ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO HELP PROMOTE THOSE SOLAR PANELS?

     Some time ago, I posted a report that the manufacturing process to build the supposedly environmentally-friendly Toyota Prius produced a lot of pollution.  In response to that Post, greenies were most angered, pointing out the supposed fallacy in the study that highlighted the pollution.

     Well, here goes another pin to burst the bubble:  China has become a major player in the production of solar panels; however, the production process reportedly produces lethal hazardous waste.  No less than that liberal icon, The Washington Post, reports this in a Sunday, march 9, 2008 story entitled "Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China" (the firms are Chinese).  Excerpts:

GAOLONG, China -- The first time Li Gengxuan saw the dump trucks from the nearby factory pull into his village, he couldn't believe what happened. Stopping between the cornfields and the primary school playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white liquid onto the ground. Then they turned around and drove right back through the gates of their compound without a word.

This ritual has been going on almost every day for nine months, Li and other villagers said.

In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth, such stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards.

"The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite -- it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University.

     Other examples of trade-offs abound-for example, when under government mandate oil companies laced their gasoline with the additive MTBE to clean the air in California, an unintended consequence was to enhance difficult water pollution problems (because MTBE is very difficult to remediate).  In short, like everything else in life, "going green" produces its own unintended consequences.  "Going green" is an attractive platitude; but platitudes are not very helpful in evaluating real-world consequences of any given "green" technology.

EVEN THE COURT ENJOYS NO MOLD IMMUNITY

     AP reports today that:

A federal judge has closed portions of Miami's historic downtown courthouse after a report identified widespread mold infestation and ongoing water leaks, with one part of the basement termed "disgusting" by inspectors.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno, the chief judge in Florida's Southern District, said in a memo that parts of the basement that house court records and a stairwell used by judges were being closed until further notice.

RUH-OH: GLOBAL WARMING EVIDENCE IS EVAPORATING

     Per DailyTech.com:

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

...The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

     Maybe the news media would like to republish their multiple stories from the 1970's warning about the coming Ice Age?  See my Post of April 8, 2006 under "Categories:  Global Warming" (right-hand side of this page).

EPA'S "ERMI" TEST-PROMISING, BUT NOT A DEFINITIVE HEALTH TEST

     On July 22, 2007 (go to "Categories"/"Toxic Mold" on the right-hand side of this page), I posted an article on the state of toxic-mold liability in the United States, essentially pointing out that there were as yet no definitive standards to "prove" that mold in any particular situation had caused someone's health problems.  In response, one reader sent in a comment that such a standard now exists in the form of the US EPA's "Environmental Relative Moldiness Index", or "ERMI".

     I am grateful for the reader's posted comment. However, the ERMI is not a health-based standard but rather simply a method to compare levels of mold in a home environment to a representative sampling of homes across the nation.  From this comparison, one can conclude that a home is overburdened (or under-burdened) with mold compared to the average home; but, as even the most ardent proponents of using the standard agree, there is no proven correlation between the level of mold in a home and particular health conditions.

     The ERMI approach starts with a highly scientifically accurate sampling of mold, using a specialized vacuum device to scoop up dust particles for mold measurement (as opposed to air sampling, which up until recently was the usual method to collect samples for mold measurement).  Whereas air samples reflect a very short duration of measurement in a potentially changing environment (i.e., air currents can vary from time to time), the dust sample is relatively stable, reflecting as the sample does materials that have collected over a relatively long period of time in such media as carpeting. 

      The dust sample is then analyzed in the laboratory by mold DNA traits, producing conclusive identification of the types of mold in the sample (as opposed to observations of the mold appearance, which observations are apparently prone to more subjective interpretation).  36 types of mold are categorized--26 types which result from historic water damage and 10 types that are associated with common household molds.  The quantity (derived at by a "log-transforming" method) of common household molds are subtracted from the quantity of the more dangerous molds to produce a score ranging from -10 to 20.  The lower the score, the less of a mold burden is deemed to exist.

     The mold-burden score from between -10 to 20 is then compared to a survey of over 1,000 homes done in 2006 by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD").  A mold burden of -10 to -4 places a house in the "low" mold burden category compared to the homes surveyed; from -4 to 5 places the home in the "moderate" burden category; and a score greater than 5 places the home in the "high" burden category.

     While the ERMI score is clearly helpful in alerting a homeowner to the possibility of dangerous health conditions being caused by mold, since there remains no definitive correlation between mold exposure and chronic disease the ERMI test is essentially useful only as a warning system that further investigation is required.  In a home with a high ERMI score and evidence of health problems (e.g., aggravated asthmatic conditions and other respiratory problems), the high score should sound alarm bells. 

     However, a low ERMI score does not mean that resident are not suffering apparent symptoms which have been caused by the presence of mold.  Nor does a high score where no symptoms are apparent mean there is a definite health problem.  The ERMI score is simply one additional indicator of the need for further investigation and interpretation.

     Moreover, the ERMI approach has its own methodological limitations.  The ERMI test was developed for homes, not commercial buildings.  One needs to extrapolate to draw any conclusions in the latter context.  Further, the dust sampling used in the HUD survey was done in specific areas of the living room and the bedroom.  Varying these sampling areas arguably would introduce some subjectivity in comparison of the dust-burden in any given home with the national sample used for ERMI results.

     Thus, the ERMI approach is an important step in ultimately developing a conclusive test of the effects of mold exposure on human health.  However, ERMI is just that--a step on the road to such a conclusive test and not the conclusive test which still continues to elude us.

     For good website discussions of ERMI, please see     http://www.aemtek.com/newsite/?q=node/98,   http://www.cleanairlabs.com/media/downloads/ERMI-scores.pdf, http://www.aerotechpk.com/AnalyticalServices/ERMI.aspx, http://www.joem.org/pt/re/joem/abstract.00043764-200708000-00002.htm;jsessionid=H4yTqJLb8G1LSrB0gWQmJv0wLh8bw2hDRXzDKpk4htBKvFJTFn1v!-383192544!181195628!8091!-1 and  http://www.mycometrics.com/articles/ERMI_Lin_IEC2007.html

THE PEOPLE'S PARADISE

     From Radio Free Asia:

     Residents of Chenxi county in the southern Chinese province of Hunan say thousands of people are seeking medical attention after a local factory polluted the local water supply, although local officials said only 26 people were taken seriously ill.

“We are not on the main water supply here, so 80 to 90 percent of villagers rely on the same water supply,” a resident of Banqiao village surnamed Chen told RFA’s Cantonese service. “One by one, they are all going to the doctor because they are getting headaches, swelling and weakness in their limbs.”

Chen said that once at the hospital, local people were told by medical staff that they had a suspected case of poisoning through pollution of the water supply. He estimated that around 90 percent of villagers in the area relied on the same water supply.

***

Chemical spills with serious health consequences are common in China.

In 2005, a massive chemical plant spill into northeastern China’s Songhua River resulted in drinking supply cuts affecting millions of residents of Heilongjiang province.

Believe it or not- from The New York Times

     From (if you can believe it) a column in today's New York Times:

...there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

***

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

***

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.

Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?

RECORD SNOW-MUST BE GLOBAL WARMING (?)

Today's snowstorm made this month the snowiest December in New Hampshire in more than a century.

     Associated Press, 12/31/08.

     How can this be?  I thought global warming was drying us out.  Oh, wait-- this unusual phenomenon shows that global warming is producing weather not seen before.  But, wait again-- this weather was seen before, a century ago, before (relatively speaking) much industrialization had occurred.

     If it's hot, it's caused by global warming.  if it's cold, it's caused by global warming.  If it's too dry, it's caused by global warming.  If it's too wet, it's caused by global warming.  If there is a drought, it's caused by global warming.  if there's a flood, it's caused by global warming. 

     It's good to be a global warming true believer.  You can never lose a debate.

MEXICO LABELS BORDER FENCE ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL

     In its November 15, 2007 edition, The Washington Post reported that the Mexican government is unhappy with the fence because it allegedly threatens hundreds of plant and animal species by bisecting their habitat.

     Maybe.  But what about the environmental damage being done by the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing that same habitat (see previous Post under the Category of Immigration, right-hand side of this page)?  A picture is worth a thousand words (click on pictures for a clear view):

   

SWISS SNOW SETS 50-YEAR RECORD

     From "Fast Track Ski News" on November 15, 2007:

Swiss ski resorts are expecting a record season after promising early snowfall, it has been reported.

***

...Switzerland has not received such a strong start to its winter ski season since 1952....

     I'd appreciate comments on how this is consistent with "global warming".

SORRY TO DISAPPOINT THE GREENIES, BUT BALI CONFERENCE WAS TYPICAL POSTURING

     Yesterday, the mainstream media went wild with joy when they could announce  that the United States had softened its position at the Bali conference and thus paved the way for a compromise climate-change agreement about carbon-emissions reduction.  Did this exuberance by the usual suspects undercut my repeated point on this Blog that countries sign "feel good" agreements but are not really going to put their economies in the tank by adhering to the agreements? 

      Hardly.  As The Sunday Times (U.K.) reports today ("Bali deal leaves greens in despair"):

AS more than 180 countries agreed a deal on climate change at the UN summit in Bali, environmentalists punctured the mood of self-congratulation by pointing to the failure to agree firm targets for reducing emissions.

Although the main industrialised countries, including America, agreed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, they refused to agree to an European Union proposal for a target of 25%-40% cuts by 2020.

Campaigners claimed the world’s biggest carbon emitters, including America, Japan and Canada, will now be free to carry on expanding such emissions for many more years to come.

“This deal is very disappointing,” said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth. “This conference has failed to give us a clear destination.”

     The real news to come out of Bali was this brief statement in The Times:

— Tomorrow, John Hutton, the energy secretary, will give the strongest hint yet that the UK should go for a new generation of nuclear power stations.

     This, of course, will hardly make the the ROGW (Religion of Global Warming) disciples happy, either.  The ROGW and its pope, Al Gore, basically want the industrialized world to go back to the 18th century as punishment for economic success (which, of course, they believe was achieved only by oppressing the virtuous people of the Third World).  The ROGW disciples also want to produce only energy that carries 0% risk, and nuclear doesn't fit that bill (if civilization had historically adopted such a no-risk philosophy, we'd indeed still be in the 18th century technologically).

     The potential endorsement of nuclear energy by the UK, should such endorsement occur, is sensible not because of the fear of global warming but because for obvious reasons the West needs to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil.  Hopefully Mr. Hutton will make, and carry through on, his expected announcement.