Air pollution concerns spark study, possible measures
Published Monday, February 25, 2008
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Stumble It!Air quality experts want to know just what that smog we’re breathing is made of.
For years, winter air pollution here has been thick enough to bother health specialists. Now, with tightening federal regulations on a specific type of pollution common in Fairbanks, the prospect of some type of restrictions on emissions from certain kinds of home heating systems, cars or industry seems almost inevitable in the next few years.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation are teaming up for a broad study of air pollution. The project will consist of a number of different testing regimes and is aimed at figuring out exactly where the pollution — a mix of dust, soot, dirt and other airborne particles — comes from.
Borough air quality specialist Jim Conner said the project will continue through the end of this year and into next winter before the results are presented in 2009.
The $2 million testing project represents a major step as the borough prepares to manage pollution concentrations, which all indications say will place Fairbanks on a soon-to-be-released list of places that chronically violate health standards developed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
“The plan is to identify the problem and then get the people together who can contribute to the solution,” Conner said.
Small pieces to a big problem
The pollution that will be studied — part of that fog that hangs over Fairbanks streets on many winter days — is called “particulate” pollution. It consists largely of bits of airborne dust tiny enough — a fraction of the diameter of a human hair — to find their way deep into the lungs when inhaled during normal breathing.
Federal health officials have linked particulate pollution to short-term and long-term health problems. It is prevalent in places like Fairbanks due, at least partly, to weather patterns that trap cold, stagnant air close to the ground. The problem could translate into control measures being placed on certain products — including household wood stoves — within four years.
Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker told transportation officials last week that the solution, whatever form it takes, will likely be met with resistance from the public. But he said the testing program, which has already begun on some fronts, will help the community take the reins in an effort to get its air-pollution problem under control.
If local officials don’t take the lead, Whitaker suggested the state, under pressure from federal environmental authorities, will likely impose restrictions that may or may not fit well for Fairbanks.
“This is going to be a very large public policy discussion, and it’s going to be a very unpopular public policy discussion,” Whitaker told Borough Assembly members early this month.
Health concerns
Particulate air pollution is a mix of soot, dust and other tiny particles.
The Environmental Protection Agency has linked the pollution to the development of chronic bronchitis or decreased lung function and, in the case of people with lung or heart disease, nonfatal heart attacks or premature death.
“Particles are killing people,” said Tom Rosendahl, an engineer and particulate specialist with the EPA. “They’re not good to breathe.”
Three years ago, the EPA tightened the threshold on the level of particulates a community’s atmosphere can host. Rosendahl said the change left a number of states and communities in the western United States facing the challenge of cleaning up their air space.
Conner said the borough isn’t sure what steps will be needed for Fairbanks — and it won’t know until the wintertime testing program is complete.
The testing will be funded solely by the federal government, Conner said.
Local air-quality specialists have mapped out more than a dozen steps under the testing project, some of which have already begun. The borough plans to add a two-person team to the public payroll for two years to pursue the project.
Among other things, the project will involve taking close-up tests of tailpipe emissions. The team also plans to outfit cars with monitors to take on-the-road air samples during rush hour and to stake out specific locations around town, Conner said.
The borough also plans to sample exhaust from space-heating systems.
So far, answers to the question of where particulate concentrations in Fairbanks come from have presented borough officials with a moving target. Literally.
“People can see this fog in their neighborhood in the morning, and then it’s gone later. But it’s just moved — it’s still around,” Conner said.
When the study is done, the state and borough will compile the results, draw conclusions and present the results at a public forum on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus in 2009.
Community Discussion
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Until we get clean burning natural gas at an affordable price we are stuck with this problem. You can take your $2 million dollars and study it to death but there is no other solution. I wonder if the EPA takes in to consideration that hardly anyone is outside for very long when it is extremely cold outside? I for one consider the wildfire smoke in the summer 1000 times more bothersome than the wood smoke in the winter that is heating someones house for a fraction of the cost of heating oil.
And I believe wildfire smoke has been the cause of air quality violations in the past.
When I think of particulate emission, I think of anything BUT cars. Seekins Ford, for example. To heat their massive building, they burn used motor oil from their quick lube service. This is unimaginably unhealthy smoke to inhale, consisting of toxic heavy metals. They are not alone, and many shops around town that accept used oil use it for heating.
Ontario, Canada has already banned the burning of used motor oils.
http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/en/news/2007/01...
For the shops using used oil for heat, economically, it makes fantastic sense. Environmentally, not so much.
Extreme emission levels of dioxins and particulates are two reasons (hey, that sounds like us?!)
What else can we do? Modern cars are clean as a whistle compared to your home heater. Look at the smoke coming out of the heater vent. White? Good, thats steam. Black? Thats money going right up your flue! Uncombusted hydrocarbons and particulates. Fix it, and it'll probably pay for itself in lower fuel bills. Things have to be far out of whack to see black.
The other culprit is of course, our coal fired power plants here in town. I am not aware of what efforts they have in emission reduction.
I personally think that if government ever gets to the point of banning wood burning stoves, without having my above concerns addressed, they have failed miserably.
Funny thing is our air quality under normal circumstances is acceptable, may even exceed that of many cities and or not much different then other small cities across the nation.
Due to weather conditions that happen nearly every year for a few weeks that nobody has control of we exceed the air quality standards.
The solutions if they come up with them will be instituted year around despite not exceeding the air quality standards for most of the year, likely will be costly and in some form of tax like the IM testing of vehicles.
While studies have indicated that particulate pollution can produce long term ill effects it should be understood that these studies were conducted in locations with a chronic problem of particulate emmisions year around not just a few weeks a year and even then not all subjects that were studied had been affected from the long term exposure. This too me indicates that dose makes the poison and some are more susceptable then others for a variety of uncertain reasons. I personally believe that short term exposure such as experienced here nearly every year does not cause ill effects on an otherwise healthy human being over the long term.
Since we are going to waste 2 million dollars on the study I would like to see the junk science study of the number of people who are otherwise healthy that have been affected by the short term exposures within the confines of fairbanks.
Fairbanksgas, you are absolutely correct!! We need the natural gas that Fairbanks should have had now for the last two decades! Finally, now our Governor is getting the gas pipeline moving, really moving towards getting our gas to market, and she is encountering resistance from many areas. You are doing a fantastic service in educating people on these issues and are to be commended!! Keep up the good work!
Fairbanksgas- is there not a confict of interest or personal advertising going on here?? (Place a full page ad like all the other businesses) Natural gas is far from the solution to all our air quality problems. In fact, natural gas heating produces more 'indoor' pollution than any other source:
http://www.gascape.org/Gas%20Em.html
So while the EPA is impressed outside, people will be dropping like flies inside- will our worries be swept under the rug? no. There's is no solution that is even close to easy here -the coldest region in the country turns to fire in the summer, heating requirements are extraordinary, and financial challenges will make change hard.
What we need is all kinds of new measures to skirt this problem and tackle the massive waste of energy that also contributes to climate change. As the only state in the country without building regulations, this should be the first thing to change (contractors cry me a whambulance...). Home and business inefficiency in this town is ridiculous- rentals are thrown together by ethicless slumlords without even close to acceptable insulation factors. We've begun to enter the age of energy accountability and soon the stubborn bastards that are Americans (myself included) will be forced to changed.
Back in the days when I was a habitual tobacco smoker when the cold-inversions hit Fairbanks I'd forget about smokin' for a while.
When it get's below -30F there's a RadonGas problem in the lowlands of the Chena and Chatanika, and Minto Flats.
Looking at the photo with this article you can see from the bend in the smoke plume from the big smokestack that there's some air movement to the West at about the 1000' level....
...ya know those advertising gizmos where they have a big colorful fabric tube mounted onto a blower pointed upwards??..The things are typically 30'tall and are often sewn into shapes looking like clowns or cowboys, or whatever..
It would be really fun to build a giant tall one of those..
..maybe 1000'tall and 100'inside diameter...
The thing would be mounted onto a smooth walled chimney base that would gather all of the collapsed fabric when the blowers were off.
The base would look like a small conical cooling tower with a ring of big gas-powered turbines at the base.. the turbines would be pushing even bigger fans and generating power simultaneously.
The top of the fabric chimney would have a big-donut shape that would actually be a balloon filled with helium [Alaska has a lotta helium in it's natural gas]..
The big cheap chimney would suck a lot of the stale cold air out of the city, warming and freshing things up a little.
The big fabric tube could be illuminated from the inside with high-efficiency sulfur-plasma lamps to make it a big tower-of-light.
Aviators would grow fond of the thing if it wasn't parked in the approach to any runways. City bound astronomers would hate it, but downtown in the winter is a really dumb place to go stargazing.
..Where to park it?? Maybe next to the Steese&Rich interchange? Off VanHorn near the airport? On an island in the Tanana River?...
...howzabout on the east end Salchaket directly in the path of the gunnery range????
...oh, and the other silly idea to do with this thing is you can use for parachute training...
..you, build launch platform inside where the upward wind is 80mph.
so, ya just stand there and pull the rip-cord.
Ya git launched thru the chimney and land on the ground in the surrounding field, then you run back inside and do it again, and again.
Whee! I'd even try that at my old age...(;-P)
I love it when people from the lower 48 and enviromental groups try to regulate Alaskan's way of life. This smells a lot like the imposed fuel study done back in the early 90s where the interior only got the new "Enviromentally Friendly" gasoline. (For those who weren't around the stuff FROZE at -15 degrees and it was the only unleaded avalible in Jan/Feb of that year.) My car and many others for the first time ever froze up. I remember looking out at the parking lot at UAF (from my dorm window) and watching cars catch on fire because people were trying everything possible to warm the gas up enough to flow. At least they are letting us know they are doing the testing this time before implementing unrealistic rules upon the interior.
I know that those who work at DEC (some of them long time Alaskans and wood stove users) will do there best to "help" the EPA and enviormental intrest groups from warmer climates find a reasonable solution to the particulate problem. I only hope the EPA and those lower 48 based groups listen!!
I think it's funny this article runs with a picture of a condensation plume and calls it "smoke." Somebody really ought to know better.
http://www.mcgehee.cc/index.php/zone/com...
Personally, I like Distant Thunder's idea the best. At least it's new and original, and that's what we need now, new original ideas rather than blathering on about outside environmental groups. At least they care, while our federal government has fought tooth and nail against any environmental changes because they might cut down on corporate profits.
And Decoder is right about one thing:
"We've begun to enter the age of energy accountability and soon the stubborn bastards that are Americans (myself included) will be forced to changed."
My friends, it's gonna be change or die.
How many "studies" will it take to determine that DIEsel fuel is a terrible contributor of nasty carcinogenic particulates in the Fairbanks air. My highly evolved olfactory receptors already make this self evident. Some days one can actually taste the DIEsel exhaust in the air. Somehow this major contributor is always ignored yet those sticky half-burned hydrocarbons are lodging themselves deep in our lungs and do not cough out. Better light-up soon because the cigarette smoke may actully protect you from the much more harmful DIEsel particulates. Oh yes and do not turn off that DIEsel pigrig, best to keep it running September through May. After all no one will enforce the $50 fine for excessive vehicle idling. Go ahead and drive around in a 7,000lb turbo DIEsel but you better be smoking.
A diesel particulate filter, sometimes called a DPF, is a device designed to remove diesel particulate matter or soot from the exhaust gas of a diesel engine. Wall-flow diesel particulate filters usually remove 85% or more of the soot, and can at times (heavily loaded condition) attain soot removal efficiencies of close to 100%. A diesel-powered vehicle equipped with functioning filter will emit no visible smoke from its exhaust pipe.
In addition to collecting the particulate, some filters are single use (disposable), while others are designed to burn off the accumulated particulate, either through the use of a catalyst (passive), or through an active technology, such as a fuel burner which heats the filter to soot combustion temperatures, through engine modifications (the engine is set to run a certain specific way when the filter load reaches a pre-determined level, either to heat the exhaust gases, or to produce high amounts of NO2, which will oxidize the particulates at relatively low temperatures), or through other methods. This is known as "filter regeneration." Fuel sulfur interferes with many "regeneration" strategies, so almost all jurisdictions that are interested in the reduction of particulate emissions, are also passing regulations governing fuel sulfur levels.
While no jurisdiction has made filters mandatory, the increasingly stringent emissions regulations that engine manufactures must meet mean that eventually all on-road diesel engines will be fitted with them. The American 2007 heavy truck engine emissions regulations cannot be met without filters.
Yup, DIEsel is pretty yukky stuff..
especially when you're a teenager and you get caught stealing it with a siphon hose in your mouth..
when the rocksalt blasts into your backside the mouthful of diesel fills your lungs..
..only then will you know what it's like to run a mile through the woods at night without taking a breath..DIEsel !!!
The hydrogen hobbyists have an interesting approach to clobbering the wasted carbon in old-tech DIEsel engine designs..
http://www.hy-drive.com/main/default.asp...
http://waterpoweredcar.com/hydrobooster....
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