Incineration of chemical weapons at Umatilla has been going on for about three years. Recently it has come under renewed attack by a "DC Watchdog" group stating there are better, safer ways to decontaminate mustard gas and other hazardous waste without mercury and other chemical emissions. KUOW, an NPR affiliate covered this story earlier this week.
Scientists studying in the clouds at DRI"s Storm Peak Laboratory above Steamboat Springs, CO have been witnessing an alarming increase in the amount of airborne mercury. Using some fairly new technology they are capable of detecting the "low" ambient concentrations, but do not be fooled by the word "low". Remember everything is relative. These ambient readings have gone up dramatically in very short order and because of the accumulative nature of mercury in the environment pose real concerns. Both KWGN2 and CBS4 in Denver covered this story.
In some hopeful news this week, Washington University in St. Louis, my sisters alma mater, along with Chrysler and Ameren are experimenting with some promising technology, reusing paint solids from automobile spray booths as supplemental fuel and also removing mercury from the flue gas. The paint solids were landfilled before Dr. Pratim Biswas, Stifel & Quinette Jens recognized the opportunity they possessed in removing mercury from the coal combustion process. See the paint residue is high in titanium dioxide (TiO2) which through a process known as chemisorption bonds with the mercury and is removed with the plants existing air pollution control devices. Sounds like a win-win-win, less waste, less coal, less mercury. A footnote from the Eurekalert release follows;
The project has been recognized with a pollution prevention award from the St, Louis chapter of the National Association of Environmental Managers and with an Environmental Leadership Award from Chrysler.
The Washington University, Chrysler and Ameren team also received the 2007 Chrysler Environmental Leadership Award.
As environmental groups continue to attack coal fired power plants (the activity du jour), Oregon's Boardman Station, the only coal fired plant in the state, is under fire from the Sierra Club and others claiming the plant is violating the Federal Clean Air Act with emissions of mercury and other dangerous substances. Excuse me, but, I think Boardman in all likelihood is operating in legal compliance with its operating permits. You and I and the Sierra Club and others may want stricter limits on pollution but until the laws change suing individual facilities is wasting our judicial system's time. An excerpt from the Bizjournals story follows;
The complaint alleges the Boardman plant is the largest emitter of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in Oregon and that its ongoing emissions of mercury and other substances violates federal law and jeopardizes environmental and public health.
The effort is part of a national campaign by environmental groups to eliminate existing and proposed coal-fired power plants. Such plants provide more than half of the country's power but are also the nation's largest source of carbon dioxide.
I don't know what they think we will do without 50% of our power. Eliminating coal fired plants from our energy mix is an admirable goal but one that is decades away, that is unless you don't like air conditioning, heated homes in winter, night baseball, large screen TVs, and those really cool electric massagers.
And just when I thought I had heard every possible downside to mercury emissions along comes my old friend Wired magazine to zing me with a new one. Sperm in mice, and presumably humans too, have shriveled
DNA due to air pollution, including mercury. It seems a team of scientists from Canada of all places (maybe their sperm DNA shriveled because it was too cold, but I digress) set mice in cages out in heavy industrial areas, some cages open to the pollution and others sealed getting only HEPA filtered air. Well, you guessed it, the ones breathing the pollution had sperm with shriveled DNA. And not only that the sperm were also hypermethylated, excessive gene activity. God, I hate when that happens. But seriously they are looking into the possible connection between these sperm mutations and the increase in childhood autism.
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