The company that fueled the innovation for cleaner auto exhaust is looking to do the same for diesel-powered trucks and buses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
Author: David Sommerstein
GREATER MENACE FROM PCBs?
Toxic waste sites contaminated with PCBs dot industrial areas of the Midwest. Scientists have long believed that the greatest PCB risk for humans comes from eating PCB contaminated fish. A new study challenges that assumption. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
Monitoring System on Hand for Bioterrorism
Scientists who monitor pollutants in rain and snow in the U.S. are offering their monitoring network to be used in the event of a wide scale bioterrorist attack. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has more:
Transcript
Scientists who monitor pollutants in rain and snow in the U.S. and Great Lakes are offering their monitoring network to be used in the event of a wide scale bioterrorist attack. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has more.
The National Atmospheric Deposition Program is best known for its early detection of acid rain in the 1970s. It has a network of over 200 sites that measure chemicals like sulfur dioxides and mercury in precipitation. But coordinator Van Bowersox says the network could also be used in the case of an environmental emergency to trace things like anthrax spore.
“To help track perhaps the source of the material or perhaps just how wide dispersed the material may be. So this would be, for example, for a widespread release of a bioterrorism agent over a broad area.”
Bowersox says the samples of such agents would be sent to a special laboratory for analysis.
The idea wouldn’t be an unprecedented use for the network. The NADP surveyed the nation’s atmosphere for nucleotides following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It also measured the amount of particles in the air after the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Scientist Tracks Air Mysteries
The Great Lakes region is home to major power producers. But along with the electricity they make comes some amount of air pollution. When coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Ohio emit sulfur dioxides, prevailing winds blow them to the Northeast, where they can fall as acid rain. Several northeast states are suing those power plants to clean up their emissions. Earlier this summer, a professor at Clarkson University in northern New York coordinated a unique study to learn more about the life cycle of air pollution, from where it’s produced to where it lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has the story:
Transcript
The Great Lakes region is home to major power producers. But along with the electricity they make comes some amount of air pollution. When coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Ohio emit sulfur dioxides, prevailing winds blow them to the Northeast, where they can fall as acid rain. Several northeast states are suing those power plants to clean up their emissions.
Earlier this summer, a professor at Clarkson University in northern New York coordinated a unique study to learn more about the life cycle of air pollution, from where it’s produced to where it lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has the story.
Chemical engineering professor Phil Hopke will take any opportunity to get out of his office and over to his field lab. It consists of a concrete slab amongst the weeds in a corner of the local airport. Installed on the concrete are monitors he uses to find out exactly what’s in the air we breathe.
(sound of opening lock)
Hopke unlocks a gate in a chainlink fence. You can already hear a strange hum in the distance. It gets louder as Hopke strides up to one of three white machines the size of dishwashers.
“Come out and change the filters once a day. This one’s for organic constituents in the air.”
He pulls out what looks like an air filter for your furnace. These machines suck in air. They leave a unique footprint of chemicals on the filter that represents what was in the air in this place on this day — chemicals like sulfur dioxide and mercury. Hopke will send these filters to specialty labs around the world to be analyzed.
There are hundreds of stations like this in North America. Groups of researchers study daily air quality for every region of the country. They examine how things like traffic and smokestacks might affect the air we breathe.
But Hopke says they mostly focus on their own areas. They don’t often coordinate studies to see how the chemicals they find move from region to region.
“It struck me a couple of years ago, particularly in the Northeast, that we have these groups talking to one another.”
Working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hopke convinced 26 sites in the East, from Texas to Toronto, to measure the same stuff on the same days. They chose the whole month of July.
It’s perhaps the largest simultaneous air sampling effort ever conducted in this country. When the data’s complete, the study will track the lifespan of pollution, from when it leaves a smokestack or a car’s tailpipe to when it is taken up by a tree or your lungs.
But scientists can’t just follow one molecule of pollution from a car in St. Louis to a lake in Michigan. They have to make models of how the chemicals move, like how meteorologists make weather maps to trace storm systems. As if that’s not complicated enough, says Hopke, naturally occurring chemicals make the job even tougher.
“You have to keep in mind that the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia are blue because of natural photochemical smog, particles being formed because of the pine materials that come off. Those materials that you smell are chemically reactive and will undergo the same type of smog reactions as human emitted materials.”
So researchers use techniques to separate out the “man-made” pollutants from the “natural” pollutants. Next they look for high concentrations of, say, sulfur dioxide in Chicago on July 15th. Then they follow those high levels east with prevailing winds. They look for high sulfur dioxide levels in Ohio or New York a few days later. After doing this many times in July for many types of chemicals, the researchers hope patterns will begin to emerge.
Hopke sits on a scientific advisory committee that helps the EPA develop pollution standards. He says this coordinated study will bring stronger science to the EPA’s sometimes controversial decisions.
“Suppose I require all power plants to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions by twenty percent. What does that do for me for particle concentrations in New York City? What will that do? Will that get us where we want in terms of clean air?”
With a study this large in scope, the answers to those questions won’t come quickly. The massive amount of data gathered in the study will take a few years to interpret.
In the meantime, Hopke and the EPA are planning another cooperative sampling effort for wintertime, when temperatures and people’s habits are different from summer.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Jet Ski Debate Heats Up
Personal watercraft, also known by their trade name “jet skis,” are the hottest sellers among watercraft in the Great Lakes region. They’re causing some heated debate as well. They’ve been banned in many National Parks, and some Great Lakes states are also regulating their use. Last summer, New York passed a law allowing towns to make their own rules for jet skis. Some have already banned them on local lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports on the controversy jet skis are provoking:
Transcript
Personal watercraft, also known by their trade name “jet-skis”, are the hottest sellers among watercraft in the Great Lakes region. They’re causing some heated debate as well. They’ve been banned in many National Parks, and some Great Lakes states are also regulating their use. Last summer New York passed a law allowing towns to make their own rules for jet-skis. Some have already banned them on local lakes.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports on the controversy jet skis are provoking.
When Jay Schecter relaxes in the quiet of his home on Hannawa Pond in northern New York, there’s one sound he can’t stand.
(Sound of jet ski starting up and driving away)
It’s a personal watercraft, or Jet Ski. It’s easy to get Schecter to talk about last summer when young kids driving jet-skis nearly drove him crazy.
“…y’know, weaving in and out of traffic and wake jumping. The awful noise, going uuuuuuuuuuuuu for literally hours on end.”
(Sound of buzzing Jet Ski)
Jet-skis are different from other motorized boats, not just because they sound different. They ride high on the water’s surface and can easily make sharp turns. So they can come closer to shores and docks at higher speeds than traditional motorboats can.
Schecter heard about the new “home rule” law in New York that allows towns to make their own jet-ski rules. At the same time, he started to hear from his neighbors.
“I started to hear complaints about jet-skis from recreational boaters, big time water-skiers, older gentlemen who’d been on the pond for many years.”
So Schecter spearheaded a campaign over the winter to get the machines banned from the water. The town Board compromised with what amounted to a jet-ski curfew from 6 in the evening to 9 in the morning. The proposal sparked a controversy on the pond that’s divided neighbors into pro- and anti-jet ski camps.
(Sound of motor boat approaching dock; then sound of guys under track)
Just down the shoreline from Jay Schecter’s place, a few motorboats idle up to Alex Vangelo’s dock. Alex and his friends like to get together on hot days like these – maybe get in a little water-skiing after work. None of them own jet skis, but they don’t want any new rules, either. Alex says most jet skiers on this pond are responsible users.
“They’ve got three or four jet skis and they get home from work and they like to get on it and ride up and down the river a couple times. Well, God bless ’em, I say”
Alex’s friend Mark Luthauser loves to cruise around in his motorboat and says his neighbors should have the right to enjoy their jet skis.
“I’d be happier without jet skis on here, but it’s just not fair for me to support something just because I personally don’t like it.”
New York’s “home rule” law is the first of its kind in the country. Other Great Lakes states have a range of Jet Ski laws on the books. But most of them don’t restrict where and when they can be used – they just regulate unsafe and risky operation.
Some people say the problems with jet skis go well beyond noise, safety, and personal freedoms. The two-stroke engines in jet skis are heavy polluters, dumping up to a third of their fuel into the air and water. The most often cited statistic says that one day of Jet Ski play emits as much pollution as a new car driven 100,000 miles. Shawn Smith of Blue Water Network, a national environmental group, says jet skis endanger fish and birds, too.
“The way they’re designed, they don’t have propellers; they’re powered by a jet pump. That allows them to get into waterways where traditional boats cannot. Often these waterways are very shallow and represent some of the most sensitive habitat for wildlife – breeding grounds, nesting areas, that type of thing.”
Groups like Blue Water Network are pushing for more states to consider “home rule” laws like New York’s.
But Industry representatives say advances in technology will soon silence the complaints against the watercraft. Monita Fontaine directs the Personal Watercraft Industry Association. She says new personal watercrafts are already 75% cleaner and 70% quieter than the older models.
“People will have to look at what it is they don’t like about personal watercraft because it certainly will not be the fact that there are any environmental impacts. And people will have to see if, in fact, it’s simple prejudice.”
(Sound up)
Back on Hannawa Pond, John Ohmohundro, another jet-ski opponent, says the jet ski controversy is similar to other “man and machine” vs. “nature and neighbor” conflicts, from snowmobiles to boom boxes to ATVs.
“Where does your right to play any way you want to interfere with my right for peace and quiet, clean air, clean water, safety…I’m interested in that issue.”
(Sound of jet ski)
So are many other people. Across the region this summer, residents will be crowding public meetings to consider their own Jet Ski restrictions.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Canada, America’s Toxic Waste Dump?
A report says Canada has become a haven for hazardous waste generated in the U.S., and much of it comes from the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
ACTIVISTS FIGHT LOSS OF PROTECTIONS (Part 2)
When leaders from the Western hemisphere head to
Quebec City this weekend to continue negotiations on the
Free Trade Area of the Americas, there’ll be a lot more on the table
than free trade. The FTAA, as it’s called, also establishes the rights
of companies when they deal with foreign governments.
FTAA critics say people take a back seat to corporations
in free trade deals. In the second of a two-part series, the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein tests the
anti-corporate arguments:
FTAA ACTIVISTS SPEAK (Part 1)
This weekend, the leaders of the 34 nations of North, Central,
and South America – all except Cuba – are meeting in Quebec City to
negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas. If ratified, the FTAA
would be the largest free trade zone in the world. Supporters say it
would be a massive boost to business and prosperity in the hemisphere.
The meetings are also attracting thousands of activists. They’ve
often been portrayed in the media as violent protestors or fringe
radicals
with costumes and puppets. But their concerns are frequently left
out of media reports. In the first of a two-part series, the Great
Lakes
Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein takes a closer look at their
arguments:
De-Icing Great Lakes Shipping Routes
The Robinson Bay is one of many ice-breaking tugboats working in and around the St. Lawrence River.See a slide show of David Sommerstein's trip on the Robinson Bay.
In many parts of the Great Lakes, spring still seems a ways off. But on the ice-choked St. Lawrence River, there is a sign of warmer days to come. Huge icebreakers are clearing a path for the international freighters that use the Seaway nine months of the year. The interior of North America as far west as Duluth will soon re-open to the Atlantic Ocean, and to the rest of the world. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein climbed aboard the tugboat Robinson Bay for its second day of icebreaking on the lock canal that parallels the river:
Navigation Upgrades Spark Debate
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing the entire navigational
system in the Great Lakes. The study could result in changes to ports
and harbors throughout the region. It could also give the go-ahead for
deepening shipping channels and widening locks on the St. Lawrence
Seaway. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein
reports, environmentalists are warning such projects could pose a threat
to the delicate marine ecosystem: