Exposed natural gas flames generate hazardous pollutants

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in Pennsylvania, Texas & Arizona to Provide Webinar Training on “Cooking With Natural Gas”

Gas appliances generate dangerous air pollutants that deteriorate your and your family’s health. It’s important for you to know the signs & symptoms of gas appliance pollution exposure and how to properly address them.

PSR is proud to offer our new webinar “Cooking With Gas: Health Harms from Gas Stoves.” In it, you will learn the primary gas pollutants and their health effects, which populations are the most vulnerable, and the steps you, your family, and patients can take to mitigate the worst of the resulting symptoms. If you are a health professional, this webinar is also Physician CME- and Nursing CEU-accredited.

We hope to see you there and have you join us in the fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground! There are 3 upcoming opportunities to join our webinar training:

May 13 @ 1-2pm ET – Pennsylvania Health Check Up with PSR Pennsylvania;
Physician, Social Work, Pharmacy, and Nursing credits will be offered at this webinar. *Pharmacy and Nursing credits are only available for individuals with a Pennsylvania license.
Register Here

May 16 @ 8pm CT / 9pm ET – Cooking With Gas: Harms to Health from Gas Stoves; presented by Texas PSR and PSR National
Physician and Nursing credits will be offered at this webinar.
Register Here

May 18 @ 7pm PT – Cooking With Gas: Harms to Health from Gas Stoves; presented by PSR Arizona and PSR National
Physician and Nursing credits will be offered at this webinar.
Register Here

>>> Sincerely, Zach Williams, MPH, Health Educator & Campaign Coordinator, PSR

Coke from Coal used for Steel from Iron

From an Article by Warren Scott, Wheeling Intelligencer, February 12, 2022

PHOTO in ARTICLE ~ Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. officials announced Friday the Mountain State Carbon coke plant in Follansbee soon will close permanently.

FOLLANSBEE — Citing a shift in the materials used to produce steel, officials with Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. have announced they will be permanently closing the Mountain State Carbon coke plant in the second business quarter. The plant located in Follansbee employs 288.

Pat Persico, spokesperson for the company, said the move was spurred by the firm’s shift to the use of scrap metal hot briquetted iron in making steel, which produces lower carbon dioxide emissions. Last year the company announced plans to reduce emissions by 20% by 2030.

Persico said, “Fortunately, we anticipate that all impacted employees will have job opportunities at our other nearby facilities.” “We have been recruiting at all of our facilities. Depending on where they want to be, we have many opportunities,” she said. Actually, 12 hourly and three salaried employees will remain at the plant for a time to ensure its closing complies with environmental regulations.

Follansbee City Manager Jack McIntosh, who was called for comment, said, “I feel bad for the families who will be affected.” He said though it appears other jobs will be available to them, they will need to move with their families to fill them, and he is sorry to see residents leaving the city. McIntosh said the absence of a major business such as the coke plant also will impact the city’s budget.

While the plant relied on its own wastewater treatment system, it was one of the city’s largest water users, he said. McIntosh added the plant and the various vendors that supplied it also paid a lot of business and occupation tax to the city. “That affects us all,” he said.

The city manager said while he’s working to estimate the loss, he can say, “there will be budget cuts. We definitely will need to make some.” Staff at Mountain State Carbon and various vendors and contractors working there also have delivered thousands of pounds of food as well as monetary donations to the Follansbee R.E.A.C.H. Program, a local food pantry.

The nation’s largest producer of flat rolled steel and iron ore pellets, Cleveland-Cliffs reported record annual revenue of $20.4 billion and record annual net income of $3 billion for 2021. Cleveland-Cliffs acquired the coke plant and other AK Steel owned facilities in 2020. Over the years, the plant has been owned by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, R.G. Steel and Severstal North America.

Established in 1917, the plant was a major supplier of steel for the then-emerging auto industry, as well as the military during World War I. Workers at the plant are members of United Steelworkers Local 9545. They had signed a three-year agreement with the plant’s former owner, AK Steel, that is scheduled to expire at the end of April.

Not Another Power Plant in CT ... or ... WV ...!

>> From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, October 22, 2921

Feedback was divided between welcoming potential economic benefits and decrying feared environmental perils at a public comment meeting on a proposed air quality permit for a natural gas-fired power plant in Monongalia County.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection held the meeting virtually Tuesday evening on the permit requested by Longview Power’s Mountain State Clean Energy LLC for the facility planned to be located immediately north of the Longview coal-fired plant in Maidsville.

The project is slated to be a gas-fired, combined-cycle plant that will supply electricity to the power grid, linking to it via an interconnection used by the coal-fired plant. The West Virginia Division of Air Quality’s preliminary evaluation found that the project as proposed will meet all applicable state rules and federal regulations, prompting the division’s preliminary determination to approve the air quality application.

Area union officials pushed state environmental regulators to keep leaning in that direction. They argue that constructing the plant would create critical jobs for their members. “[T]he job opportunities [are] huge. I would like to add that the jobs created will be good-paying jobs, with important retirement and health care benefits,” said Natalie Stone, representative of the Morgantown-based North Central West Virginia Building Trades Council.

The proposed gas-fired plant is projected to emit 5.13 million tons of greenhouse gases, 321 tons of nitrogen oxide, 276 tons of carbon monoxide and 210 tons of particulate matter per year, according to a permit application prepared for the DEP by Ambient Air Quality Services Inc., a Pennsylvania-based air quality consulting firm.

Opponents of the project objected to what they said were troubling discrepancies and inadequate air quality protection measures in the proposed permit as well as the project’s proposed greenhouse climate emissions that would contribute to the climate crisis.

The International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization consisting of 30 member countries, said in May that investors should not fund any new coal, oil or natural gas projects if the world is to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

Earth must meet the mid-century deadline to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avert the worst effects of climate change, the agency reiterated in a road map for the global energy sector that included the new recommendation to end all new fossil fuel projects.

James Kotcon, chairman of the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club’s conservation committee, observed that a draft permit for the facility lists the facility’s total electrical generating capacity as 1,300 megawatts, while a DEP preliminary determination and fact sheet for the facility notes that the facility’s electricity generation capability is 1,200 megawatts.

DEP spokesman Terry Fletcher indicated after the meeting that the figure was an approximate value, adding that the output will vary based on power efficiencies and operating conditions. A PowerPoint presentation that Division of Air Quality engineer Edward Andrews showed describing the project indicated that the plant would be a 1,200-megawatt facility.

Area resident Duane Nichols argued that it would be environmentally unjust for the plant to be located near West Virginia University medical facilities, health centers and other sites of importance. Two facilities Nichols mentioned, the WVU Eye Institute and Mountaineer Field, are roughly 10 miles away from the proposed facility location. “You can’t find a worse location in the entire state of West Virginia,” Nichols contended.

Those anticipated emission levels are all well above federal significance levels, subjecting the plant to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Prevention of Significant Deterioration regulations. That designation requires installation of emissions-limitation technology, air quality analysis, an additional impacts analysis assessing the effects of air, ground and water pollution, as well as public comment on permits and citizen enforcement actions against sources not complying with their permits.

Project opponents questioned the “clean energy” part of Mountain State Clean Energy’s name during the meeting. “When I see a company that calls themselves Mountain State Clean Energy and then ask for 5 million tons of greenhouse gas [emissions], who do they think they’re fooling?” Kotcon asked.

Mountain State Clean Energy will need to apply for a water pollution permit for the site or modify an existing one to include the new gas-fired turbine, Fletcher said.
Located 3,000 feet west of the Monongahela River, the site is slated to operate two pipeline-gas compressor units. The application indicates that no greenhouse gas emissions will be associated with starting up, shutting down or operating the units. The proposed start-up date for the facility is Jan. 1, 2025, according to the DEP.

Mountain State Clean Energy LLC formally changed its name from Longview Power II LLC in November of 2020. That name change came seven months after the West Virginia Public Service Commission issued a certificate to the company to construct and operate the gas-fired facility and a 70-megawatt utility-scale solar facility — 20 megawatts to be located in West Virginia and 50 megawatts in Pennsylvania. The commission also approved construction and installation of a 500-kilovolt electric transmission line extending approximately three quarters of a mile north from the gas-fired facility.

Longview Power II LLC and Longview Renewable Power LLC, a separate company granted the solar siting certificate that subsequently changed its name to Mountain State Renewables LLC, estimated that the cost to construct the gas-fired facility would be $1.1 billion, according to the Public Service Commission. The Monongalia County Commission approved a 30-year, $58 million payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with the Longview parties in December 2020.

The Division of Air Quality will take public comments until Mon., Nov. 1 at 5 p.m. and subsequently take final action on the application. Written comments may be emailed to Edward.S.Andrews@wv.gov, with “Mountain State Clean Energy Comments” in the subject line, or mailed to Edward Andrews, WV Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Air Quality, 601 57th Street, SE, Charleston, WV 25304.

Additional information on the project proposal can be found at https://dep.wv.gov/daq/permitting/Pages/NSR-Permit-Applications.aspx

Diesel Fuel Exhaust Disrupts Scent Signals for Honeybees

Article by Helen Thompson for National Geographic, October 3, 2013

To a bee, no two flowers smell quite the same. When honeybees forage for flowers, they search for, learn, and memorize distinctive floral scents and return to the hive to tell other bees what they’ve found through their famous waggle dance.

It is an important ritual that is being disrupted by one of the most pervasive forms of air pollution—diesel exhaust—according to a new study published Thursday in Scientific Reports. The research pinpoints the mechanism by which the fuel-combustion pollutants degrade certain chemicals in floral odors. The absence of those chemicals affects honeybees’ ability to recognize the scent. (See related quiz: “What You Don’t Know About Cars and Fuel.”)

Engine exhaust is hardly the only threat facing the honeybee. It is well recognized that exposure to multiple pesticides can impair bees’ olfactory skills, while ground-level ozone, or smog, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation can also degrade floral odor compounds that bees pick up on. Authorities around the globe are grappling with how to address the little-understood cyclical diseases that are causing colonies to dwindle. (See related, “The Plight of the Honeybee.”)

The new study offers insight into the specific hazard for pollinators from the fumes from cars, trucks, trains, ships, and heavy machinery. Significantly, the study indicates that honeybees haven’t been helped by the “cleaner” diesel now used in Europe and the United States due to regulations that over the past decade removed sulfur from the fuel. The researchers used ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel in their experiment. (See related: “Pictures: Cars That Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel.”)

Odor Cues

Thousands of chemical compounds contribute to flower odors, so honeybees (Apis mellifera) need a discerning sense of smell. “A honeybee might see a red flower, and say oh is this a flower that I want to visit, and [it] uses odor cues to figure out if it’s worth visiting,” said Quinn McFrederick, an ecologist at Fresno State University in California. Odor cues can tell bees which flowers have the most nutritious nectar and pollen for harvesting.

Scientists have long thought that air pollution masked these key floral scents, but the new study provides evidence of how the exhaust actually changed the chemical composition of the odors. Using an odor palette from a common target for honeybees, oilseed rape flowers (Brassica napus), a research team at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom exposed the compounds to diesel fumes from a generator fueled by ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Almost immediately, the diesel fumes started breaking down two of the flower odor compounds: farnesene and terpinene. After training honeybees recognize the flower scent, the researchers removed both degraded compounds from the mix.

“To our surprise, really, we saw that even changes in one of the very minor constituents of the mixture caused a major change in the responsiveness of the bee to the smell,” said Tracey Newman, a neurobiologist at the University of Southampton and a co-author of the study.

The researchers said one component of diesel exhaust takes the blame for this degradation: NOx gases, compounds that contain both nitrogen and oxygen, reacting with volatile floral odors. Although the scientists used diesel fuel, which powers the majority of cars in Europe and nearly all heavy vehicles around the world, NOx gases also are emitted by gasoline, or petrol, and even alternative fuels like biodiesel and ethanol. (See related, “Biofuel at a Crossroads.”) “The bottom line is I don’t think one can start pointing one’s finger at biodiesel, diesel, or petrol,” said Guy Poppy, an ecologist and co-author on the study. It’s a larger issue with internal combustion engines, he said.

Both the United States and the European Union use nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a proxy for all NOx gases and have set limits for the amount of NO2 in the air, but not for nitric oxide (NO) levels. Poppy said, “These are the sorts of emissions that are sometimes left out from the discussions about climate change because these emissions are not ones as heavily associated with greenhouse gases.” (See related “Pictures: A Rare Look Inside Carmakers’ Drive for 55 MPG.”)

Flower Chemistry

Oilseed rape flowers aren’t the sweetest smelling blooms. “They’re actually a bit stinky,” Newman said. But, their odors are very well understood, and these two degraded compounds appear to be a key element of odor communication for bees. Other bee species and other pollinators rely even more heavily on scent over longer distances. So, the findings could have major implications for other pollinators as well, said McFrederick, who was not affiliated with the study.

Interestingly, the degraded compounds in this experiment were present only at low levels, and removing terpinene by itself led to a significant decline in bee recognition in the experiment. “That suggests that that in some way kicks off a particular pathway in the odor perception abilities of the animal,” said Newman.

The researchers’ next step is to look at the impact of diesel on the honeybee nervous system.

How will these findings play out in the real world? “The study clearly illustrates that airborne pollution can perniciously impact the ability of bees to locate food,” said Jose Fuentes, a meteorologist at Penn State University who was not associated with the study. Fuentes spelled out two cautions: The experimental levels of pollutants were high even for urban rush hour; and the impact of the NOx gases might actually be an indirect one. That’s because NOx gases notoriously react with air and sunlight to make ground-level ozone, or smog, which may be the actual culprit in disrupting the floral odor compounds.

Urban environments expose honeybees and flowers to more diesel exhaust, but there are many important factors affecting the success of hives. The kind of neighborhood gardens found in urban and suburban areas also might provide bees with longer lasting food sources than in rural areas. Field studies could shed more light on the impact of air pollution. “What we need to know is [for] a flower sitting in a field next to a car in a motorway, whether there actually is going to be a plume of smell coming from that flower and whether it’s going to be significantly affected because of the exhaust fumes,” said Poppy. The worst-case scenario would be to find a drastic reduction in honeybee foraging and pollination.

While it’s unclear how much impact diesel pollutants might have on pollination, the new study indicates that exhaust should be added to a growing list of known threats.

“Honeybees living in a modern world face many stresses,” including diseases, insecticides, and atmospheric pollutants, Poppy said. “Probably bees can cope with most of these stresses in isolation or when just two or three of them come together. But, when they all come together simultaneously, one might start to see significant effects and that might explain some of the things we’re seeing … with pollinators being lost around the world.”

Gas flaring could be eliminated in most cases under proposed regulations. Photo courtesy of GreenPacks.

Some very exciting news just came out of the EPA.   In Ken Ward Jr.’s blog, Sustained Outrage, there is a July 28 post that informs us that the EPA just released Proposed Amendments to Air Regulations for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry (ONG).  An 8-page  Fact Sheet on the document is available on the EPA website.   Generally, the proposed changes fall into one of four categories: reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, revising the air toxics standards (to reduce cancer risk and other ill health impacts) from oil and natural gas production and revising air toxic standards to reduce risk of health impacts from natural gas transmission and storage.   The EPA will accept public comment for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.  Final action must be taken by the EPA by Feb. 28, 2012.

Here’s the very distilled recap :

REDUCING VOC EMISSIONS During the flowback stage of well completion, fracturing fluids, high-salinity water and gas come to the surface at a high velocity and volume.  Flaring is employed to burn off the gas during this gushing phase until the majority of the liquid and solid contaminants have been forced out by the pressures generated by the fracking process, the gas flows more purely, and is then collected and treated.

Much methane is lost during flowback and flaring, and other VOCs and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) such as benzene, ethylbenzene and n-hexane are also released.  Raw natural gas is primarily composed of methane, a VOC and greenhouse gas which is 20 times as potent in greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide. Oil and natural gas production accounts for nearly 40% of all US methane emissions. VOCs contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone (smog).

The green completion process, also known as Reduced Emissions Completions, is a technology which captures gas which would otherwise be lost during well completion and puts it into the production line so that it can be treated and sold.

Interestingly, employing the green emission technology results in sizable savings to the natural gas industry.   The EPA estimates the net savings to industry through application of the proposed rule would be nearly $30 million annually.  (One seriously wonders why it takes a federal law to force an industry to employ technology that not only raises net revenue, but also reduces public health risks.)

EPA estimates that the use of green completion technology will reduce VOC emissions from hydraulic fracturing by almost 95%, methane being one of the VOCs.  VOCs across the ONG industry are expected to fall by nearly 25% if the proposals are implemented.  Wyoming and Colorado already require green completions.

Other equipment proposals: 1)Centrifugal compressors would have to be equipped with dry seal systems.  Reciprocating compressors would have to replace rod systems every 26,000 hours.  2)  The proposed regulations would require that new or replaced pneumatic controllers be driven by a non-gas power source.  3) Condensate tanks which handle a certain volume of condensate or crude oil must reduce VOC emissions by 95%.  4) Natural gas processing plants must strengthen leak detection an repair.

SULPHUR DIOXIDE Stronger source performance standards for sulfur dioxide would be required for plants processing gas with the highest sulfur dioxide content.  (Sulphur dioxide standards were issued in 1985.)

REDUCING CANCER RISK/HEALTH IMPACTS (for both ONG production and natural gas transmission and storage) All large dehydrators would have to reduce emissions of air toxics (such as benzene) by 95%.  Emissions standards would be established for small dehydrators at major sources.  The proposed regulations are expected to reduce emissions of air toxics by 30%.

BACKGROUND The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires a review every 8 years for  new source performance standards (NSPS) for industries that contribute to air pollution which endangers public health.  The existing NSPD for VOCs were issued in 1985.  You do the math. A similar story can be told about air toxics standards.  The CAA requires a one-time review after a standard is issued to find out what risks remain and whether or not more protective standards are needed.  The CAA also requires technical review every 8 years to identify better emission control technologies.  Both the standards for ONG production and those for natural gas transmission and storage were issued in 1999.  Environmental groups sued the EPA in Jan. 2009 for failing to review the NSPS.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. District entered a consent decree in Feb. 2010 that required the EPA to sign proposals related to the review of those standards by July 28, 2011 and issue final standards by Feb. 28, 2012.