Every Day Is Special: air pollution

Showing posts with label air pollution. Show all posts

December 2 – Happy Birthday, EPA!

Posted on December 2, 2016

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has done a really good job of helping to protect human health and the environment by setting priorities, writing laws, and enforcing laws.

This organization has literally changed the world – for the better.

The EPA has worked on pesticides, air pollution, water pollution, greenhouse gases and climate change, ozone depletion, trash/waste, and much more.

With more than 15,000 full-time employees, including many engineers and scientists, the EPA is on the front lines standing against short-term thinking and greed, standing up for a more global and long-term view of human activity.

The EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon, and he signed an executive order bringing the agency into existence. It began operations on this date in 1970.

This is important: even though the Environmental Protection Agency was the brainstorm of a Republican President, and even though it has been widely viewed as effective and important, the current Republican platform, the Republican president-elect, and the Republican-led Congress all seem to want to abolish the EPA as we know it! The platform urges the government to forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide – which is crazy, since that is one of the most important greenhouse gases. It also calls for shifting responsibility for environmental regulation to the states, ending the federal government's ability to study the effects of pollution and to establish policies and laws that safeguard our air, water, and land. Instead of thinking long-term, big-picture, as the Republican Party has in the past, the current version of the party seems to want to crawl into a short-term, small-view that will be more self-destructive than helpful to anyone and everyone!

Let's celebrate the EPA today, on its birthday! And let's make sure it stays the hard-working, effective agency it always has been.

One EPA success story that touches my life is the air quality in
Southern California. When I was growing up, there was so so so so
so so much smog, and so many days we were not allowed to play
outside because of smog alerts. Now there are even more people
and even more cars in the Los Angeles area,
but the air is much much much much cleaner and clearer!

My husband grew up in one of the biggest environmental disaster zones in the country, the Love's Canal area of Niagara Falls, NY. The first time he tried to show me what his old stomping grounds looked like, when we were adults, it looked like the fenced off area above. The last time we went there, it ALMOST looked like parkland, below. The old, unused houses had been removed, but there were still some old, unused roads. It was pretty but also pretty weird...The EPA is key to preventing new disasters and also healing old ones.

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the premiere of “Bending Sticks”

National Day for United Arab Emirates

Artist Georges Seurat's birthday

National Mutt Day

Republic Day in Laos

Liquefy Day

Atomic News Day

Faux Fur Friday

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

December holidays
December birthdays
Historical anniversaries in December

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

November 17 – Petroleum Day

Posted on November 17, 2016

This is NOT a day to double down on old technologies that pollute the environment. It's not a day to insist that we want big, gas-guzzling cars, and it's not a day to shrug aside alternative energy sources.

Instead, it's a day to learn more about petroleum. Like...did you know that this substance has been used since ancient times? And...did you know that petroleum is an important ingredient in many medicines and materials, makeup and paint, agricultural needs, and more?

A brief history of petroleum

Petroleum is made from vast quantities of dead plankton and algae falling to the bottom of seas and lakes, where the remains mix with dirt and sand. As further layers settle on top, the lower layers heat up. The pressure from above and the heat causes the fossilized remains to change to a waxy material called kerogen and then into liquid / gaseous hydrocarbons.

So the petroleum we have today was made long, long ago from the remains of living things that lived even longer ago! That's why we say that petroleum and other fossil fuels (fuels made of the fossilized remains of once-living things) are not renewable. Once we use up the petroleum we have now, we would have to wait millions upon millions of years for more to form!

Ancient peoples used
natural tars to waterproof
boats and seal roofs.

Forms of petroleum have been used since ancient times. Asphalt (a sticky black form of petroleum) was used to build the ancient city of Babylon. Ancient Persians used petroleum in their medicines and in order to create lights. In the mid 300s A.D. (C.E.), Chinese people began using bamboo to drill for oil. In Myanmar, hundreds of hand-dug wells produced oil – apparently since ancient times. In Europe, petroleum has been explored and used since the late 15^th Century.

"Greek fire" couldn't be put out with water.
Historians think it was made using petroleum.

Modern distillation and use of petroleum got its start with Scottish chemist James Young in the mid-1800s.

Petroleum products

Here is a partial list of products made from (at least in part) petroleum:

gaseous fuels such as propane
liquid fuels such as gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuels, jet fuels, etc.
lubricants such as motor oil and greases
paraffin wax, which is used in the packaging of frozen foods, etc.
slack wax, which is used for candles, matches, and other products
sulfur, which is used for some insecticides and fungicides, matches, fertilizers, and so forth
tar, which is used for roofing
asphalt, which is used to form some forms of concrete and for paving roads
petroleum coke, which is used to make some kinds of electrodes
petrochemicals, which are used to make synthetic rubber, dyes, detergents, ammonia, and a variety of solvents
petroleum by-products, which are used to make linoleum, perfume, petroleum jelly, soap, vitamin capsules, pantyhose, paint, lipstick, shower curtains, safety glasses, shampoo, crayons, aspirin, and on and on and on...
plastic, which is used to make...almost anything!

Oil spills and other forms of water pollution
can result from drilling for petroleum!

The worst thing about petroleum is that burning the various fuels made from it causes pollution and greenhouse gases that increase global warming. We need to be really smart about how we solve these problems, and how we replace our dependence on fossil fuels, as well!

Also on this date:

National Revival Day in Azerbaijan

Malabo Festival

Elephant round-up in Surin

Homemade Bread Day

Mathematician A. F. Mobius's birthday

National Unfriend Day

Anniversary of Lewis and Clark reaching the “Ocian”

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

November holidays
November birthdays
Historical anniversaries in November

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

December holidays
December birthdays
Historical anniversaries in December

March 12 – Arbor Day in China

Posted on March 12, 2016

China celebrates trees and forests on the anniversary of national hero Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who urged his nation to foster a lumber industry...

...and to replant forests so that the industry would always be strong.

Arbor Day originally started in the United States, in Nebraska, in 1872. It has caught on all over the world, although Taiwan (the Republic of China) didn't start celebrating Arbor Day until 1927, and mainland China (the People's Republic of China) waited until 1981 to begin celebrating the day.

The Chinese government urged every citizen capable of doing physical labor to plant at least two or three trees each and every year. Creating a holiday during which people can fulfill this obligation was a really good idea. Most Chinese citizens plant trees in their own home gardens or by roadsides. Some people join in with non-profit organizations that do massive tree planting programs.

China has really struggled with air pollution, as these photos show:

When I meet neighbors who came to California from China,
I often see them wearing face masks as is so commonly seen
in photos of Chia...even though we have little visible smog
where I live!

Trees are able to create better air quality by:

Reducing the temperature – Shady trees keep our cities cooler, and cooler temperatures help prevent inversion layers that keep smog in place. Buildings that stay cooler in the summer don't need to use as much energy for air conditioning – another “win” for the environment. Also, some pollutants depend on warmer environments.
Removing air pollutants by absorbing them through the tiny pores on a leaf's surface, or, sometimes, by trapping particles on the rough surface of the tree's bark. Unfortunately, this air-pollution-absorption is only a temporary solution, since many of the pollutants will be released back into the environment as the bark or tree burns, dies, or is attacked by beetles or other pests.

Actually, trees can increase air pollution in complex ways, by releasing Volatile Organic Compounds such as isoprene. But VOC emissions depend on temperatures, and as we said, trees tend to lower temperatures, so having more tree cover usually lowers overall VOC emissions. Also, different species vary in how much VOCs they emit.

A hybrid tree called the MegaFlora is being touted as a solution to some of the complexities above. This hybrid can be grown in the worst, most depleted and even polluted soil. This tree takes only about one-eighth of the water that it takes to grown corn, and yet it grows really, really quickly – about 60 feet in just three years. While it is growing, the MegaFlora tree helps clean air, soil, and water. Most impressive of all is that it can assist in the production of natural gas!

MegaFlora trees can be “gasified” – burned up in a super-hot chamber that has no oxygen. This no-oxygen incineration changes the tree to a gas called syngas, which in turn is converted into a liquid biofuel.

And, get this – 99% of the MegaFlora tree is converted to energy! The one percent residue that is left behind is either sand or glass sand. Because it is gasified in a closed chamber, the pollutants that the tree has absorbed all through its life are burned up, too, rather than released back into the atmosphere. And I presume (but couldn't confirm) that the tree was specially bred not to churn out too many VOCs.

So, China has a huge air pollution problem. And MegaFlora trees can help provide energy while cleaning up air pollution. I read that China is jumping onto the MegaFlora bandwagon, having ordered more than two billion of these special hybrid trees!

Better get planting!