Water find may end Darfur war

Leftovers may explain perfluorinated compound puzzle:

See my earlier post about this. Looks like the EPA did want the companies to phaseout not just the PFOA, but the precursor compouds as well, and according to this article, quite a bit of progress has been made.

Eight companies have pledged to slash releases of several perfluorochemicals at their operations around the world, EPA announced on March 2.

Arkema, Asahi, Ciba, Clariant, Daikin, DuPont, 3M/Dyneon, and Solvay Solexis have agreed to reduce emissions of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its longer chain homologs, and compounds that can degrade into PFOA, EPA said. The companies will also reduce levels of these compounds in their products. Responding to a challenge EPA made in January, the eight firms volunteered to cut industrial releases of PFOA as well as amounts of the chemical in products 95% from 2000 levels by 2010 or earlier. The companies also pledged to work on eliminating releases and content of PFOA in products by 2015.

Here are the individual companies’ commitment letters. They all loudly proclaim their commitment to reduce PFOA levels in their products, not quite so universally unequivocal on the precursors… I need a lawyer to parse some of the language. 3M, for instance, says that they do not “manufacture” the telomers’, which is not the same as saying they do not use them. Solvay Solexis, is extremely straigtforward and agrees to the EPA conditions in a letter actually written in plain English! Dupont, good letter too. Let’s see how this situation plays out, outright elimination in 10 years seems nice, which leads me to believe that the companies are already moving in this direction. The journal article suggests that the residuals are mainly due to inefficiencies in the manufacturing process. The reaction yield is 70%, meaning the 30% left behind from the monomer formation reaction will need to be removed from the product.

An update on the benzene story from last month.

Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News – Dispute Over Benzene In Drinks

In late 2005, FDA began analyzing beverages containing benzoate and ascorbic acid. The majority of samples contained either no detectable benzene or levels below 5 ppb, says Robert E. Brackett, director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition. FDA’s results are preliminary. After its survey is complete, the agency will determine what, if any, additional action is necessary, Brackett wrote to EWG. Changes in FDA’s analytical procedures may account for the differences in results. To collect benzene in the earlier tests, FDA used a purge-and-trap method, in which the samples were heated to 100 °C for 30 minutes. Recently, the agency has been using a static-headspace methodology, which does not involve much heat. In the earlier tests, the high heat was probably creating benzene, says an FDA source who asked not to be identified.

The explanation seems to make sense. Low level analysis is riddled with instances such as these, where the analyte you’re looking for is  introduced into the sample after the fact. It is impossible to decide without looking at the protocol whether this happened or not. Since the source of the benzene is from the reaction of ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C) and benzoate salts, notably sodium benzoate, it would have been clear to anyone doing the analysis to avoid conditions that would result in the formation of benzene during the analysis, or maybe not…

Static Headspace analysis usually involves some heating as well, at much lower temperatures for shorter periods of time, though in the case of something as hydrophobic as benzene, not much heat would be required. So, the artifacts in static headspace would in this case be lower than in purge and trap analysis.

Still not a concern in the grand scheme of aggregate benzene exposure.

Who would have thunk it, turns out that uranium mining and nuclear waste storage result in significant carbon emissions…
New Debate Over Nuclear Option

Now, some scientists and other experts are beginning to raise a different question about nuclear power: Is it really as clean as supporters contend? A report, released on Mar. 26 by a British nongovernmental organization called the Oxford Research Group, disputes the popular perception that nuclear is a clean energy source. It argues that while nuclear plants may not generate carbon dioxide while they operate, the other steps necessary to produce nuclear power, including the mining of uranium and the storing of waste, result in substantial amounts of carbon dioxide pollution. “As this report shows, hopes for the climate-protecting potential of nuclear energy are entirely misplaced,” says Jürgen Trittin, a former minister of the environment in Germany and a contributor to the report. “Nuclear power cannot be promoted on environmental grounds.”

The report, called “Secure Energy? Civil Nuclear Power, Security and Global Warming,” examines a number of risks from nuclear power development, including concerns over the disposal of radioactive waste and the threats from terrorist groups. But its most novel component may be the quantitative examination of carbon emissions on a comprehensive basis. “Carbon emissions are a global problem and it’s time to look at the carbon released by nuclear power globally,” says Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, author of the report’s chapter on carbon emissions. “The assumption has long been that the [greenhouse] effect is zero, but the evidence shows otherwise.”

“Novel component”?, well, I would not go that far, it appears that the authors performed a carbon footprint analysis and concluded that the carbon footprint of nuclear fission energy production was somewhere between renewables and fossil fuel power generation, which is not entirely surprising. Coupled with all the other issues facing nuclear energy, and the obvious environmental justice issues that impact the siting of any new plant or waste repository, nuclear energy should not be a very serious option at all. Unfortunately, it’s a great boondongle for the developers of the plants because the subsidies and power pricing mechanisms ensure profits for the developer at the expense of the general public, and waste disposal issues can forever be postponed, eventually leaving governments (and tax payers) to pick up the tab.

By the way, go read Jamais Cascio’s interesting post about the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger. The “nutrition like label” shown here is something I wish to see in almost every product used! It would make the regulation of carbon a lot less complicated. It appears that England will take the lead on this concept, see Carbon Labelling (yes, 2 L’s, the “correct” spelling!).

Buried in this abstract from the Environmental Science and Technology Journal is a little titbit about the origin and fate of 90% of all natural estrogens found in water bodies.

Fate, Transport, and Biodegradation of Natural Estrogens in the Environment and Engineered Systems

Another major source, which accounts for 90% of the estrogen load, is animal manure from concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFOs). Manure is not required to be treated in the United States as long as it is not discharged directly into water bodies. Thus, there is an urgent need to study the fate of animal-borne estrogens from these facilities into the environment. A number of studies have reported the feminization of male aquatic species in water bodies receiving the effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) or surface runoff from fields amended with livestock manure and municipal biosolids.

I am not a big fan of hog factories. Clean them up!