Are We Really Conscious of the Air We Breath?

As I was finishing up reading the last part of chapter 2 in our book, I was starting to think about each single breath I was taking. I have always known that air is composed of many particles, but never did I realize that they were infact solid particles and for that matte, particles that could possibly harm my health. Of course small, random exposure to these particles could for the most part mean no harm, but wouldn't it be nice to know what you are breathing in. As I was walking past the construction site this morning, across form the IPJ, they were sanding something that was producing a giant white cloud of particulates. After reading chapter 2, I was honestly nervous to breath in as I walked by. Not that the construction workers hvae much of a choice in their job tasks, but it made me think to a much broader picture. How much are we really conscious of as we live our day to day lives? Is it possible that if the public was more aware on specific hazards to their health, they might change their lifestyles for the better?

As I was reading my weekly Time Magazine, this week had an article on "Greenhoouse Airlines" and how 1.6% of greenhouse gases is due inpart to airplanes. It was interesting because it also mentioned that although this was a small percentage, the carbon released was at higher altitudes than ground level and thus had a greater warming effect. Apparently, long flights are equivelent to months of driving SUV's. That's somehting that I am sure not many people have thought about. The article also mentioned how the Prince of Wales made a public effort to cut back on his flights last year. It just makes me wonder how many more people might cut back on their flights if they were made conscious of the decisions they make.

Time Magazine, "Greenhouse Airlines" by Brian Walsh; February 12, 2007
www.time.com

Pint-sized car engine

Well I just finished my group's discussion section, so I am really feeling emissions data and ways to increase the efficiency of an internal combustion engine. And then, all of a sudden, as I am just going along mindin my own business...an article about what some MIT geniuses are doing currently. No...It couldn’t be, I mean what? A pint-sized engine....nawwww. YESSSSSS! So it turns out that for several years "MIT researchers have been developing a half-sized gasoline engine that performs like its full-sized cousin but offers fuel efficiency approaching that of today's hybrid engine system--at a far lower cost. The key? Carefully controlled injection of ethanol, an increasingly common biofuel, directly into the engine's cylinders when there's a hill to be climbed or a car to be passed."
I mean if that doesn’t sound interesting then maybe some of the stats will blow your mind. Like that this new engine will go 30% farther on a gallon of fuel than a typical gas engine. And, if all cars had this engine today, we would be using 30 billion gallons of gasoline..yea GASOLINE, NOT OIL. Also, the emissions would be much cleaner due to the ethanol supplementation. That’s huge!

Read up on this at the following website: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/engine.html

Cheers!
-Alex Dru

Free Lectures Relating to Topics from Class!

The San Diego History Museum has a lecture series entitled, "Global Climate Change: Perspectives and Solutions", which are free to the public! The three remaining lectures are about clean energy, air pollution and human health, and global warming. Here is a link to find out the dates, presenters, and more information about their lecture topics: SDNHM

Bush Doing Some Good (kinda)

To tell the truth, I always felt my home town of NYC was a fairly clean place to live in terms of atmospheric pollution, at least compared to the other citys i have travelled to around the world. I never experienced the burning stink of the smog I found in Los Angeles, Rome, or Tokyo nor did I ever see the yellow haze that signifies it. But i will say that for the 15 years or so that I have had formative memories of the place, the statues and monuments that give the city much of its character have been "melting." It is disturbingly easy to track the effect acid rain has had on these beautiful public works of art were a timespan of only several years is needed to discern extreme superficial damage. This article is relieving in the fact that it represents some amount of recognition of the problem and the resulting changes in policy need to rectify it. Since the press release was dated in late 2003, it would be most intresting to see scientific data on the effect these stringent laws have had in the past 3 years. I will surely look. Due to the fact that a large part of the damaging SO2 and SH2 are not produced in New York state, inter-state co-operation seems to have great promise in helping problems like this all around the country, and these laws are indicative of that co-operation. Hopefully in time to prevent the noble visage's of my memories from degrading into formless masses.
http://www.senate.gov/~schumer/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/press_releases/PR02265.html

Particulate Matter in Santiago's Smog

Santiago Smog Moves to the Suburbs Latin Trade, Dec, 1998 by Greg Brown http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BEK/is_12_6/ai_54760281
"Where indeed? Chile's environmental review board, known as the Conama (Comision Nacional del Medio Ambiente), admits it is far behind and stretched financially on issues such as toxic waste and garbage dumps. Meanwhile, independent university experts note that forcing the purchase of catalytic cars and trucks is not the answer. Some 85% of the pollution infecting the capital is particulate matter--ground-up tire tread, leaves and dust--which hangs in the air after traffic stirs it up. The sheer number of autos and buses moving around in the city pushes pollution counts higher, not simply the volume of exhaust from their tailpipes."
The smog is so dense in the city that when I was visiting in the summer of 2005 and climbed one of the large hills that overlooked the city you could see the sea of smog lapping up against the hills and up to the edge of the Andes. Although catalytic converters are useful for reducing the emissions of NOx, as seen here in the article about Santiago, the smog problem is far reaching past one chemical process. The particulate matter that plays a central role in the smog is not identified. Chemistry can be done to specify what are the main components of the particulate matter and then address directly their sources and create solutions to the problem. The seriousness of addressing all of the factors that contribute to smog is seen here. Simply implementing the use of catalytic converters is not going to take away from the other conditions that contribute to the smog.

Montreal Protocol

and successive agreements have had are shown in Figure 2 by illustrating the fact that the The book only mentions the Montreal Protocol briefly near the end of the first chapter and outlines what chemicals have been banned. After further investigation on the topic I came across a link that goes into more detail about the protocol (http://exchange.unido.org/cmsupload/1509_2791686912_ozone.pdf). In this brochure you can see how many billions of dollars have been given to different countries and organizations to conduct research for finding alternative chemicals which do not damage the ozone. Another interesting fact was to see the amount of reduction of CFCs, HCFCs, methyl chloroform, etc. that has occurred in developed and developing countries since the Montreal Protocol was established (Table 2). The impact the original protocol and successive agreements had compared with if no action was taken is illustrated in Figure 2. I thought it was very interesting to see the predicted abundance of ozone depleting substances in the stratosphere if no action was taken. There is a lot more information about the Montreal Protocol and successive agreements in this brochure and I hope you take a look at it and better understand the impact it has had.

Hydrofloroethers?!

Our reading for class on wed was about the various HCFC's and CFC's that all still destroy ozone molecules either by forming chlorine radicals which migrate to the stratosphere, or in the case of HCFC's have very potent short term effects. The scientific community has been attempting to synth a molecule which is inert and still can still clean electronic components, work in refrigeration, and serve as carrier compounds in lubricants. There is much work and testing to be done, and it is known that hydrofloroethers will breakdown by the OH radical scrubbing process described in class, but the products of this reaction may inadvertantly carry a high greenhouse gas potential. Still I found the abstract and journal artical interesting on these organic compounds. Who knows what future effects they may have in store...

Web address for the PDF.
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/jpcafh/2005/109/i02/pdf/jp047860c.pdf

San Diego has a UV Monitoring Site!

After we discussed the loss of mid-latitude ozone, I began to wonder if any monitoring of the ozone loss in the San Diego region was currently under study. Interestingly, the National Science Foundation has one of its six UV monitoring sites in San Diego! A high resolution spectroradiometer is installed and operating to record the UV data, which unfortunately could not be obtained. (The NSF site requires one to be registered to access the data.) However, it spans from present to 1992. Also, on this site was a Student's Guide to Ozone and UV, which was a nice summary of the basics we have been discussing in class.Here is the website in case you want to review: SD UV

Human Lives affected by the Antarctic Ozone Hole?

When we started discussing the ozone hole and its anthropogenic origins, the deleterious effects on our atmosphere's chemistry made it easy to overlook the human lives affected in the southern hemisphere. Pronged by the book's statement that ground UV-B levels of light are increased by 3-6x during the appearance of the ozone hole in the spring, I found an article on PubMed about Punta Arenas, Chile, a medium-sized city located on the extreme southern tip of South America, whose inhabitants over the past 15 springs have been seeing an increase in severe sunburns and photosensitivity disorders. I believe this study is essential for a community whose risk of overexposure to UV rays is high. This way, individuals can become educated and learn how to lower their personal exposure risk and avoid sunburns that could eventually lead to malignant melanomas.

For the full article visit: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11807429&dopt=Abstract

Ozone depletion over the Arctic region

According to our book, the Arctic ozone hole appears on a larger scale during cooler periods. I was wondering if these cold periods were related to the climate cycle ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) and more specifically the La Nina part of the cycle when temperatures are cooler then normal. If the ozone hole and La Nina are connected is there a way to predict when the next La Nina year is going to be and begin preparing experiments to test ways to make the hole less severe during the colder periods. These experiments could lead to possible solutions for the future when hydrogen becomes a predominate source of energy and more water is released into the stratosphere and leads to longer and more severe cooling periods and more PSCs in the air.

For more information on ENSO go to: http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_elnino.html
on this site you can also connect to other areas of NOAA research about climates.