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Scientists Baffled By Unknown Source of Ozone-Depleting Chemical

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-blame-the-schools dept.

schwit1 writes: Scientists have found that, despite a complete ban since 2007, ozone-depleting chemicals are still being pumped into the atmosphere from some unknown source. "Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), which was once used in applications such as dry cleaning and as a fire-extinguishing agent, was regulated in 1987 under the Montreal Protocol along with other chlorofluorocarbons that destroy ozone and contribute to the ozone hole over Antarctica. Parties to the Montreal Protocol reported zero new CCl4 emissions between 2007-2012. However, the new research shows worldwide emissions of CCl4 average 39 kilotons (about 43,000 U.S. tons) per year, approximately 30 percent of peak emissions prior to the international treaty going into effect. "We are not supposed to be seeing this at all," said Qing Liang, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published online in the Aug. 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. "It is now apparent there are either unidentified industrial leakages, large emissions from contaminated sites, or unknown CCl4 sources."

45 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Easy, India or China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who else would, unapologetically, give the middle finger to the environment?

    1. Re:Easy, India or China by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and I can think of a certain group of American Democrats who despite whatever noises they make at the end of the day are equally mega-corporate bitches same as the Republicans. Obama and 90% of Democrats in Congress for starters....

    2. Re:Easy, India or China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Who else would, unapologetically, give the middle finger to the environment?

      Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, US, UK, Sweden, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Poland, and probably quite a few others.

      But not Canada. Canada would apologize.

    3. Re:Easy, India or China by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So why has every environmental initiative in the past 40 years been pushed by the Democrats and resisted by the Republicans?

      Why did "mega-corporate bitch" Obama introduce new carbon emissions rules in June that will cost energy producers a fortune?

      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/us/politics/epa-to-seek-30-percent-cut-in-carbon-emissions.html

    4. Re:Easy, India or China by sjames · · Score: 3, Funny

      They probably rigged their SUVs to actually manufacture CCl4 and immediately release it into the atmosphere just because.

    5. Re:Easy, India or China by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can we just agree on greed being the culprit? Democrat, Republican, where's the difference? As long as there's money to be made by ignoring the law and as long as breaking a law and getting caught is cheaper than heeding it, greed trumps "doing the right thing" any time.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:Easy, India or China by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      haha, under what president was the EPA created? and the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Endangered Species Act become law? DDT banned? why Tricky Dicky Richard Nixon, of course.

      HW Bush made Clean Air Act tougher and that reduced acid rain and smog at the time

        Obama is for fracking, some key Democrats just pulled support for anti-fracking laws, Obama allowed starting drilling in sensitive arctic areas, Obama caved in and didn't allow new smog/ozone levels as being too expensive on industry (even though Bush in 2008 made tough new ground level ozone/smog standards)

    7. Re:Easy, India or China by pla · · Score: 2

      They probably rigged their SUVs to actually manufacture CCl4 and immediately release it into the atmosphere just because.

      Oh c'mon now, no one (over the age of 2) would behave that petulantly, right?

    8. Re:Easy, India or China by Dorianny · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can think of a certain group of American Republicans who would do exactly that...

      Privately there are many Republicans that do believe in the scientific method and would like to see action on climate change but are reluctant to admit it because of fear of being labeled as traitors. On the Democratic camp there are many that realize that cap and trade, and so called "renewables" cannot be a complete solution to halting global warming but are simply afraid to support low or 0 carbon, but uncool power generation technologies, such as Nuclear for fear of being labeled the same.

    9. Re:Easy, India or China by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who controlled Congress for all of those things?

    10. Re:Easy, India or China by ohieaux · · Score: 2

      Why did "mega-corporate bitch" Obama introduce new carbon emissions rules in June that will cost energy producers a fortune?

      I'm pretty sure the "fortune" will be paid by the common folk, and go to the corporations making green products. And, I'm guessing these "green" companies are held by the 1%

      --
      Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
    11. Re:Easy, India or China by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So just because a bill is called the Clear Skies Act, you think it helps the environment and hurts corporations? Apparently you're the reason that consultants like Frank Luntz make the big bucks. My friend worked for him when he came up with that name. It was a total giveaway to corporate interests. That does nothing to contradict my post.

      Nixon was much more centrist and pragmatic on a lot of issues than people remember. Also, that EPA bill was passed by a Democratic Congress. The GOP really started their anti-environment push with Reagan- who immediately had the solar panels removed from the White House. It went into high gear starting in 1994 with Newt Gingrich.

    12. Re:Easy, India or China by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Democrat, Republican, where's the difference?

      That was literally the entire point of my post that you're replying to.

    13. Re:Easy, India or China by gargleblast · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Clear Skies Act 2003 was a failed attempt by Republicans to INCREASE the amount of allowed air pollution. It would have done exactly the opposite of its title. It is a textbook example of doublespeak. It was never passed. It was an abysmal failure on so many levels.

      Old George and Tricky Dicky weren't quite so brazen as Dubya. But: HW's sulphur cap and trade program took another five years to start, and was less successful than conventional regulation in Europe.

    14. Re:Easy, India or China by geekoid · · Score: 4, Informative

      You should really read those links. Seriously dude, just linking something you don't actually understand as some sort of proof just mkas you look foolish.

      The first one made it worse:

      The law reduces air pollution controls, including those environmental protections of the Clean Air Act, including caps on toxins in the air and budget cuts for enforcement. The Act is opposed by conservationist groups such as the Sierra Club with Henry A. Waxman, a Democratic congressman of California, describing its title as "clear propaganda."

      Among other things, the Clear Skies Act:

      Allows 42 million more tons of pollution emitted than the EPA proposal.
      Weakens the current cap on nitrogen oxide pollution levels from 1.25 million tons to 2.1 million tons, allowing 68% more NOx pollution.
      Delays the improvement of sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution levels compared to the Clean Air Act requirements.
      Delays enforcement of smog-and-soot pollution standards until 2015.
      By 2018, the Clear Skies Act will supposedly allow 3 million tons more NOx through 2012 and 8 million more by 2020, for SO2, 18 million tons more through 2012 and 34 million tons more through 2020. 58 tons more mercury through 2012 and 163 tons more through 2020 would be released into the environment than what would be allowed by enforcement of the Clean Air Act.[2]

      In August 2001, the EPA proposed a version of the Clear Skies Act that contained short timetables and lower emissions caps [3]. It is unknown why this proposal was withdrawn and replaced with the Bush Administration proposal. It is also unclear whether or not the original EPA proposal would have made it out of committee.

      The second one--Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on December 17, 1963

      The third one-- Nixon combined existing groups into one, for budget reasons.
      However, I would argue the the Pubs of the 60's and 70s are vastly different then the pubs of today. Post religious right control.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    15. Re:Easy, India or China by geekoid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Non of that actually makes any damn sense.

      This stupid scientist make things up for money meme need to really fucking stop when every expert in the field agrees.

      Fuck, you're stupid.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    16. Re:Easy, India or China by structural_biologist · · Score: 2

      I can think of a certain group of American Republicans who would do exactly that...

      Indeed, some conservatives in America have taken on the practice of coal rolling, outfitting diesel trucks to spew black smoke as protest against environmental regulations.

    17. Re:Easy, India or China by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Zero carbon?!? Why do you wish death for 90% of the people in the world?

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    18. Re:Easy, India or China by Razed+By+TV · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Re-read your post. I'll help you out, even.

      So why has every environmental initiative in the past 40 years been pushed by the Democrats and resisted by the Republicans?

      Why did "mega-corporate bitch" Obama introduce new carbon emissions rules in June that will cost energy producers a fortune?

      What happened to your brain in the 60 minutes between your posts? At first you extoll the virtues of the Democrats, and now you claim your original post is about Democrats and Rebulicans being the same. Do you see the discontinuity?

      GP has it right. The US was built disregarding the damage we were doing to the environment. Now that we're on top, its easy for us to tell people not to do things. But if anyone else wants to get ahead, they're going to do it the cheap and easy way. Without some sort of alternative financial incentive, greed will drive countries to disregard the environment to ensure their industry evolves. While you can point at Democrats and Republicans and call them angels or devils, the rest of the world is going to do what they want with regards to the environment (and there are a lot more of them than there are of us).

    19. Re:Easy, India or China by Wootery · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Government is basically the worst possible nightmare-scenario giant monopoly evil corporation you can imagine.

      Here in the UK, our government has taken steps to prevent there being a monopoly ISP. They didn't start a government-run ISP, they just regulated things to prevent a monopoly. And... it worked. Not all government intervention means shifting things from the private to the public sector. If anything, I imagine there are now more ISP jobs than there would be with a monopoly.

      Also, we don't have to suffer truly godawful ISPs, the way you do in the US, which is nice.

      But no, you'll go on believing all that government does is evil (that might not be such a worry if it weren't for that your system allows payments that would be classified as bribery in damn near any other country, btw), and that there's no better way to run a country than by letting corporations screw over the average person.

    20. Re:Easy, India or China by Tyrannicsupremacy · · Score: 5, Informative

      And it worked? No, you just have a censored internet. http://www.csmonitor.com/Innov...

      --
      http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
    21. Re:Easy, India or China by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2

      Congratulations on painting about 100M people with that brush, because clearly they're all exactly the same.

      YOU are the problem with politics in the United States.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  2. Old drums leak by Noir+Angellus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and there are a lot of old drums of this stuff sitting around old industrial buildings because it costs money to have it disposed of safely. There's probably a degree of it being released by the new generation of workers who have no idea what's in those old rusty drums, and the older workers have plain forgotten, and are just dumping it into drains to get rid of it and make space in the chemical storage room.

  3. Source is HVAC Contractors by fibrewire · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know because it's happening all over the Coachella Valley. I have seen cut rate guys NOT reclaiming or pumping down coils - jettisoning 10+ pounds each time. This occurs at least 50 times a day here in the desert that I know of. Even top paid contractors like callthegeneral.com just don't care because their commission is based on number of visits per day, and it takes an extra 15-25 minutes to pump a system down before removal. The wholesale houses even pay a couple $$$ per pound of the reclaimed stuff, but commission rates ensure blowing off straight to atmosphere every time.

    1. Re:Source is HVAC Contractors by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nope. CCl4 is not used in HVAC systems. You are thinking of freon, which is not what TFA is about.

    2. Re:Source is HVAC Contractors by adolf · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't know of a single refrigerant in common use which remains liquid at STP. Almost all of them evaporate very, very quickly at atmospheric pressure.

      Indeed, the most common one in new equipment (these days) is R-134a. Which is the same thing that goes into the "canned air" commonly sold and used for cleaning computer gear, and is also the same chemical used in the more common forms of freeze spray (the difference being whether it is dispensed as a liquid via an internal dip tube, or as a gas by simple lack of a dip tube).

      What were you going on about, again?

      Oh, right. Clues.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    3. Re:Source is HVAC Contractors by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 4, Informative

      CCl4 otherwise known as R-10 in the HVAC world, is a coolant and is a precursor to R-11 and R-12. Both of which happily decompose to CCl4.

      --
      Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
    4. Re:Source is HVAC Contractors by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      When I open up the tap in my kitchen sink, am I "blowing off water straight to atmosphere" ??? Of course not, showing us all that you didnt know that Carbon tetrachloride was a liquid while making your first post blaming a bunch of people that you clearly have other different issues with.

      Saying that something is a liquid/solid/gas/etc is a bit of a simplification. The reality is that substances exist in equilibrium between various phases, and this shifts based on temperature/pressure.

      If you spill some water on a sidewalk in the summer and come back an hour later, you won't see any water, because it will evaporate - probably fairly quickly depending on the humidity.

      Carbon tetrachloride is much more volatile than water in practice. The boiling point isn't all that much lower, but unlike water there is almost none of it present in the atmosphere to start out. That greatly facilitates evaporation per Le Chatelier's principle.

      Oh, and I don't think anybody uses carbon tetrachloride in air conditioners. Old ones certainly use CFCs though, and most of those boil at a lower temperature. Carbon tetrachloride has been a known carcinogen for ages, so industrial uses have been shifting away from it for a while.

    5. Re:Source is HVAC Contractors by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      CCL4 has the industry name of R10
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

      And was most certainly used in air conditioners for decades. It's banned for that use now, but anyone with an older system that's being replaced could definitely have R10.

    6. Re:Source is HVAC Contractors by cnaumann · · Score: 2

      Do you have a cite for this decomposition into carbon tet? You would have to knock the fluorine(s) off the R11 or R12, that is not so easy to do. I can see where bromine containing halons could decompose into chlorine containing halons given a mixture of chlorine and bromine containing halons and some UV light.

  4. No data, so choose your favorite villain by Mostly+a+lurker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Since the source is completely unclear, most posters will blindly assume it is the fault of whichever group is their bête noire. Some favorites will likely be China, North Korea and Russia, but use your imagination folks. There is just as much evidence that it is caused by evil bankers, genetically modified foods, pedophiles or US militarism.

    1. Re:No data, so choose your favorite villain by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Any chance to pin that on the content mafia or patent trolls? C'mon, at least ONCE such a story has to hit someone we can uniformly hate and not be controversial.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:No data, so choose your favorite villain by blue9steel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well as long as we're blaming people without evidence then I choose environmentalists. They're already responsible for global warming since they blocked the transition from fossil fuels to nuclear. I'm sure once we dig into the issue it's likely to be caused by the banning of disposable bags or the manufacture of electrical vehicles or some other process which sounds good on the surface but has unintended bad side effects.

  5. From the wikipedia by mveloso · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not sure how accurate this is, since it's from wikipedia, but the reference seems legit.

    In 2008, a study of common cleaning products found the presence of carbon tetrachloride in "very high concentrations" (up to 101 mg/m3) as a result of manufacturers' mixing of surfactants or soap with sodium hypochlorite (bleach).[18]

    http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...

    FTA:

    "By mixing surfactants or soap with NaOCl, it was shown that the formation of carbon tetrachloride and several other halogenated VOCs is possible"

    1. Re:From the wikipedia by Smallpond · · Score: 4, Informative

      Clorox had $5.6B in sales last year, of which 10% was laundry products according to their annual report. A gallon of bleach sells for $2, so if all their sales generated 275M gallons of bleach-containing chemicals = 1M m3 x 101 mg/m3 = 100,000 gm. Nope. That amount is negligible compared to what the study reports.

    2. Re:From the wikipedia by Technician · · Score: 2

      I'm wondering how much is a false detection for a similar chemical, or as the result of another chemical reaction. At work our Lead detection kits respond the same to Copper. This has led to missdiagnosis in copper plating.

      Chlorinated hydrocarbons abound in the environment. Could this be by products of burning recycled PC parts and old monitors and wire. The copper and other metals theft and recycling may be the cause.

      --
      The truth shall set you free!
    3. Re:From the wikipedia by Smallpond · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Industry is much better than individuals at handling chemicals safely.

  6. Re:china did it by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    "The west" started Chinese air pollution? So the smog around Chinese cities is our fault? They must be really desperate for excuses...

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  7. Re:china did it by Narcocide · · Score: 5, Funny

    Its called "setting a bad example." This got my little sister out of trouble almost every single time.

  8. Re:china did it by Stan92057 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well Corporate Americas is definitely at fault. They move the manufacturing to countries that have No EPA, No Unions, No OSHA. No labor laws.

    --
    Jack of all trades,master of none
  9. Re:china did it by geekoid · · Score: 2

    Some fault probably belongs to the countries that don't have those regulations.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  10. Re:Ooh, ooh I know! by Rosyna · · Score: 2

    Well, of course it came from humans. There is no natural source of CFCs on earth. They aren't a naturally occurring substance.

  11. Re:Massive Environmental Damage by Layzej · · Score: 2

    Australians suffer the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Being located close to the ozone hole over the Antarctic means they are exposed to higher levels of UV radiation.

  12. Degreasers by rubycodez · · Score: 2

    carbon tet and other degreasers used to just seep into the soil in "cleaning pits", I know buildings where that went on for half the 20th century.

  13. Coming from Methane by Pete+Venkman · · Score: 2

    Couldn't the CCl4 be resulting from radical chlorination in the upper atmosphere? There is certainly enough UV light available.