Environmental t News Linking science with new policies for CCS
I
Fr ank Gouveia , LLNL
n a world that continues to rely necessarily likely, CO2 leakage if John Venezia of the nonprofit on coal as an energy source, carthe original injecting company has think tank World Resources Instibon capture and sequestration shut down, ownership of the land tute (WRI) agrees, saying, “What (CCS) has been embraced by many and minerals in the land above a we don’t want to do is to start off as a promising option for reducing reservoir, and ownership of the with a project without having unirising CO2 emissions and combatpores filled by injected CO2. form standards. If there is some ing global warming. Yet use of CCS Guidelines for monitoring leakleakage down the line, it will genon a large scale raises a mountain age and accounting for the gas in a erate a very bad perception about of legal and regulatory questions. regulatory emissions cap-and-trade CCS, and people won’t trust it.” New research published in WRI is working with a diES&T (pp 5945–5952) sugverse group ranging from gests that these issues need academics to insurers to as much attention as the devise uniform protocols technology itself and puts for the many stages of CCS. forth several areas where Still, CCS is just “one of the scientific underpinmany arrows in the quiver” nings of regulatory and lethat can be used against gal decision making can be global warming, Venezia strengthened. adds. “If there is a real converSeveral government sation between people on agencies are already workthe policy side and people ing on incorporating science on the science side, then we into policy development. can begin to develop” some Sean Plasynski of the U.S. LLNL researcher Mackenzie Johnson collects water and guidelines for these relaDepartment of Energy’s atmospheric samples during a cold CO 2 eruption from tively new, large-scale CCS (DOE’s) National Energy Crystal Geyser in Utah. Crystal Geyser penetrated a natuprojects, says coauthor JuTechnology Laboratory ral CO 2 reservoir in 1936 and remains unplugged. lio Friedmann of Lawrence notes that DOE’s 10-yearLivermore National Laboratory program also need to be hashed old program, funded at $100 mil(LLNL). “Holding off addressing the out. These types of issues are comlion for the current fiscal year, has policy issues until the science is set pounded by varying state rules several small CO2 injection pilot is going to hold up the process.” governing underground rights and projects. DOE has seven regional The concept behind CCS is injection. In the new ES&T paper, partnerships that involve 350 entisimple, the authors write: capture the authors focus on two areas of ties, including states, universities, CO2 emissions and inject them in research: surface leakage of CO2 and private companies spanning a supercritical state into deep geoand groundwater quality. They 41 states and 4 Canadian provlogic formations, where the carbon present two case studies of analog inces. Observations from the pilots is likely to stay put for hundreds sites in which an injection well or can support policy decisions, Plaof thousands of years. Reservoirs abandoned well failed in conjuncsynski says. for such geologic sequestration are tion with a large volume of natuThe U.S. EPA has a smaller yet plentiful throughout the world; the rally occurring CO2. Leakage can significant program dealing with best injection spots are deep saline occur, notes coauthor Elizabeth the permits needed before an inaquifers, depleted oil and gas forWilson of the Hubert H. Humphrey jection site begins operations. EPA mations, and coal seams. Institute of Public Affairs at the staff are developing permits for Yet an abundance of legal and University of Minnesota, when CO2 DOE’s CO2 injection pilots using the regulatory issues arise from the migrates to the surface through long-standing underground injecmany phases of a CCS project, abandoned well bores or through tion well program; this might be which include capturing, transfaults or fractures in the rock. “CCS expanded nationally to include CO2 porting, and injecting the CO2 and must be integrated into a larger regeological sequestration, Wilson closing a site. Issues also include gime, where public perception is says. responsibility for possible, but not very important,” Wilson says. —CATHERINE M. COONEY
5924 n Environmental Science & Technology / September 1, 2007
© 2007 American Chemical Society
News Briefs
Jupiterimages
While the U.S. East Coast broiled in a July heat wave, 150 scientists and policy experts gathered in the cooler climes of Kingston, Ontario, to ponder earth’s warming problem from a very practical perspective. Conference co-organizer Philip Jessop of Queen’s University (Canada) opened the meeting with this question about greenhouse gases: “We’ve got ’em. What are we going to do about it?”
Many ideas for tucking away carbon are waiting for economic incentives.
Scientists presented plenty of tantalizing options to reduce or store emissions, but many talks ended with a thud when the issue of marketability arose. After outlining an idea to dissolve CO2 in aquifer brines, David Keith of the University of Calgary told his audience, “There’s no question this will work. The question is, ‘How much will it cost?’ ” That was the question on everyone’s mind at the first Conference on Greenhouse Gases Mitigation and Utilization, held at Queen’s University and sponsored by energy companies and research organizations. Truman Semans of the nonprofit research group Pew Center on Global Climate Change gave a nod to the importance of new technology to reduce emissions in his plenary talk. “But we can’t do it until markets flourish,” he said.
He called for policies that create a market price for CO2 by capping emissions and issuing tradable permits for emitting carbon, a call that was echoed throughout the meeting. The joint conference combined two CO2-themed meetings: CHEMRAWN XVII (Chemical Research Applied to World Needs), which was focused on the science and policy of reducing CO2, and the International Conferences on Carbon Dioxide Utilization, aimed at finding environmentally friendly ways to use CO2 in industry. ES&T will publish a special section of papers and features related to the joint conference in an upcoming 2008 issue. On the technology front, Keith generated buzz with a barrage of options for reining in global warming, including prototype equipment that uses sodium hydroxide to suck CO2 directly from ambient air (“[This] can fundamentally alter the dynamics of carbon mitigation,” he said) and his farout geoengineering idea called photophoretic levitation, which would send nanosized disks into the stratosphere, where earth’s magnetic field would keep them levitating in position to shield the sun’s rays. Others noted that concentrated streams of CO2 generated for carbon capture projects could be used to produce useful products, such as fuels, plastics, and industrial chemicals. But according to Eric Beckman of the University of Pittsburgh, these uses “won’t affect climate change.” There just aren’t enough high-value chemicals in the world to pump that much carbon into. However, CO2 removed from power-plant stacks could go into sustainable products, he says, and could provide alternative
Access to research for the developing world
More than 100 publishers and three UN organizations agreed in July to provide developing countries with inexpensive online subscriptions to peer-reviewed research journals until 2015. Publications are available through the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE). The environmental research in the OARE collection will give developing-country scientists “access to the same quality of information as [researchers have] in the developed world,” says Serge Bounda of the UN Environment Programme.
Money for climate policy
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has awarded $3.6 million to two universities and four nonprofit groups to assess and develop policy information related to global warming. Launched this year, the foundation’s $100 million Climate Change Initiative supports three areas: clean-energy technologies, the pricing of greenhouse gases, and adaptation actions to reduce the effects of climate change on people and the environment. One grant recipient, the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, will develop an international policy regime to address issues after the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period, which expires in 2012. Another, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, will produce two briefing books for the U.S. Congress that describe key elements of climate policy without advocating policy choices.
Sep tember 1, 2007 / Environmental Science & Technology n 5925
jupiterimages
What to do with greenhouse gases?
Environmentalt News pathways to energy-intensive industrial processes. CO2-based chemistry could also provide a revenue stream, said chemist Richard Heyn of the Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research (Norway). “If industry has to reduce CO2, it will look for ways to offset the cost” by using CO2 to create sellable products, he says. Scientists worried about the chicken-and-egg problem in getting technology going. “How do we get a good idea off the ground
in advance of the market?” one engineer asked during a group discussion. Traditional profit motives don’t apply to mitigation techniques, which are not about making valuable products but about not making something. Investment incentives, such as government subsidies and carbon pricing, via taxes or trading systems, are thus critical to budding carbon entrepreneurs. At the meeting, hallway chatter between sessions often circled
Printer particle emissions add up Ten years ago, the U.S. EPA evaluated printers and photocopiers, but these data are now “interesting historical information,” comments Charles Weschler of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Printers have changed Lidia Mor awsk a
When researchers in Australia discovered that particulate matter levels were five times higher during the workday inside a nonsmoking office building than outside near a freeway, they looked for indoor culprits. After testing more than 50 printers throughout the building, they found that particle emissions varied depending on the type and age of the printer. In one case, standing near a working printer was much like standing next to a cigarette smoker. The results are described in new research published in ES&T (pp 6039–6045). Lidia Morawska of the Queens land University of Technology (Australia) and colleagues monitored printers of numerous makes and models with printer toner cartridges at various stages of use—from new to depleted. They also tested several representative printers in an experimental chamber to carefully track the concentrations and distributions of different size particles from high to low emitters. Only a handful of studies on modern printers exist in the literature, says Morawska. Further research should include performance tests of multiple printers of the same model and make. Her team intends to follow up with more studies that analyze the chemistry of the particles, which will also have implications for health impacts.
This printer in a Brisbane, Australia, office building contributed to higher particulate matter concentrations indoors than those outside near a freeway.
a lot since then: most have shifted to ink jets and other technology, and dramatic improvements have changed cartridges and even “the nature of toner itself,” Weschler says. These new data are only the first steps in getting modern assessments of exposure to printer particulate matter, he says. Weschler notes that the team found a wide range of emissions levels. “Emissions may be highest with a brand-new cartridge, just opened,” he speculates, when the solvent is highest and the toner is
5926 n Environmental Science & Technology / September 1, 2007
around carbon prices, and tech talks ended with dollar signs. At about $30 per ton (t) of carbon, several technologies become eco nomically viable. Others, like Keith’s air capture system, require prices to tip over $150/t. Right now, the price for a permit to emit 1 t of CO2 is $29 in Europe but less than $4 on the Chicago Climate Exchange. Scientists and engineers appear to be waiting for the market signal that will get their technologies off the starting block. —ERIKA ENGELHAUPT
“ripe”. But even with one printer, such as the one the team observed that was particularly offensive, “if we were to look at 10,000 printers, which isn’t realistic, how common is that one bad apple?” Weschler asks. Perhaps not very, he suggests, considering that companies themselves conduct testing to meet certain criteria, like Germany’s Blue Angel certification, introduced in 1977 to certify eco-friendly products. HP reports that it tests a new inkjet or laser printer for emissions of primary volatile organic compounds, ozone, and dust in test chambers before rolling it out on the market. Erik Uhde of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research (Wilhelm Klauditz Institute) in Germany says that printers even within a manufacturer’s series can vary, depending on where the parts were purchased, among other factors. “The sources of particulate matter in the printer are not completely clear,” he says, and toner may not have as much impact as suspected. Nevertheless, the research underscores the importance of printer emissions when considering human exposure to particulate matter. “Most of your time is [spent] indoors at the office or indoors at home,” Weschler says, so “most of your exposure is indoors, either to chemicals that originated indoors or that are brought in by ventilation.” —NAOMI LUBICK
News Briefs
Courtesy of Miriam Weber
It’s a hard-knock life for a coral. Pesticides, oil spills, ships, and climate change are just a few of the punches that humans have thrown at reefs. With that in mind, Ph.D. student Miriam Weber of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Germany) started looking for a way to study corals in their ocean home instead of in the lab, where they’re hard to keep alive.
Ph.D. student Miriam Weber tries out her new diver-operated microsensor.
After 2 years of work, the result is a new diver-operated tool to diagnose exactly what’s ailing reefs, down to the decimal point. The microsensor profiler, as it’s called, is described in new research published in ES&T (pp 6210–6215). Weber’s motorized profiler uses microsensors to measure oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, pH, calcium, light levels, and other environmental conditions that could challenge the survival of corals or help them thrive. Each measurement is precise to within 5 micrometers (μm)—a grain of salt is about 70 μm in diameter. This means that an experienced diver can use a magnifying glass and maneuver the probe right into the mouth of an individual polyp. “No microsensor system existed that I could deploy on a coral reef, so I knew I had to design one myself,” Weber says. The new device functions underwater down to 30 meters, allowing divers to collect data without returning to the surface. Its tiny, pointed feet also permit divers to deploy it on the uneven, fragile surfaces of a coral reef.
So far, the institute’s microsensor research team, led by Dirk de Beer, has used the system to study the effects of human-induced sedimentation on fragile reefs. In the Great Barrier Reef lagoon off the coast of Australia, sediment loads are 10 times higher now than before settlers arrived 200 years ago. In addition, extensive grazing by livestock and farming of sugarcane crops have leaked nutrients from soil to coastal waters and have displaced coastal vegetation that would otherwise hold sediments on land. With the help of the new microsensor system, the team discovered that sediments flowing into reefs damage coral not only by blocking light, a known mechanism, but also by depriving tiny coral polyps of oxygen and, according to new, unpublished data, consequently poisoning them with toxic sulfide. This means that loads of nutrient-rich sediments can kill coral within 24 hours, much more quickly than previously thought. Today, nearly 60% of coral reefs worldwide are threatened by sedimentation, Weber says. Kay Vogel of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (New Zealand) is eager to try out the new device. He uses microsensors to understand the boundaries between living systems and water to show, for example, that microbial mats under Antarctica’s floating ice are alive. “I would use this in my own research,” he says, noting that he now has to transmit each data point laboriously to a shipboard crew, and someone on board writes it down. The setup comes with a magnifying glass, an underwater flashlight, and a paintbrush. To tote it all, “I need something really small that I can take with me,” Weber says. In fact, Weber encourages other marine scientists to borrow her design, “so we can learn much more about what is really happening down there.” —ERIKA ENGELHAUPT
OSHA must release exposure data
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) database on workplace exposure to toxic substances is one of the world’s largest. But the agency refused to release it to one of its former employees, Adam Finkel, when he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2005. A federal court ruling in June declared that the agency’s grounds for denying access were unfounded. Now anyone can access the database with a FOIA request. The data include the results of more than 2 million analyses from nearly 75,000 OSHA inspections since 1979. Finkel, currently at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, wants to use the information to study OSHA inspectors’ risk of beryllium exposure and evaluate the agency’s sampling and regulatory programs.
Millions for cellulosic ethanol research
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $375 million grant program designed to jumpstart a national cellulosic ethanol industry. Three new DOE bioenergy research centers—the BioEnergy Science Center, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, headed by the University of Wisconsin Madison; and the Joint BioEnergy Institute, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—will each receive $125 million over the next 5 years. Partners will include 18 universities, 7 national labs, 1 nonprofit group, and several companies. This commitment, announced in June, follows two others this year, bringing federal support of cellulosic ethanol to $960 million. However, the funds await approval by Congress later this year.
Sep tember 1, 2007 / Environmental Science & Technology n 5927
ROY KALTSCHMIDT/ LBNL
Coral, get ready for your close-up
Environmentalt News Rice paddies map arsenic problem determine how they take up arsenic in these mapped fields. Team members are also sampling floodwater during the monsoon season to see whether they can capture the remobilization process in action. Stephan Hug
A team of scientists has mapped in minute detail the fate of arsenic as it is carried across several hectares of rice paddies in Bangladesh. The complex picture painted by the work, published in ES&T in two parts (pp 5960–5966; 5967–5972), provides a solid base for future assessments of human exposure to the toxic metal, researchers say. Since the 1980s, nearly half of the rice paddies in Bangladesh have been flooded with irrigation water—sometimes laden with arsenic. To determine what happens to the arsenic as it flows over the fields and transfers to soils, scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology sampled irrigation water and soil from 18 rice paddies near Sreenagar (30 kilometers south of Dhaka) at different times in the growing season over a period of more than one year (December 2004 to February 2006). Their data show that from the point where irrigation water enters a field, arsenic unfurls like a fan: within 20–30 meters of the entry point, arsenic levels are the highest, but at the outermost edges, the concentrations lessen. The team also observed the accumulation of arsenic in paddy soils despite monsoon flooding that clearly remobilized some of the arsenic. Sites that are irrigated several times a year and that experience no monsoon flooding should have higher levels of arsenic and more variability of arsenic concentrations across a field, says Stephan Hug of Eawag, a coauthor of the first paper. The flooding also seems to have a soil-depth-dependent effect; arsenic accumulates readily within the first 10 centimeters of soil, and no leaching to groundwater is evident. The team is now conducting measurements of rice plants to
Researchers examined the changing flow and chemistry of irrigation water in this and surrounding rice paddies in Bangladesh, mapping exactly how arsenic is delivered to the paddies’ soils.
“Something like this was needed, where a group of careful scientists went to one particular area where arsenic has a high source and looked at the progress of arsenic through the soil,” says Alexander van Geen, a prominent arsenic researcher at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. Still, this work is “not the ultimate step,” he says, and future rice studies will need to determine whether the “patterns reflected in a particular field are associated in plants.” The new data add to the evidence that arsenic intake from rice consumption has the potential to outpace levels of arsenic from drinking water, counters Andrew Meharg of the University of Aberdeen (U.K.). Meharg and colleagues have analyzed rice grains from fields irrigated with arsenicbearing water. The data, which are soon to be published, says Meharg, show a 1:1 transfer of arsenic from soil to grain. The new research provides “some evidence that more complex dynamics are going on” and that
5928 n Environmental Science & Technology / September 1, 2007
more work is needed, he says. With the evidence for long-term buildup of arsenic in soil, Dave Polya of the University of Manchester (U.K.) wonders whether a more serious problem will exist in the next few decades. Third plantings of rice are “only possible because of irrigation water. If it’s going to result in having hazardous rice, that’s not a sustainable practice,” he says. Nonetheless, Polya and others note, the problem of contaminated soil will take longer to address than that of contaminated wells. Identifying dangerously contaminated wells is relatively easy, but not so with soil, says Alex Heikens, who is now at the UN Development Programme in Jakarta (Indonesia) and is the author of a recent UN Food and Agriculture Organization report about rice in Bangladesh. Heikens emphasizes that these are the first papers to highlight what may be more important: “It’s not only a food safety risk, it’s also a food production risk.” Anecdotal evidence shows negative impacts on rice crops. The question remains, “What level of arsenic in soil is acceptable to rice in terms of plant growth?” “If there’s a buildup issue [in soil] and that’s toxic to plants, that’s important,” van Geen agrees, but he worries that concerns over rice grown in arsenic-laden soil will supersede the more urgent problems of the water supply. Arsenic levels in water taken from wells here and elsewhere can be as high as 400 micrograms per liter (parts per billion). The consequences of that exposure include cancer and arsenic poisoning. With regard to the buildup of arsenic in paddy soils and its consequences, the new research “makes the picture much stronger than it was before,” says Heikens, echoing other comments on the work. Now, Heikens comments, the researchers “need to take it to other locations and repeat it” to get a broader view of the variability of arsenic concentrations in soil and water. —NAOMI LUBICK
News Briefs
Insect metamorphosis concentrates organic pollutants
U.S. EPA
Caddis fly pupae (like the one at left) carry higher concentrations of toxic organochlorine pesticides and PBDE flame retardants than larvae (right) and contribute more to bioaccumulation of these compounds in the environment.
Now, a new study published in ES&T (pp 6137–6141) shows that the contribution of pollutants to the next trophic level depends on what life-cycle stage an insect is in when it gets eaten. The findings have implications for calculating biomagnification of organic pollutants in aquatic ecosystems. At the end of their larval lives, insects metamorphose into winged adults via a temporary pupal stage. They stop feeding and sleep through this phase as their bodies disintegrate larval structures and build the new adult body. In the process, they lose body weight by burning protein, while their fat deposits—which also store organic pollutants—remain almost intact. Mireia Bartrons of the Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB-CSIC) in Spain and her colleagues looked at concentrations of organochlorine compounds, such as PCBs, and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants in four aquatic insect groups—belonging to caddis flies as well as biting and nonbiting midges—in two lakes in Catalonia.
They found that although the total amount of pollutants per insect remained the same in larvae and pupae, the concentrations increased significantly in the latter. The results have implications for the accumulation of organic contaminants in insect predators, for several reasons. Pupae are more abundant at times of high fish activity and, because they are stationary, are naturally more prone to predation than larvae are. In addition, because pupae weigh less than larvae, fish need to eat more pupae to satiate their energy needs. And not surprisingly, trout feeding on pupae get two to five times more pollutants per calorie of pupae eaten than when they feed on larvae. Scientists put larvae and pupae “in the same basket” when calculating insects’ contribution of pollutants to the food chain, says coauthor Jordi Catalan. These results suggest that “you need to separate these two stages of aquatic insects” for accurate representations of biomagnification of organic pollutants, he adds. Peter Ross, a marine mammal toxicologist at the Institute of Ocean Science, in Sydney, British Columbia, agrees. “At present there is a lot of appetite, on the part of not only scientists, but risk assesors and regulators, to better understand how PBDEs are behaving in the environment,” he says. “So how these chemicals behave in the bottom of the food chain is a fundamental information need for those of us who are dealing with the top of the food chain.” Very little is known about how specific species at the bottom of the food chain and their life cycles influence the distribution of toxic chemicals in the environment, he says. This study is noteworthy in that it tries “to shed some light on a black box where we don’t have a lot of understanding.” —RHITU CHATTERJEE
The U.S. EPA failed to properly monitor asbestos after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving thousands at risk from inhalation of asbestos fibers. This finding was reported by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, in a report released in June (GAO-07-651). GAO noted that EPA’s public information about how to mitigate exposures to contaminants, especially asbestos and mold, was at times inconsistent and unclear. The agency also didn’t collect hazardous materials from national wildlife refuges soon enough after the storm. GAO recommends that EPA develop an asbestos monitoring plan for New Orleans, put in place protocols that will improve public communications during a disaster, and establish guidelines for federal agencies and states detailing responsibility for cleaning up hazardous waste after such events.
Asia already hit hard by climate change
Rising temperatures could lead to more mosquito-borne diseases, water shortages, and hunger because of crop failures in the Asia–Pacific region, warned health and environmental experts at a July workshop in Malaysia sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). A 2004 WHO study estimated that climate change directly or indirectly causes about 77,000 deaths in Asia and the Pacific Islands each year—about half of the world total attributed to climate change. Shigeru Omi, WHO’s director for the Western Pacific region, cautioned delegates at the meeting: “We have now reached a critical stage in which global warming has already seriously impacted lives and health, and this problem will pose an even greater threat to mankind in coming decades if we fail to act now.”
Sep tember 1, 2007 / Environmental Science & Technology n 5929
noa a
Caddis flies, midges, and other aquatic insects easily accumulate toxic chemicals from the food they eat and the air they breathe. When eaten by fish, these critters pass on the contaminants to their predators, thus contributing to accumulation of the pollutants through the food chain.
Lessons from Katrina
