INTERESTING TIMES

That's a lot of people who can't shower in or cook with the water coming from the faucet. The solution to this pollution is said to be dilution, same as ever, which means people have to wait until enough good water has run through the system to wash out the chemical. The wildlife get no such warning. The symptoms are nausea and vomiting. I haven't found anything about longterm toxicity yet.

Events like this are manageable for populations wealthy enough to purchase bottled water or travel to cleaner digs. For impoverished folks and for the creatures and plants of the land, this is a true crisis.

The leak was a foaming agent used to wash coal, and it went from a 48,000 gallon storage tank straight into the Elk River. The primary component in the foaming agent that leaked is the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (CH3C6H10CH2OH). It has been patented as an air freshener and has a slightly minty odor (another good reason not to use air fresheners). It is used in ~20-25% of coal plans, mainly for "coking coal" which is used for metallurgical purposes, but not for making coal burned to make electricity ("steam coal") which is the lion's share of total coal produced.

The biz owning the leaky tank is called Freedom Industries, and it distributes mining reagents for WV, VA, PA, OH, MD, MN, KY, and MI. In 2008, Freedom Industries was specially selected by Georgia-Pacific Chemicals as a distributor of G-P's Talon brand mining reagents for the states already mentioned. Georgia-Pacific Chemicals is, of course, a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. Koch is big biz, and should be penalized to assure that they will take better precautions in all their plants in the future.



SOURCES
Fresh Brains sent me this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/11/west-virginia-chemical-sp_n_4582100.html
National Geographic on the same leak:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140110-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol-chemical-spill-west-virginia-science/
Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/11/1268990/-Freedom-Industries-Has-Ties-to-Koch-Brothers
Koch Industries
http://www.kochind.com/

That's what it sounds like from the letter behind the cut (at bottom), anyway. Then I searched and found that there are some senators working to strengthen the Clean Air Act on some specific pollutants, specifically with regard to coal. And frankly, I'm all for it. We need clean air. Clean air makes all the difference. I come from East Tennessee, the land of acid rain and asthma. And I have lived where the air is clean. I know the difference.

The specific proposals are to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 80% by 2018, mono-nitrogen oxides by 53% and mercury by 90% by 2015. I don't know a thing about the technology involved, but if these adjustments ARE technologically feasible we absolutely should require that our plants do them. Even knowing that we have to pay for it. Sulfur dioxide is the main thing that causes acid rain, and acid rain kills the trees and depletes the soil and turns the land into waste. It is the nightmare that people have when they think about nuclear devastation, only it happens. Nitrogen oxide contributes to acid rain. Mercury is just plain old toxic, neurotoxic and hard to get rid of. If we can stop plants from blowing mercury into the air, it won't get rained into the water, and it won't concentrate in the fish or come pouring through our taps. We won't be so poisoned.

Oh, you say, you're not poisoned? Don't check your own heavy metals if you don't want to know.

On the subject of fossil fuel dependence, here's a short history from the Post Carbon Institute.


( this letter from CREDO action in my email inbox today )