Discoblog » Pollution Solutions (& Disasters)

Clumsy Tokyo Subway Commuter Drops His Bottle of… Hydrochloric Acid?

Andrew Moseman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:45:27 +0000

Note to self: the next time you need to carry a container filled with hydrochloric acid to work, take a cab.

Tokyo got a scare this morning after a man dropped his bottle of the toxic liquid on a subway train. Several people when to the hospital with minor injuries, but thankfully this chemical clumsiness didn’t cause a major disaster.

Police didn’t arrest the man in question, a 20-year-old stone mason, deciding he didn’t intend to spill his chemicals on the train. Hydrochloric acid has a number of industrial uses, though perhaps carrying it in a bottle on a crowded train isn’t the best transportation strategy.

And because of his butterfingers, New Yorkers aren’t alone in revisiting unpleasant memories of terrorist attacks (as a 9/11 conspirator’s trial comes to Manhattan). Reuters says:

Japan is particularly sensitive to hazards on its trains after a 1995 incident in which members of [the Aum Shinrikyo] religious cult released highly toxic sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring thousands, some permanently.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Nerve Gas in the Subway, revisiting the 1995 attack
DISCOVER: What Invisible Things Are in the Surfaces You Touch and the Air You Breathe? (in a which a DISCOVER editor finds out how dirty the New York subway system really is.)
80beats: MIT Students Who Hacked Boston Subway Silenced; Report Gets Out Anyway

Image: Wiki Commons / Fg2

Hugo Chavez: “Any Cloud That Crosses Me, I’ll Zap It So That It Rains”

Andrew Moseman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:16:00 +0000

Hugo Chavez: ardent socialist, Venezuelan president, rain maker?

A crippling drought in his country has led Chavez to embrace cloud seeding. This week, he announced that he will team up with Cuban scientists to fly through clouds and “zap” them with silver iodide so they produce precipitation, one of the most popular kinds of cloud seeding and the one China said it used to induce a snowstorm this February.

Reuters was there to catch the president’s excitement:

“I’m going in a plane; any cloud that crosses me, I’ll zap it so that it rains,” Chavez said.

Seeding the clouds doesn’t do any good if there’s no moisture to begin with, but we presume that President Chavez wants to try anything that might help. Anyway, “zapping” is a more pleasing alternative to threatening, which the president previously tried on his countrymen. From UPI:

Earlier this month Chavez accused Venezuelans, including businesses, of wasting water and warned of tough punitive measures. He advised people … to limit showering to three minutes. Jacuzzis, watering of lawns and flowerbeds and filling of swimming pools have all been banned.

For the sake of Venezuela’s swimmers, horticulture enthusiasts, and hot tub manufacturers, here’s hoping the president’s plan is a success.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Harnessing the Weather
DISCOVER: Microwave a Tornado, Lase a Rainstorm
The Intersection: When Will Geoengineering “Tip?”
Discoblog: Brazilians Urged to Pee in the Shower to Conserve Water

Image: flickr/ Daniel Zanini H.

Glowing Green Bacteria vs Deadly Hidden Land Mines

Andrew Moseman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:27:30 +0000

A small crop dusting-style aircraft skims the land, spraying a mysterious solution onto the ground. Within hours, a few spots begin to glow bright green. No, this scene isn’t some hair-brained Homer Simpson scheme to use nuclear waste as a fertilizer. Rather, it could be a new way to locate one of humanity’s most vile creations: land mines.

University of Edinburgh scientists announced today that they’ve bioengineered a bacteria to glow a bright green when it comes in contact with the chemicals that old land mines leak out into the ground. The project was actually a student creation, and their supervisor, Alistair Elfick, says that they could mix the bacteria into a solution that could be sprayed by air over areas known to be infested with mines.

Elfick says the team isn’t planning to sell the glowing microorganisms commercially. But if the technique works, countries around the world could reap the benefits. From BBC News:

Each year, between 15,000 and 20,000 people are killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance, according to the charity Handicap International.

Some 87 countries are riddled with minefields, including Somalia, Mozambique, Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Could Rats Be the Next Sniffing Dogs? (They’ve already been trained to find landmines.)
Discoblog: Animal Prosthetics: False Limbs for Elephants, and Silicone Where You’d Least Expect It (Elephants in Myanmar and Cambodia are sometimes the victim of mines.)

Image: flickr / nestor galina

Thanksgiving for Fish: Food Chemicals Go Through People & Back Into Water Supply

Brett Israel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:06:16 +0000

Pulses of certain Turkey Day food ingredients are detected in the water supply in the days after the holiday, according to researchers. But as reported in National Geographic News, it doesn’t stop there:

For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.

A research team from the University of Washington tracked pulses of food ingredients that enter Washington’s Puget sound to learn more about how our actions on land affect the water supply, and to determine what slips through sewage treatment plants. Similar monitoring is underway worldwide, and scientists have turned up things such as flu vaccines, cocaine, heroine, rocket fuel, and birth control in waterways.

Click on over to team leader Rick Keil’s lab Web site to learn more about the Puget Sound research. But Keil told National Geographic News that the no one knows yet whether the subtle seasoning of the water is having an impact.

For now, there’s no evidence that a sweeter and spicier sound is a bad thing—salmon, which can smell such flavors, could be enjoying their vanilla-enhanced habitat, Keil said.

Image: flickr / Lana_aka_BADGIRL

Britain’s New Protected Minority: Tree-Huggers

Brett Israel — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:55:38 +0000

Employers in the U.K. have just learned that there’s a word for discrimination against a person based on their earth-conscious, tofu-eating ways: “greenism.” And firing someone for their environmental views is just as illegal as firing someone for their religious or philosophical beliefs, according to a court ruling.

Tim Nicholson, former head of sustainability at property firm Grainger Plc, claims he was laid off because of his views on climate change and the environment. A judge said Nicholson could take Grainger to the Employment Appeals Tribunal over the layoff, but Grainger challenged the ruling on the grounds that climate change is a scientific and not philosophical viewpoint. However, that challenge was overturned, according to the Telegraph:

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.”

The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

Nicholson said during previous hearings that due to his strong convictions he refused to travel by air and renovated his house to be environmentally friendly. He also said Grainger’s chief executive, who allegedly once flew a staff member from Ireland to London to deliver a forgotten Blackberry, was hostile toward his beliefs. The company said it will now argue that there was no link between Nicholson’s views and his layoff.

Image: flickr / hpeguk

New Ink-Remover May Be Key to Recycling Office Paper

Brett Israel — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:28:07 +0000

Kindles, iPhones, laptops, and maybe an Apple Tablet make avoiding the printer a cinch. However, should someone actually need to read off dead trees, a new method to remove ink from white paper could make office paper far easier to reuse. All it takes is a solution of 60 percent dimethylsulphoxide and 40 percent chloroform and a little agitation to shake off the ink, and used paper will be almost as good as new, according to a new study.

From Physorg.com:

[Researchers] found that a combination of solvents can remove toner print from paper without harming the paper to make it reusable, although the resulting paper is not quite as white as new paper.

Physorg.com also has a an image of the comparisons between printing on paper treated with chemical solutions versus printing on a fresh sheet.

It’s hard to imaging any office keeping a wet lab and actually doing this, and sloshing through all that solvent can’t be very safe or economical. So here’s an alternative idea: Just stop printing altogether and read things digitally like everyone else.

Image: flickr / michaelkpate

Iceland to Save All Computer Servers (and the World)?

Melissa Lafsky — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:29:38 +0000

Things looked pretty bleak in Iceland a year or so ago. Declaring national bankruptcy is never high on a country’s list of priorities. But BBC News reports that the beleaguered country is attempting to make a comeback—as the nexus of all the world’s computer servers. In a way, it’s the perfect place to keep a ton of servers that require huge amounts of energy to be kept running, and cool. From the report:

In Iceland, with its year round cool climate and chilly fresh water, just a fraction of this energy for cooling [the servers] is needed. It means big savings.

Just outside Reykjavik, work is well advanced on the first site which its owners hope will spark a server cold rush.

In around a year – if all goes according to plan – the first companies will start leasing space in this data centre.

And if this proves successful more sites are planned.

And with its wealth of geothermal (and therefor carbon-footprint-free) power, the country stands to make a substantial global impact, particularly since all those servers mean a constant increase in CO2 production. As one expert put it:

“[I]f a large internet media company operating thousands and thousands of servers relocated its servers to Iceland, that company would save greater than half a million metric tons of carbon annually.”

Granted, now all they have to do is lay all that fiber optic cable. No getting around the series of tubes!

The Washing Machine That Can Measure Your Sweat Stains

Melissa Lafsky — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:18:27 +0000

Revealed this week at Ceatec (Japan’s version of CES): The omniscient washing machine. Well, maybe it’s not omniscient, but it can detect precisely how dirty your sweaters and jeans are, and target any sweat stains. The Eco-Navi, made by Panasonic, uses a light-activated sensor to detect levels of dirtiness, while sweat stains are recognized by “another sensor that sends tiny electrical impulses through the wash as it spins,” according to Greentechmedia.

So how much water and energy are we saving? A lot:

Electricity consumption drops from 79 watt hours to 72 watt hours and water consumption trickles down to 67 liters from 72 liters per load.

Now for the downside: It’s currently retailing at $3,000. Which, for a washing machine, is a bit hefty. But as with all fancy electronic devices, the price will be dropping any day now.

Image: Courtesy of Ceatec

Harness the Waves! Scotland Launches Giant Cylinder to Nab Sea Power

Brett Israel — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:37:35 +0000

A giant cylinder will splash into the water off the coast of Scotland next Spring, all in the hopes of harnessing the energy of waves and converting it to electricity.

Engineers are still tweaking the marine power converter, according to Reuters:

Dwarfed by 180 meters of tubing, scores of engineers clamber over the device, which is designed to dip and ride the swelling sea with each move being converted into power to be channeled through subsea cables.

The sea snake, as it’s called, is being developed for the German power company E. ON and represents a serious investment in marine power, which is considerably more costly than offshore wind power. A push by regulatory agencies to slash emissions has companies taking a closer look at marine power these days—and apparently these so-called snakes have the potential to capture a decent share of the energy market:

The World Energy Council has estimated the market potential for wave energy at more than 2,000 terawatt hours a year—or about 10 percent of world electricity consumption—representing capital expenditure of more than 500 billion pounds ($790 billion).

E. On is hoping the current project in Scotland will fare better than their fist foray into marine power—a commercial wave project in Portugal that flopped after one of the partners ran out of cash.

Image: flickr / Wonderlane

The Ultimate in Sustainable Toys: A Placenta Teddy Bear

Melissa Lafsky — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:14:24 +0000

We’re all for sustainable toys. After all, having children is the single most carbon-intensive action human beings can take, so the least we can do is give our kids a recycled rubber ball or eco-friendly duckie to play with.

And so we applaud the efforts of green-minded design group [re]design in putting together an exhibition of sustainable toys from around the world. But there is a line to all of this. And that line is the Placenta Teddy Bear. If you want to eat it, that’s your business—but forcing your placenta on the world in the name of sustainability is another matter. Here’s a description, courtesy of Inhabitots:

A crafty alternative for those who don’t necessarily want to eat their baby’s placenta, but want to pay their respects to the life sustaining organ by turning it into a one-of-a-kind teddy bear. Green’s ‘Twin Teddy Kit’ ‘celebrates the unity of the infant, the mother and the placenta,’ and enables preparation of the placenta so it may be transformed into a teddy bear. The placenta must be cut in half and rubbed with sea salt to cure it. After it is dried out, it is treated with an emulsifying mixture of tannin and egg yolk to make it soft and pliable. Then, you craft it into a teddy bear.

Then, you wait for the apocalypse. Which can’t come too soon.

(Hat tip to Maia Weinstock.)

Image: Inhabitots