At least one man has drowned in crude during the clean-up operation, which has expanded as the area of the slick has doubled in size despite earlier government assurances that it was being contained and posed no risk to ecologically sensitive areas.

Five days after a pipeline explosion at the north-east port of Dalian, oil had reportedly spread over an area of 430 square kilometres, prompting a dispersal mission along the coast.

Hundreds of local volunteers are spreading absorbent matting along the Yellow Sea shoreline in an attempt to stop the slick from damaging beaches.

Out at sea, authorities have started to use oil-consuming bacteria to try to disperse the slick, along with chemical agents and lengthy floating barrages.

Even though maritime officials have mobilised 800 fishing boats to assist the 40 specialist vessels in the operation, the winds and tides are spreading the slick wider and thinner.

The difficult conditions have proved fatal for at least one man. A 25-year-old firefighter, Zhang Liang, drowned on Tuesday when a wave threw him from a vessel, according to the state news agency Xinhua.

In some areas, volunteers equipped only with rubber gloves, rubber boots and rudimentary tools have struggled to cope with the waves washing up on the beaches.

“I’ve been to a few bays today and discovered they were almost entirely covered with dark oil,” Zhong Yu of the environmental group Greenpeace China, told the Associated Press. “The oil is half-solid and half-liquid and is as sticky as asphalt.”

Fishing in the waters around Dalian has been banned until the end of August.

“The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine animals and water quality, and sea birds,” Huang Yong, deputy bureau chief for the city’s Maritime Safety Administration, told a regional TV station.

The authorities say the leak was staunched within 24 hours of last Friday’s accident, but they have yet to reveal how much oil was discharged before then. The state-run China Central television channel estimates the spill at 1,500 tons, less than 0.5% of the amount released into the ocean by the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Local officials have been upbeat about the prospects of a quick clean-up and a resumption of normal services at the port, which has had to redirect 420 vessels from the area of the slick.

“Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters,” Dalian’s vice mayor, Dai Yulin, told reporters earlier this week. Other officials expect the operation to last twice as long and even then it is far from clear that the ecological damage will end.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/21/china-oil-spill-disaster-wildlife

The following story is but another jigsaw piece in the collapse of the American Empire. When I was in Cuba several years ago, I saw what the once great USA – and its largely undeserving people – will have to endure. Given the excesses of the average American, many will struggle to survive; by 2020 it will all but over for the upper middle, middle and lower socio-economic population.

Michigan Oil Spill Prompts Evacuations, Finger-Pointing

By MATTHEW DOLAN
JULY 29, 2010

An oil spill this week from an underground pipeline connecting the U.S. to Canada has prompted local health officials to call for the evacuation of as many as 50 homes and recommend residents living close to the river to stop using well water for drinking and cooking.

The spill contaminated more than 20 miles of the Kalamazoo River in south-central Michigan and led to finger-pointing between those leading the clean up and state and local officials who have described the response as inadequate and slow-footed.

The pipe’s Canadian owner, Enbridge Inc. of Calgary, maintains that its response has been ramping up and that the oil hasn’t leached into a nearby lake, which response officials have called a place they hope to protect from the spill’s reaches.

Company and federal officials said that even though the river’s western reach ends at Lake Michigan, they don’t believe that the oil spill will reach the great lake.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that more than one million gallons have escaped. That would make it one of the largest ever in the history of the Midwest. But company officials are sticking with their earlier estimation of 819,000 gallons.

Unlike the BP PLC oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, this gushing pipe near Battle Creek, Mich., was capped relatively quickly after its owners were able to shut down the line almost immediately after its discovery. The pipe rupture has already forced the evacuation of several dozen residents who live near the Kalamazoo River, forced the river’s closure to the public and raised questions about whether the pipeline’s owner reported the spill in a timely way.

The line owned by Enbridge Energy Partners LP is a 30-inch pipe that moves light synthetic, heavy and medium crude oil northeast about 1,900 miles. The affected section of the line stretches from Griffith, Ind., through Michigan and just over the border to Sarnia, Ontario.

The Calhoun County Public Health Department on Thursday recommended the immediate evacuation of residents living closest to the site of the spill in Marshall because of elevated levels of Benzene in the air. Between 30 and 50 homes were affected in the recommendation but it wasn’t clear whether the figure included the number of residents who have already fled the area.

People who breathe in high levels of benzene in the short term may develop dizziness, irregular heartbeat, headaches, tremors and unconsciousness with long term affects harming the blood and immune systems.

The department said evacuated residents would be reimbursed by Enbridge, but couldn’t say how long they would be out of their homes.

In a precautionary move, the health department also warned those with private wells living within 200 feet from the edge of the river bank between Tallmadge Creek—site of oil spill—west along the Kalamazoo River to the Kalamazoo County line to stop using the water for drinking and cooking despite the fact that no test has yet reveal groundwater contamination.

After the leak was discovered on Monday morning on a creek near the company’s pump station in Marshall, Mich., the pipeline was shut down when its isolation valves were closed off, according to officials at Enbridge Inc.

Federal officials said Wednesday that the timeline involved in the spill remains under investigation by several agencies.

Officials said it would be weeks before an official cause of the pipe break is determined. Feedback from the initial portions of the investigation is expected in the next few days to provide telling clues about the origins of the leak, company officials said.

Regulators Sent Warning Letter to Enbridge

U.S. government regulators sent a warning letter to Enbridge seven months ago about possible problems with the pipeline that ruptured earlier this week.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration wrote to Enbridge Energy Partners Chairman Terry McGill in January that his company’s corrosion monitoring in its oil pipeline connecting the U.S. to Canada did not comply with federal regulations.

Company officials said Thursday that Enbridge Inc., the parent company, had been compiling with regulators’ request since the letter and at the time the spill was reported on July 26. Its remediation for corrosion of the oil transport line from Indiana to Ontario has been ongoing, according to company executives.

Stephen Wuori, executive vice president for Enbridge’s liquid pipelines, said during a conference call with reporters that the point of the line that ruptured on Tallmadge Creek in Marshall, Mich., was not seen as problematic before the spill. A spokeswoman for agency at the Transportation Department declined to comment about the issue.

Since 2002, Enbridge has received more than a dozen warnings or citations for violating safety and other standards and fined tens of thousands of dollars as a result, according to a review of correspondence maintained by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

The area of ocean 65 miles south of New Orleans would normally be occupied by fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen, but it has been deserted since the BP spill began. The abandoned wellhead burst in the early hours of Tuesday morning after being hit by a tug boat that was pushing a dredge barge.

The wellhead is discharging a mist of orange and brown oil about 100 feet in air but the Coast Guard does not have a specific flow rate for the well determined yet, although there have been early reports that there is natural gas and mud mixed in with oil coming from the well. The well, which was once owned by Cedyco Corporation, was abandoned in November 2008.

Now – in the home of ‘free speech’ – it seems that the oil spill is not to be covered … except by government spun doco’s; the following story tells in in more detail.

First Amendment suspended in the Gulf of Mexico as spill cover-up goes Orwellian

Saturday, July 03, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger; Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that would make it a felony crime for any journalist, reporter, blogger or photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime.

CNN reporter Anderson Cooper says, “A new law passed today, and back by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, … will prevent reporters and photographers from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife just about any place we need to be. By now you’re probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they’re working for because they’re afraid of losing their jobs.” Watch the video clip yourself at NaturalNews.TV: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=203

The rule, of course, is designed to restrict the media’s access to cleanup operations in order to keep images of oil-covered seabirds off the nation’s televisions. With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what’s really happening in the Gulf.

The war is on to control your mind

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because the U.S. government uses this same tactic during every war. The first casualty of war, as they say, is the truth. There are lots of war images the government doesn’t want you to see (like military helicopter pilots shooting up Reuters photographers while screaming “Yee-Haw!” over the comm radios), and there are other images they do want you to see (“surgical strike” explosions from “smart” bombs, which makes it seem like the military is doing something useful).

So war reporting is carefully monopolized by the government to deliver precisely the images they want you to see while censoring everything else. Now the same Big Brother approach is being used in the Gulf of Mexico: Criminalize journalists, censor the story and try to keep the American people ignorant of what’s really happening. It’s just the latest tactic from a government that no longer even recognizes the U.S. Constitution or its Bill of Rights. Because the very first right is Freedom of Speech, which absolutely includes the right to walk onto a public beach and take photographs of something happening out in the open, on public waters. It is one of the most basic rights of our citizens and our press.

But now the Obama administration has stripped away those rights, transforming journalists into criminals. Now, we might expect something like this from Chavez, or Castro or even the communist leaders of China, but here in the United States, we’ve all been promised we lived in “the land of the free.” Obama apparently does not subscribe to that philosophy anymore (if he ever did).

So how does criminalizing journalists equate to “land of the free?” It doesn’t, obviously. Forget freedom. (Your government already has.) This is about controlling your mind to make sure you don’t visually see the truth of what the oil industry has done to your oceans, your shorelines and your beaches. This is all about keeping you ignorant with a total media blackout of the real story of what’s happening in the Gulf.

The real story, you see, is just too ugly. And the government has fracked up the cleanup effort to such a ridiculous extent that instead of the “transparency” they once promised, they’re now resorting to the threat of arrest for all journalists who try to get close enough to cover the story. Yes, this is happening right now in America. This isn’t a hoax. I know, it sounds more like something you might hear about in Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela or some other nation run by dictators. But now it’s happening right here in the USA.

As Anderson Cooper reported on CNN: “Now the government is getting in on the act. Despite what Admiral Thad Allen promised about transparency just nearly a month ago. Thad Allen: “The media will have uninhibited access anywhere we’re doing operations…” Anderson Cooper: The Coast Guard today announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming with 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. What this means is that oil-soaked birds on an island surrounded by a boom, you can’t get close enough to take that picture. Shot of oil on beaches with booms? Stay 65 feet away. Pictures of oil-soaked booms uselessly laying in the water because they haven’t been collected like they should? You can’t get close enough to see that. Believe me, that is out there. But you only know that if you get close to it, and now you can’t without permission. Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges.”

See the video yourself at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=203

This site is part of the Natural News Network © 2009 All Rights Reserved.

Previously I wrote of a surplus of oil reserves being built up by various countries and that many container ships have likewise been parked around the world, waiting for oil prices to rise so they can make more money (of course).

Anyway, it turns out that over 50 oil tankers are anchored off the coast of Britain, refusing to unload their fuel until prices have risen.

But that’s not really the problem, as science writer Fred Pearce (environmental consultant to New Scientist) says; he suggest that the super-ships that keep the West in everything from Christmas gifts to computers, pump out killer chemicals linked to thousands of deaths because of the filthy fuel they use.

The filthy black smoke kicked out by funnels on ferries, cruise liners, container ships, oil tankers and even tugboats, that leaves a brown haze across ports and shipping lanes is toxic pollution. As ships get bigger, the pollution is getting worse and perhaps the biggest shock is that just 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world’s cars.  

Unlike power stations or cars, ships burn the cheapest, filthiest, high-sulphur fuel, the thick residues left behind in refineries after the lighter liquids have been taken; oil nobody on land is allowed to use. Thanks to decisions taken in London by UN’s International Maritime Organisation (the body that polices world shipping), this pollution continues to kill people as well as marine life, when a simple change in the rules could stop it. There are some 100,000 ships on the seas, taking goods from Asian industrial nations to consumers in Europe, the USA and Australia to name the major addicts.

But the ships work on being cost effective, and ships that bring Christmas presents to Europe are now en route to Yantian in southern China, carrying containers full of our waste paper, plastic and electronics for recycling. This trade-route burns marine heavy fuel, or `bunker fuel’ which leaves behind a trail of lethal chemicals inclduing sulphur and smoke linked to breathing problems, inflammation, cancer and heart disease.

For decades the IMO has rebuffed calls to clean up ship pollution; while it’s long been illegal to belch black, sulphur-laden smoke from power-station chimneys or trucks, shipping has kept its licence to pollute. For 31 years, the IMO has operated a policy agreed by the 169 governments that make up the organisation which allows most ships to burn bunker fuel; waste oil, basically what is left over after all the cleaner fuels have been extracted from crude oil; the same as asphalt, the cheapest and dirtiest fuel in the world which is thick with sulphur.

The IMO rules allow ships to burn fuel containing up to 4.5 per cent sulphur, 4,500 times more than is allowed in car fuel in the EU (European Union); sulphur comes out in tiny particles and it is these that get deep into lungs. The largest ships can each emit as much as 5,000 tons of sulphur in a year, the same as 50million typical cars.  There is an estimated 800 million cars driving around the planet, which means 16 super-ships can emit as much sulphur as the world fleet of cars.

The IMO purports to be cleaning up shipping, by having fuel contain no more than 3.5 per cent sulphur by 2012 and eventually down to 0.5 per cent; problem is the IMO has given shipping lines 12 years to make the switch; and then, it will depend on a final feasibility review in 2018.

We have run out of time, contact your federal member to insist the the Australian government does something to address this low profile polluting. Why should international shipping and aviation be exempt from the Kyoto Protocol rules on cutting carbon emissions ? Airlines have promised to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 and orders are in for more fuel efficinet / better quality fuel air planes.  

The reason shipping has been ‘successful’ in avoiding changing over is they claim they can’t afford it; two thirds of the world’s ships are registered in developing countries such as Panama; carying flags of convenience to evade tougher rules on safety and pay for sailors.

The short answer may be too soon to tell, but it’s not looking good.

I suspect Kevin Rudd is indeed a man who can’t be trusted with the purse strings. A man too keen on making himself popular by giving away our money to powerful interest groups.

While the Opposition wants us to consider these charges strictly in the context of the Government’s budgetary stimulus spending, there’s just as much chance of profligacy in a different area and, indeed, with the Opposition’s contrivance: the Senate-stalled carbon pollution reduction scheme.

If they can get their act together, the Liberals (minus the Coalition’s climate-change deniers) plan to let the emissions trading scheme through the upper house provided the Government agrees to yet more expensive concessions to business interests claiming to be adversely affected by the scheme. At the same time, it seems the Government is preparing to use the supposed need for compromise with the Libs as cover for its own capitulation to the renewed importuning of the electricity generators (some of which are private businesses, but most of which are state Labor mates in NSW, Queensland and South Australia).

In his official report, Ross Garnaut advised the Government there was no case for compensating the power generators. It’s a safe bet this view was shared by all the Government’s econocrats. But good old Santa Kev – every child or businessman wins a prize – gave them free emissions permits worth $3.5 billion, anyway.  Did they say thanks? No, they said: this guy’s a soft touch, let’s hit him for more. They continued their rent-seeking, thinking up half a dozen dubious arguments why their compensation was inadequate, and scaremongering about how the lights could go out.

Did Mr Tough Guy, I-make-no-apology, fiscal conservative Rudd send them packing? No, he went to water and quietly commissioned a special report on their claims.  Which government department did he get to do the report? An agency called Morgan Stanley (formerly known as part of the ”unrestrained and unregulated greed” Wall Street crowd).

Now this will surprise you: Morgan Stanley is reported to have backed the generators’ concerns. I bet Rudd was surprised, too. So don’t be surprised if the generators get more money in the next few weeks. And don’t delude yourself that if all they get is more free emissions permits, it won’t be at the taxpayers’ expense.  As the Coalition’s obstructionists like to say, the emissions trading scheme is really a tax. By limiting the amount of carbon that may be emitted, it forces up the prices of emissions-intensive goods and services, such as electricity.

When the Government sells the emissions permits to big polluters such as power stations, this means the value of the price increases suffered by consumers (and intended to discourage them from using so much electricity) is transferred to consolidated revenue, as with any other tax. But when the Government gives emissions permits to the polluters, in effect it allows them to keep the proceeds of its tax. And the budget balance is worse off to that extent.

What the generators want you to think is that if they don’t have to pay for their permits, they won’t have to put up their prices. Don’t believe it. The Europeans fell for that when they set up their emissions trading scheme and were amazed and appalled when the power companies whacked up their prices anyway. Since Rudd must know this, I’m all the more fearful that he is weak-kneed when it comes to protecting the Government’s coffers against raids by marauding businessmen.

And when the day comes that the retail price of electricity rises anyway, don’t imagine the Opposition’s complicity in procuring more compensation for the generators will in any way inhibit it from proclaiming from the rooftops this further example of Labor’s economic incompetence. The power generators’ basic claim is that the instigation of an emissions trading scheme will, at a stroke, slash the capital value of their business. Unless they are compensated for this loss, no one will want to lend to them and they may be forced to cut their losses and walk away, leaving households and businesses without power.

But the Garnaut report exposed the weakness of this argument – a case of deception and special pleading if ever there was. For a start, they’ll be able to pass on to customers most, if not all, of their increased costs, which will preserve their profitability. But to the extent that the capital value of their asset is reduced by the scheme, they have no moral, legal or economic argument to demand that taxpayers compensate them for their loss.

There’s no insurance against loss for capitalists in a capitalist economy. Market-caused change raises or lowers the capital value of businesses every day. No one suggests losers should be compensated by the taxpayer.  Similarly, businesses gain or lose from changes in government policy all the time. No one suggests the losers should be compensated, nor that windfall gains be confiscated. To wish otherwise would be to put elected governments in an intolerable straitjacket, greatly constraining their ability to act in the public interest.

No one compensated the tobacco companies when governments took to discouraging smoking, nor James Hardie when governments acted against asbestos. No one has compensated the smash repair industry for all the things governments have done to reduce road accidents and deaths.  In any case, any investor in power stations who didn’t see restrictions on carbon emissions coming was a fool. If the private owners paid too much for their power stations the capitalist solution is clear: cop the loss and sell to new operators at a more realistic price without the station losing an hour’s production.

It doesn’t matter where or of which political party or vested bureaucratic utterance, there is a bias, a deliberate withholding of or misleading information.

In Paul Keating’s time, the CPI was the measuring stick of the wan and flux of the economy; however, when rising wages, fuel / house / put any other commodity that influences prices … these ‘aberrations’ were said to distort rather than warn of an impending balance.

The federal and state government’s various stimulus packages in the past were ‘bridges’ to level out troughs of supply and demand for work, but now we see diverging paths, where one part of the government is working against another part of the government (stimulus versus Reserve braking the economy).

The Emission Trading Scheme / Plot has different characters, but the same deliberate exclusion of important players in the overall ‘scheme of things’.  Both the Colation and Labor have the vested interests of their financial masters / supporters in mind, so preferential treatment – under the guise of ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ – means that the biggest polluters (re-election donors) will be exempt from the ETS.

As the ETS lacks transparency (must be the pollution), we must consider the EROEI (energy return of energy invested) evaluation. The movie Saving Private Ryan asked a similar question, of the value of an individual; in the movie, three or four brothers were killed in action, so the Army decided to ‘save’ the last son for the grieving mother … all heartfelt and well-meaning and of course other men had to die to save this soldiers life, but if we change the word energy for emotion, we get the similar quandary.

However, with the ETS / EROEI (the E in EROEI now stands for Emotional Quotient), it’s profits (under the guise of jobs), that is more important that our health, the environment’s health and the continued wholesale killing of *entire species of bats, birds and bees, which is not seen as a problem; nowhere is the value of these *crucial players acknowledged or remunerated.

The catalyst for this article today was the story of the ‘dawning of EROEI in the American military psyche’.

Now we all agree that the USA’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq is not to instil democracy (where rorting the voting system originated) but to provide strategic positioning to ensure the continuous supply of energy to a voracious American population.

Now the cheapest way to transport fuel is by ship, rail or pipelines (all of course not subject to ‘terrorist’ attacks); however in Afghanistan (where such pipelines don’t exist – as they would be blown up – and train services are non-existent) at best, only poorly maintained roads have to be used, but these are subject to ambush, so the USA Army has to fly the fuel in.

Someone, somewhere actually did the EROEI on fuel ‘needed’ to supply vehicles etc at an average cost of about $400 a gallon / $100 a litre and when flown in by helicopter (in specially made bladders) up to $1,000 a gallon / $250 a litre. They also found that the helicopters used almost as much fuel as the fuel they shifted. This EROEI in the USA’s Pentagon is known as the ‘fully burdened cost of fuel’.

So when some politician starts talking about ETS, people should ask about the ‘fully burdened cost to the environment’. By not making all users – of the environment – pay, it is just fanciful to suggest it will make any difference.

The Qld Labor government crows about saving 1% of energy (after 10 years if 100,000 pools are built and they all use off-peak power) yet proposes to allow another aluminium smelter to be built that will use 20 times that, not to mention the environmental pollution.

We were No 1 in Rugby Union, Rugby League and Cricket; however its unlikely most Australians want to be No 1 as the biggest polluters in the world, but thanks to corporate government, that’s where we are and all the bullshit spin the government puts of clean coal and geo-sequestration and throws billions of $ on insulation etc, this is but a drop in the bucket as to the hundreds of billions of $ successive governments have handed to coal, gas and oil companies; aka ‘the green mafia’.

America, once the pin-up boy of per capita worst carbon dioxide polluters in the world had China running a close second, but in a Steven Bradbury, we Australians have taken the world’s worst highest accolade.

As the Australian government is not refuting this report complied by a British company (Maplecroft) and based U.S. Energy Department data, it must be so.

The report calculated that Australia’s per capita output of carbon dioxide is about 18.66 metric tons a year which is four percent higher than the United States.

That means that yearly, we Australians pump 392,000,000 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into our skies every year; while China remains the world’s biggest overall greenhouse gas polluter (with a population of some 1.2 billion people) followed closely by the United States (with just over 300 million people), being No 1 with a population of just over 21 million people, we have to ask ourselves, is this right ?

Of course global warming sceptics claim that burning all the coal, gas and oil has nothing to do with global warming, and Australian politicians claim ‘good management’ makes Australia strong, but why don’t we have energy efficient housing as mandatory, rather than retro-fitting houses; why do companies that manufacture highly polluting building materials continue to pollute and not have to upgrade ?

In Australia, we receive from the Sun over 100,000 times the energy we use daily, yet we hold the title as the worst per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, because rather than solar power, we have a heavy reliance on coal energy, which puts the money into a few corporations rather than spreading the load. The claim is about 80 % percent of the country’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power stations, but this doesn’t mean the rest is solar or wind power; much it comes from hydro electricity and even burning off native forests to generate energy and mockingly, these companies market that energy as ‘green’ and ‘renewable’ but if it were renewable, they would be burning forest plantations rather than old growth forests.

Canberra has committed to cutting greenhouse gas pollution by up to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2000 levels, but has no real or workable plans to achieve this; political grandstanding and spin-doctoring are all any of the parties are good at.

I’m currently researching and writing a story about how poor planning by the federal government has resulted in the Insulation Industry Pulls Wool Over Our Eyes.

The answer is in the question of how a rapidly growing primary producer of food exported all over the world can be relied on when these same producers have put ours out of work and the lead time to rebuild food growing infrastructure.

China’s soil is quickly eroding and its water rapidly becoming so polluted that it isn’t just unsafe to drink; even unsafe for fishing, farming and factory use; the ecosystems it relies on is on the verge of collapse.

Last month Xinhua (the official Chinese news agency) had an article on a 3 year investigation that revealed almost 40% of China’s territory (about 3,569,200 square kilometres of land), suffers from soil erosion, putting crops and water supply at risk; the survey was reportedly carried out by China’s bio-environment security research team.

In Shanghai, the Yellow River – which provides drinking water to millions of people in northern China – is now so badly polluted that 85% of it is unsafe for drinking. China’s heavy industries have tipped so much waste into the river that enormous stretches of it, amounting to over a third of its entire length, cannot be used at all anymore, either for drinking, fishing, farming or even factory use, according to criteria used by the United Nations Environmental Program.

This is not new, but the fact that it is getting more airplay suggests that even the Chinese – who care little for the environment or its people – now comprehend the ramifications of being the world’s biggest, most populous country whose economy is desperately being counted on by a recession-savaged world as well as the growing number of unemployed.

China’s water and soil woes appear to have now reached the point at which food and water shortages leading to a health crisis could be possible at any moment, leading in turn to a reduction in GDP at the exact wrong time.

But is there ever a right time to eat polluted foods containing a cocktail of toxins?

Organic compounds means compounds (or chemicals) that use carbon as their basic building block and most jurisdictions have accepted that volatile means compounds that have a boiling point of less than 250°C at normal temperature and pressure.

But all is not so simple as it might appear! VOC listing (especially in America) is subject to political lobbying and there are many exemptions that simply defy logic.

One can legitimately, in America, have a paint full of exempt solvents (even the very ominous sounding chloro-fluoro compound known as Parachlorobenzofluoride) yet still claim it to be VOC free.

Closer to home, the Australian Paint Approvals Scheme (APAS) exempts acetone – clearly a hazardous organic compound – yet includes ammonia, which, by definition is not organic!

Waterborne paints may include small amounts of VOCs as excipients in some of the raw materials used but the major deliberate use of VOCs is confined to two areas – coalescing agents and open time additives.

Although there are some exceptions to this rule, waterborne paints are generally made from somewhat hard polymers (to achieve film toughness), which are temporarily softened (to improve film formation) by the addition of a small percentage of volatile organic coalescing solvents.

The most successful (both technically and commercially) of these coalescing solvents had a quoted boiling point of 246°C – clearly then a VOC.

The world’s major supplier of this material recently changed its test method for determining boiling points and, lo and behold, it came out at 251°C – not a VOC!

They have been able to convince the European Parliament and APAS as to the veracity of their results so that the material is no longer seen as a VOC. Because of this, VOC levels in many paints have dropped by about half at the stroke of a pen.

The drying rate of waterborne paints is dominated by weather conditions and generally needs slowing down to achieve good flow and to maintain a ‘wet edge’. The additive of choice here is propylene glycol, a bland material that is used in medicines (both topical and oral), in a wide range of cosmetics and toiletries, and in foods, such as ice cream; also defined as a VOC is ethyl alcohol, an active ingredient of wine and other spirituous liquors.

There are games manufacturers can play with both coalescing and open time additives using slightly higher boiling homologues to improve their stated VOC level to further confuse an already confusing subject. In a gentler, more co-operative era, the New Zealand Paint Manufacturers Association agreed to help all members who were genuinely trying to reduce the toxicity of their products. It was agreed however, that trying to score marketing points by playing a VOC numbers comparison game was inappropriate in this confusing and hard to measure area. [info - Resene Paints]

The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District estimates the average dairy cow emits about 8.8 kilograms of VOC a year; about 24 grams a day. New Zealand has a dairy population of some 5.3 million cows (2006) at 24 grams a day equates to 132,500 kilograms a day. Australia has cattle population of some 27 million equating to about 675,000 kilograms a day.

A Californian study of vehicle VOC emissions (in 1997) showed an average VOC of 9.3grams per litre; the average car used 5.9 litres a day, so the average usage resulted in 55 grams per day.

Hair sprays, deodorant sprays and many cleaners release VOC’s; a 500 gram tin can represent about 400 grams of VOC’s.

It is worth noting that paints, sealers, resins and glues (holding carpets etc) release VOC’s for their full life as they break down.