it. The teabaggers were out certainly, for all the good it will do them. But where are the thousands rallying to get heavy metals and industrial chemicals out of our drinking water? Without that kind of presure, backroom dealing and public/private backscratching win the day.

The NYT has documented nothing else but a[nother] total regulatory failure -- with most of the backsliding occurring, of course, over the last 8 years. Where Al Gore offered the social security lockbox, George Bush gave us the environmental lockbox -- the place where anonymously quoted EPA officials were instructed to put their clean air and water cases so that polluters ~~campaign contributors~~ could remain unpunished. Ugly, ugly stuff. No wonder no Bush-era EPA administrator had the guts to go on the record for the article.

It certainly feels like we're farther than ever from addressing the biggest challenges that face us. Until government (not to mention the media) decides that its job is to be a true counterweight to, rather than an enabler of, corporate American excess, we'll be living in a dirty, unhealthy country.

Photo by gambier20 used under a CC license

Labels: health, politics, pollution

June 3, 2009

Humm-dinger

Hummer Tough enough to drive over the Great Wall? Photo credit: GM.comI can't say as I know exactly what's going through the minds of the top executives at Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd. who have reportedly just purchased the Hummer brand from GM. I'll say one thing, though. I'm pretty sure they're not Peak Oilers. Still, give them credit for some much-needed greenwashing:

[Hummer spokesman Nick] Richards said the buyer planned to continue selling Hummer's current lineup as it developed "more efficient" vehicles. The brand will eventually sell trucks fueled by diesel, ethanol and other alternative fuels, he said.

That's the spirit! Although getting 10 miles/gallon running on anything will start to pinch when that anything costs $5 a gallon again.

CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON GRIST.ORG...

Labels: energy, pollution, transport

April 21, 2009

Phthalates Make Us Fat[ter]

The dangers of phthalates (an ingredient in some plastics) as an endocrine disruptor are well-known. Now we discover, via a study conducted by Mt. Sinai Hospital, that they may in fact play a role in the childhood obesity epidemic. Ezra Klein however is unimpressed:

Thirty years ago, kids might have been sedentary and eating lots of crappy food, but they were eating less of it than they are now. Same for adults. According to CDC data, between 1971 and 2000, obesity in the United States shot from 14.9% to 30.1%. The main reason is simple enough: Average calorie consumption increased. Men went from 2,450 calories to 2,618 calories. Over the course of a year, that's an increase in 61,320 calories. The trends were even more striking for women: an average intake of 1,542 calories became 1,877 calories. That's 122,275 extra calories per year. (The gender difference here surprises me, incidentally.) Another study, this one from the USDA, estimated that "average daily calorie consumption in 2000 was 12 percent, or roughly 300 calories, above the 1985 level." This, they estimated, was the prime factor behind America's soaring rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

But Mrs. Beyond Green, a political scientist who studies public health issues, thinks Ezra is too quick to dismiss the potential role of phthalates. She points out that:

It may seem like calories in-calories out is the obvious, clear answer. But I think we actually don't understand the hormonal regulation of metabolic functions all that well, and so it seems PLAUSIBLE that the obvious answer may actually be wrong. It may be that eating a lot more calories makes us fatter, but that absent any other disruptions to the metabolic system, most people would eventually adjust to the new calorie load without becoming morbidly obese -- just a little bit fat. Enter phthalates (and whatever other junk is out there). It disrupts something in the metabolic balance and causes us to be unable to adjust to the new calorie load.

One thing that's worth noting in the Mt. Sinai study is that we don't know the calorie intakes of those kids. It could be that high exposure to phthalates (and these kids had much higher than average levels of phthlataes present in their urine) causes obesity at caloric intake levels that might only be slightly above normal. Ezra does, of course, agree this should be studied further, but thinks the focus needs to remain on diet. At the same time, he also points out, dealing with the diabetes epidemic may be beyond the capacity of our (or any) health system:

[N]o one knows how you provide affordable medical services to a population where a solid quarter of the folks have type II diabetes. In fact, you probably can't do it. But that's where the trends are headed.

Given the threat that diabetes represents to the system (not to mention to our health), it seems like even marginal contributors should be quickly addressed. Phthalates (along with their evil plasticizing brethren) may well have turned what might have been a manageable problem into an existential crisis.

Photo by Steve Wampler used under a CC license

Labels: health, pollution

March 16, 2009

Poisoning the Water for a Nice Green Lawn

This is one of my pet peeves. Starting in the early spring when I see those Chemlawn trucks rolling through my neighborhood, I want to have my Howard Beale moment. I want to run up to these people and scream, "Why are you pouring poison on your lawn?!?!?"

I don't do it, of course, but I do marvel at the willingness people have to blindly pour that stuff on their property and thence into their drinking water. It has always surprised my that municipalities didn't seem to care. Apparently, that's changing:

A new law proposed by Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, prohibits lawn fertilizer applications from Nov. 1 to April 1 to prevent nitrogen runoff from frozen ground. The law, which also requires retailers to post signs near fertilizer displays advising customers of the date restrictions, took effect in January. Violators, whether landscapers or homeowners, risk fines of $1,000.

In a county with no other source for drinking water for its 1.4 million residents, rising levels of nitrates are no small matter, county health officials said. Once concentrations in a water supply exceed a longstanding federal and state health standard of 10 milligrams per liter, public drinking wells must be shut down or else costly denitrification equipment must be added at the wellhead. Even at lower levels, nitrates become an environmental concern, health officials said.

The restriction seem pretty mild to me - I'd ban lawn fertilization outright. Heck, in a world where people insist on watering them even in the midst of severe drought and where homeowners associations fine members if they don't, I'd ban lawns! But I'm not really that Stalinist. Not yet, anyway.

Photo by heipei used under a CC license

Labels: health, pollution, water

February 23, 2009

Miracle Liquid

No, I'm not talking about coffee - though you can drink it. And clean with it. And disinfect food with it. And enjoy an "odor-free" Japanese taxi because of it. That's right. I'm talking about electrolyzed water (via the LAT):

...a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current... Some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso -- the miracle liquid.

That's as good a name as any for a substance that scientists say is powerful enough to kill anthrax spores without harming people or the environment.

Used as a sanitizer for decades in Russia and Japan, it's slowly winning acceptance in the United States. A New York poultry processor uses it to kill salmonella on chicken carcasses. Minnesota grocery clerks spray sticky conveyors in the checkout lanes. Michigan jailers mop with electrolyzed water to keep potentially lethal cleaners out of the hands of inmates.

This is just too cool. Anything that replaces bleach and other cleaning products is great. But to find one that costs "less than a penny a gallon?" Not to mention the health benefits to the janitors and hotel housecleaners who are exposed to toxic chemicals all day everyday. The only downside is that it's not shelf-stable and the equipment to make it costs a few thousand dollars - which is why it's been an industrial solution to this point. No doubt someone will come up with a consumer product soon enough - and given how much most of us spend on cleaning products it likely will be a money-saver down the road. But the really fascinating bit is this:

Minnesota food scientist Joellen Feirtag... installed an electrolysis unit in her laboratory and began researching the technology. She found that the acid water killed E. coli, salmonella, listeria and other nasty pathogens. Yet it was gentle enough to soothe her children's sunburns and acne.

She's now encouraging food processors to take a look at electrolyzed water to help combat the disease outbreaks that have roiled the industry.

Quick! Someone call Bill Marler. I'm only half-kidding. Pop quiz: which would you rather use on your food? Water or Cobalt-60? This is not a trick question.

This is one ball that needs to start rolling ASAP.

As for the Japanese taxi thing. Read on (stop if you're about to eat):

Sanyo is bent on cleaning up Japan's taxis with a tiny air purifier that fits into a car's cup holder. The device uses electrolyzed water to shield passengers from an unwelcome byproduct of Japan's binge-drinking business culture: vomit.

"There was some concern about the spreading of viruses and bacteria via the taxi, not to mention the . . . stinky smells," Sanyo spokesman Aaron Fowles said.

I don't make this stuff up.

Photo courtesy NBC. Idea for photo courtesy LAT.

Labels: food, health, pollution

February 16, 2009

Killing King Coal

In what may be a watershed, the NYT broached the subject of the death of coal. Who ever thought you'd read this kind of thing in a paper of record any time soon:

The coal industry, which powered the industrial revolution and supplied America with much of its electricity for more than 60 years, is in a fight for its survival.

With concerns over climate change intensifying, electricity generation from coal, once reliably cheap, looks increasingly expensive in the face of the all-but-certain prospect of regulations that would impose significant costs on companies that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The article goes on to describe the obstacles to implementing so-called "clean coal" - like the idea that rock in many parts of the South is too porous for carbon capture and sequestration technology to work: the carbon gas would just leak out. And the likelihood that coal will stay in our energy mix for a long time - mostly because of the 600 legacy coal-fired power plants still running.

But the article misses a couple of important points. A lot of attention is given to the costs for coal power associated with climate change legislation in terms of a market price for carbon as well as the costs to incorporate carbon capture (which will likely run into the billions per coal plant). But that ignores the fact that, even now, when coal plants are proposed that use the best available anti-pollution technologies for mercury, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide, they turn out to be more expensive (and take longer to build) than cleaner alternatives. Now that the Obama EPA re-writing mercury emissions regulations, the coal industry will have trouble just complying with those. It's easy to see why states are losing interest in coal-fired power plants having nothing to do with carbon capture.

So the only question that matters, it seems to me, is how you get rid of those 600 legacy plants. And the answer is: energy efficiency. The Rocky Mountain Institute recently published a study on what they called the "efficiency gap." They determined that if all 50 states were as energy efficient as the top ten most efficient states then "more than 60 percent of coal-fired generation could be displaced" - as in shut down. That's 360 coal-fired power plants right there.

It's also crucial to allow what's called "decoupling" so that utilities can adjust rates more freely in order to reward customers for energy efficiency (most utilities currently have the perverse incentive to encourage energy use among their customers since they are only allowed to make money by selling more electricity). California currently practices this (as Joe Romm explains in detail) which is part of the reason why their energy use per capita has remained at 1990 levels. Rep. Henry Waxman attempted (and, I believe, failed) to insert a decoupling provision in the stimulus.

If we focus on those two things, we'll have a lot more luck getting rid of coal than if we throw billions of dollars and years of effort on carbon capture. Which is why I'm much happier when Steven Chu agrees with me, than when he doesn't.

Labels: carbon, energy, pollution

February 13, 2009

Wherever You Go, There's BPA

Enviroblog flagged this deeply disturbing article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the results of new bisphenol-A studies. I'd heard that BPA hangs around in our bodies longer than earlier believed, but this brought me up short:

The research indicates for the first time that people are either constantly being bombarded with bisphenol A from non-food sources, such as receipts and plastic water piping, or they are storing the chemical in fat cells, unable to get rid of it as quickly as scientists have believed.

"It provides evidence that we are being exposed to more BPA than we think - and that contaminated food and beverages may not even be the main source" of our BPA exposure, said Patricia Hunt, a professor at Washington State University who pioneered studies linking BPA to cancer. "Scary, huh?"

I think I now know how to answer the question, "Would you like your receipt, sir?" Um. No. And water pipes?! Raise your hand if you have PVC plumbing. I count about 100 million of you. And let me also observe that it makes me really unhappy when scientists use words like "scary" to talk about the presence of certain chemicals in our bodies. Leave it to Enviroblog to bring the hammer down, risk-wise:

An estimated 6 billion pounds of BPA are produced globally annually, generating about $6 billion in sales. In addition to food containers, BPA is an additive in many other consumer products, some like plastic water pipes and municipal water storage tanks may also leach BPA directly into the drinking water. Let us also consider the other side of BPA lifecycle: What happens to those 6 billion pounds every year once they are released into the environment? They do not just disappear; on the contrary, BPA accumulates in the freshwater and marine environment, where it could damage wildlife reproduction. In 2007, an interdisciplinary team of scientists from seven different research institutions, found aquatic animals and aquatic ecosystems to be at great risk for BPA-caused endocrine disruption.

Water pollution with BPA is not just a risk to wildlife, as demonstrated by another research finding, this time from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Tucked away among long data tables of a recent USGS report is a startling observation that BPA is 1 of the 5 most frequently detected chemical contaminants in groundwater sites analyzed by USGS. 30% of the samples tested by USGS scientists contained BPA. In many communities nationwide, groundwater is the main source of drinking water, and people in some communities might be continuously exposed to BPA simply from the water they drink. Water utilities have not been testing tap water for potential BPA contamination so we don't know how many people may be ingesting BPA with tap water. But just think about it: with 6 billion pounds of BPA produced every year, the purity of our water supplies may very well be at risk.

So much for chucking all those water bottles and cutting back on canned food. Enviroblog wants you to read this and then sign their petition in support of the KidSafe Chemicals Act. But before we go to all the trouble of passing a law, can we just ban the stuff? Pretty please?

Photo by Aper3Caper used under a CC license

Labels: health, pollution

February 10, 2009

Bye, Bob

Bob "climate change is a crock of sh*t" Lutz is retiring from GM. He designed nice cars, I guess. And yes, he was Mr. Volt. But I guess the "triumph of science" in the new administration was too much for him. Now if GM would just drop their anti-environmental lawsuits and their love affair with ethanol, I wouldn't feel so bad about bailing them out.

Photo courtesy GM

Labels: pollution, transport

February 6, 2009

Phthalate Phight

Plastics are bad and you shouldn't use them. But since that won't happen, it would be nice if we could at least get rid of phthalates, a common ingredient in soft plastics. For those who need a phthalates refresher, Enviroblog reminds us that they are:

a family of toxic chemicals that have been linked to allergies and asthma, infertility, reduced testosterone concentrations, and, most worrisome, abnormal development of reproductive system in baby boys.

Phthalates are used in a wide variety of consumer products such as fragrances, cosmetics and shampoos, medical devices, soft toys that children and pets play with and often chew, building and home decorating materials, and even children's clothing.

The good news is that Congress passed a law last year banning the chemical. The bad news is that the Consumer Product Safety Commission under ~~idiot~~ former President Bush had ruled that products manufactured before February 10, 2009 could stay on the shelves. So it's a poison, but only after February 10. Before February 10 it's not a poison. Got it? So the Natural Resources Defense Council and Public Citizen sued to stop enforcement of that CPSC ruling. And they appear to have won. Good news, right?

Well, it was until GOP Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and several of his Senate colleagues got involved. With backing from the US Chamber of Commerce, this group of Republicans are attempting to insert a provision into the stimulus bill that would significantly weaken the entire product safety reform act. According to the LAT, the bill:

...would delay the [phthalate] regulations by six months, clarify rules about component testing, exempt resellers from the act, prevent retroactive enforcement of the act and require the commission to provide small businesses with a compliance guide.

Apparently, stimulating the economy and poisoning children go hand in hand. What is it with these people? Presumably, Democrats will knock it back. But it does make you wonder - what environmental landmines might still be buried in that stimulus package?

Photo by Steve Wampler used under a CC license

Labels: health, pollution

January 22, 2009

Cleanish Coal?

Now, don't anybody throw shoes at me just because I'm talking about coal. It's still bad and we should stop using it. That said, the Illinois legislature just approved a new coal-fired power plant with some interesting implications. True, Sean Casten at Grist isn't happy. The idea that his home state of Illinois, having just bequeathed us The. Best. President. Ever, is now gifting us another coal plant has prompted no small amount of teeth-gnashing. But despite his clenched teeth, he did take a moment to observe the that the state law under which the plant will be built will require the capture and sequestration of at least 50% of the plant's carbon emissions.

No, I'm not jumping for joy at the news. But it's worth pointing out that this will be an IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) coal plant, which means it turns the coal into gas before burning it. IGCC lets you take out most of coal's impurities (such as mercury and sulfur dioxide) and is the leading technology for so-called "carbon capture-ready" coal plants. There are only a few such plants currently in existence because - wait for it - they're really really expensive to build - up to triple the cost of conventional coal plants. Sorta takes the "cheap" out of what's billed as a cheap and abundant power source.

But back to the Illinois plant. Thanks to Casten's math and Kevin Drum's insights, most of the blog work is already done. Casten calculated that once you include rate increases, the new plant - which won't come online until 2014 - will generate power at about 20 cents/kWh. For the sake of comparison, I can buy baseload wind power today through a local power co-operative here in Philadelphia at an "unsubsidized" cost of 16.2 cents/kWh. Better not tell the Illinois legislature.

Moreover, Casten did even more math and determined that Illinois ratepayers are being charged about $400 per ton of carbon. Which is, as Kevin Drum points out, a market price for carbon that environmentalists would kill for and about 25 times the market price for carbon on the European carbon exchange (the only fully functioning carbon market in the world right now).

But here's where things get interesting. The EPA is supposed to develop carbon emissions standards for coal plants. The Supreme Court and the EPA's own Environment Appeals Board said so. And now we know that capturing 50% (and possibly as much as 60%) of carbon emissions from coal plants can be done without much effort. Even the Illinois legislature's plan calls for capturing 90% of carbon emissions for any plants coming on line after 2017. The question will be - is 50% going to be the standard for the EPA? Why not shoot for that 90% target right away? Lisa? Any thoughts?

And finally, to temper your own gnashing of teeth, the Sierra Club observes on its terrific coal-fired power plant tracking page (ah, the Internets) that this law really just kicks off a cost study, which could take up to a year to complete. And even then, the legislature could vote not to proceed (not to mention the fact that Blago's replacement may not be quite so coal friendly). In the interim, any number of cheaper renewable projects could come up for consideration with a lower cost and a quicker turnaround.

All in all, I actually see in this a small victory. To get a coal plant off the ground, Illinois:

set a short window for coal-fired power that incorporates anything less than 90% emissions capture
set a market price of at least $400 per ton of carbon emissions
could stop this plant in its tracks well before construction starts.

Not exactly a "shovel ready" project. I'm not a betting man (as far as you all know) but I wouldn't put money on this thing ever making it off the drawing board.

Labels: carbon, energy, pollution

January 16, 2009

Dept. of Unintended Consequences

Over at Grist, Sean Casten observes that many innovations which seem like perfect solutions at a small scale often bring massive unintended and damaging consequences at a large scale. He uses some nifty examples from the past to illustrate his point. My favorite item, though, is the fact that, at its introduction a century ago, the automobile was hailed as a miraculous, trouble-free solution to the reigning urban pollution crisis of the day - fetid air and streets full of animal "byproducts." No one at the time imagined that hundreds of millions of cars worldwide might ever exist, much less one day create pollution problems of their own.

Casten goes on to list the likely but unintended consequences of scaling up the alternative energy technologies required for our transformation to a low-carbon economy.

The solar industry depends on massive volumes of silicon, which must be mined from quartz and purified of its oxygen with a healthy dose of coal and/or charcoal. Do we comprehend the increased size of quartz mines and (char)coal use to meet a solar-dependent grid?

Any central power generation technology requires prodigious amounts of copper in the wires, which must be mined and purified, often with significant acid leaching.

Any battery-intensive future -- whether for automotive or electricity storage -- is implicitly a world that puts us homo sapiens in much closer contact with large concentrations of heavy metals, from lead to cadmium or lighter metals like lithium.

Fuel cells require large volumes of rare earth metals (platinum, rhodium, etc.) that tend to be concentrated in parts of the globe not always known for political pleasantry.

Efficiency, unsexy but powerful - you know, like Dick Cheney - holds the key. We need to squeeze every last joule out of our power and waste energy sources without relying on a 1 for 1 replacement of dirty power with "clean" power. We can't just scale up alternative energy sources to the same level as our fossil fuel-based system - we need to scale down our power demands, too. The good news is that Dr. Secretary Stephen Chu (or is it Secretary Dr.?) at the DOE is a big efficiency fan.

The even gooder news is that a slew of old, highly efficient technologies that had been washed away by the 20th century flood of cheap oil are reappearing as the floodwaters recede. greentechmedia offers a fun list for those keeping score at home. To some extent, the list simply confirms the fact that many of the technologies central to our low-carbon future have actually been around for upwards of a century. Things like geothermal cooling, solar thermal water heaters, gas plasma lighting, zinc batteries, biodiesel and even electric cars are all in that category. Tidal power, meanwhile, goes back a nifty 900 years. But there are also old and, in some cases, ancient technologies like "swirly water" - which involves using vortexes to purify water, dung "gasification" and ambient cooling systems that are just now being "rediscovered" as having commercial-scale potential.

But the fact remains, whether we're traveling back to the future or in, through and beyond, we're going to have to focus on doing more with less power. Anything else is a waste.

Photo courtesy the US National Archives

Labels: carbon, energy, pollution

December 29, 2008

The Barn Door

The TVA slams it shut now that the horse has finally gone. Maybe. According to the AP, the TVA is now "reviewing storage options" with the idea that maybe they should do something different with all that coal ash.

As Atrios would say, no one ever could have imagined that this would happen. Storing ~~1.7~~ 5.4 million tons of coal ash in giant ponds next to rivers is just such a fantabulous idea. Flushing toxic sludge down nature's toilet sure doesn't seem clean to me. What would the caroling coal lumps say?

Photo by Steffe used under CC license

Labels: energy, pollution

December 19, 2008

A Moratorium on the Moratorium

Remember that watershed ruling by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board that seemed to require the EPA to study carbon emissions from coal plants before allowing new ones to be built? Well, the Bushies may be enemies of freedom, the environment and capitalism and all that, but they are careful readers. According to a report in the NYT, the ruling did not in fact require the EPA to consider carbon emissions in the permitting proces. It just said they "can" - a detail that was noticed by the EPA's lawyers, if not the rest of us. And that, as Robert Frost might say, has made all the difference.

Outgoing EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, so effectively filleted in a recent series of Philadelphia Inquirer articles, has stuck one more of his substantial collection of shivs into the back of the environmental movement by declaring Thursday, "The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls." And so it won't. With that statement, so went the moratorium on new plants. You can still hear the coal industry cheering.

In the end, the Obama administration can indeed require carbon emissions controls under the Appeals board ruling for new plants. But it looks like several thousand megawatts of new coal-fired power will come online before they get to it. Oh well. It's just the climate, right?

Labels: carbon, climate, energy, politics, pollution

December 11, 2008

Enough with the CAFOs Already!

I suppose this post could also be titled "More Fun with Regulations." Because trashing the regs on mountain-top mining wasn't enough, now the Bush EPA is trying to help chicken CAFOs in their longstanding quest to drown us all in ~~chickensh*t~~ ammonia pollution. Kudos to The Daily Green for picking up this new report from the Environmental Integrity Project, a group formed by dissident EPA officials (i.e. EPA officials who actually wanted to do their jobs).

Of course, as we know CAFOs are already effectively exempt from environmental regulations. But if the Bushies get their way, the CAFOs won't have to admit to anyone how much they're spewing either. Ammonia pollution is another in a long list of things about which, according to George W Bush, Americans don't have a "right to know." And, by they way, the numbers are absolutely staggering. In terms of ammonia emissions, chicken farms from just the top ten producing states out-pollute ALL of US industry by a factor of 8 to 1 (and far more if you include egg-laying operations). According to the report:

Based on data from multiple studies, broiler producers in the top 10 states released an estimated 481,764,049 pounds of ammonia in 2007, or more than eight times the combined total reported by industrial sources -- such as steel mills and oil refineries -- to the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)... Based on a recent study for USEPA in Indiana, egg laying operations in the top ten states released an estimated 221,551,888 pounds of ammonia in 2007...

Factory farm chickens are worse ammonia polluters than steel mills, oil refiners and chemical manufacturers combined? Um. Yuck?

And it's not just the USDA and the EPA in on this. The FDA is trying to lend a hand as well. The WSJ is reporting that the FDA has reversed itself and will continue to allow CAFOs of all kinds to routinely use the antibiotic cephalosporin. La Vida Locavore has more, but in sum, the FDA announced a ban back in July based on research that indicated the antibiotic's widespread use in livestock would further encourage the spread of drug-resistant bacteria. Naturally, that fear is totally unfounded. How comforting.

The odd thing is that fixing this isn't complicated - it's just hard. Enforcing current law combined with even a modicum of concern for public health - just think of the recent infant mortality study - will put CAFOs out of business almost overnight. Assuming, that is, the Bushies leave any of these laws on the books. But to do it, Team Obama has to be willing to take on some seriously vested (and deep-pocketed) interests. And if that isn't daunting enough, Obama et al do indeed appear to have quite a bit on their plate already.

Photo by hddod used under a CC license.

Labels: farming, food, politics, pollution

December 9, 2008

Fun with Regulations

You know you've crossed a line when US Circuit Court judges repeatedly compare your legal logic to something out of Alice in Wonderland. But as an article in yesterday's Philly Inquirer details, that's exactly how things go down in court with the Bush EPA. As we watch the Bushies in their final throes of environmental degradation, it's worth our reviewing the EPA's recent history. Boy, were they bad - though it was no accident. From attempting to gut New Source Review (which was apparently the reason Bush's first EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman quit) to setting a mercury limit so high that no power plant would actually have to reduce its emissions, these evildoers let no bad deed go undone.

The highlight, though, has to be their efforts to limit sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution from power plants. The cap-and-trade system that the Bush EPA came up would have at least made some reductions, however meager. Power companies were indeed investing in billion dollar scrubbers to comply so it was by no means a total smoke and mirrors system. But the implementation of the rules was so flawed as to be irreparable - the court felt compelled to junk the whole system. As a result, "the court took a big anti-pollution rule off the books - the one that the EPA believed could prevent thousands of premature deaths annually." In other words, when they weren't derelict in their duties, they were incompetent.

It will take years to rewrite the regulations (although Congress could act sooner to reinstate the system in some form). So now coal plants, like the Brunner Island plant which dates from the 1960s and sits outside of Harrisburg, no longer have the incentive to finish their scrubber systems. What looked to be a competitive advantage when the companies were facing emissions limits is now perceived by them to be a disadvantage. And of course, the power companies all lost tens of millions of dollars each when the bottom fell out of the emissions trading market after the court ruling. Meanwhile:

Twelve thousand tons of coal arrive by railcar daily at the... Brunner Island plant, and, until the scrubber goes online, it will continue to spew sulfur dioxide and particulate matter into the air. The pollution wafts from a 600-foot-high smokestack and drifts east toward Philadelphia.

Now that's a legacy to be proud of. If you're an industry lackey, that is. Can we just declare tomorrow to be January 20th, 2009 and get this over with?

Labels: energy, politics, pollution

November 11, 2008

Plastics Are Bad

Here is another entry in a continuing series of hard-hitting Beyond Green exposés. Plastics are bad. And you should stop using them. All of them. 'nuff said.

The above was prompted by the good folks at Enviroblog. They picked up on a story of two Canadian researchers whose biology experiment was contaminated by equipment made with plain old polypropylene plastic - the plastic "interfered with the function of a human brain protein and ruined a drug experiment." It surprised the researchers and caused them to raise alarms that this kind of contamination could be occurring everywhere. Enviroblog tells us where it can be found:

These plastics are marked by recycling code 5. Just now, running to check my refrigerator, I found a pack of cream cheese, a container of spreadable butter, and a yogurt tub, all packaged in number 5 plastic. Polypropylene is also used for manufacturing thermal coffee mugs, bottle tops, kitchen appliances, cutting boards, rugs, mats, bags and even baby bottles.

No, you're not experiencing deja vu. Yes, it's bisphenol-A all over again. In fact, in another clearly unrelated coincidence, the toxicity of BPA was also discovered when BPA-laced equipment interfered with biological research. As for longterm health effects, The Toronto Globe and Mail, which reported on the underlying paper, points out:

Not enough is known about the two substances leaking from the plastic - quaternary ammonium biocides and oleamide - to know what hazard, if any, they might pose through exposure to consumer products made from polypropylene.

"It's very difficult to say whether we should be worried from a health point of view about this," said Andrew Holt, the paper's lead researcher and an assistant professor of pharmacology.

Tell you what. I'm worried.

This all goes back to the fact that, also according to Enviroblog, of the 80,000 industrial chemicals in the wild, approximately 60,000 were grandfathered into the government's chemical toxicity testing legislation enacted in 1976. The good news is that New Jersey's Senator Frank Lautenberg has introduced an updated version that would tighten testing requirements. The bad news is there are and always will be at least 80,000 chemicals in the environment (and likely in our bodies) that no one really understands. Did I mention that plastics are bad?

Labels: health, pollution

October 9, 2008

Every Little Bit Helps

You know what I've always loved about aerosol pollution? Its cooling effect! I know, I know - but I'm not the only one who feels this way. And we're going to start really missing it soon, according to a new study out of Germany. In fact, all these worldwide efforts to clean the air will start to warm us even faster if we don't simultaneously [all together now] massively cut carbon emissions. Turns out particulate pollution of all kinds (even sulfur oxides, which cause acid rain) provides a cooling effect. We all remember that cold winter back in 1992 thanks to Mount Pinatubo? In the spirit of Yom Kippur, I think there's only one thing to say: Oy vey!

Photo by ojbyrne used under CC license

Labels: carbon, climate, pollution