polyurethane
This bacterium can eat polyurethane-based plastics
Polyurethane, which now goes to landfills or gets burned, might be able to be broken down by some hungry bugs.
Peabody asks court to overturn mine safety citation.
Peabody Energy asked a federal appeals court to overturn its citation for improperly sealing ventilation stopping, which separates intake air from return air, at a Colorado coal mine.
Peabody Energy asked a federal appeals court to overturn its citation for improperly sealing ventilation stopping, which separates intake air from return air, at a Colorado coal mine.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit will decide whether Peabody’s use of polyurethane spray foam to seal the perimeter of a concrete block ventilation stopping at the company’s Foidel Creek Mine amounts to “a traditionally accepted method” ( Peabody Twentymile Mining v. Sec’y of Labor , 10th Cir., No. 17-09540, 8/25/17 ).
A Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission administrative law judge affirmed the Aug. 6, 2014, citation alleging Peabody Twentymile Mining’s use of foam violated federal regulation 30 C.F.R. 75.333(e)(1)(i).
More than a thousand such stoppings, which prevent gasses from entering escapeways, are used in the mine, according to the review commission. Peabody sold 2.6 million tons of coal from the northwest Colorado mine in 2016.
Jackson Kelly PLLC, Pittsburgh, which represents Peabody, declined to comment to Bloomberg BNA.
Violation Despite Ventilation Plan
Peabody’s Mine Safety and Health Administration-approved ventilation plan recognizes two types of stoppings—temporary metal panel stoppings and permanent concrete block stoppings. Temporary metal panels may be sealed with polyurethane foam, a non-strength-enhancing material, according to MSHA.
Peabody used the foam to seal the edges of both temporary and permanent stoppings. Its 2011 ventilation plan didn’t limit the use of the foam to temporary stoppings, and the company had used the foam since 1983. MSHA finalized the “traditionally accepted method” regulation in 1996.
Despite Peabody’s use and MSHA’s lack of enforcement during prior inspections, the agency issued a citation for this violation, among others.
Prior or longtime use of a method within a mine is irrelevant to whether the company built the stoppings according to “traditionally accepted methods,” Administrative Law Judge David P. Simonton wrote. He assessed a $162 fine for the citation.
Two commissioners said they would affirm Simonton’s ruling, while two said they would reverse and vacate the citation. As a result, Simonton’s decision was affirmed.
The review commission is currently operating with four members rather than five.
Peabody’s Likely Arguments
Peabody filed the petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Aug. 25.
Its arguments before the Tenth Circuit may track the opinion authored by Chairman William Althen and Commissioner Michael Young, who would have reversed Simonton’s ruling.
“In short, because MSHA traditionally accepted this method—both implicitly through allowing the longstanding, widespread practice at the Foidel Creek Mine, and explicitly through approving the practice in Peabody Twentymile’s ventilation control plan—it was a ‘traditionally accepted method,’” they wrote.
If the term were ambiguous, the secretary’s interpretation of the regulation is not entitled to deference, the chairman and commissioner wrote. Here, the secretary is interpreting his own earlier interpretation in the preamble, and such interpretations cannot receive deference under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1997 Auer decision.
The Department of Labor, Office of the Solicitor, Arlington, Va., represents the secretary.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lars-Eric Hedberg in Washington at lhedberg@bna.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rachael Daigle at rdaigle@bna.com
For More Information
The petition for review filed by Peabody Twentymile Mining in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Peabody Twentymile Mining v. Secretary of Labor is available at https://src.bna.com/r2J.
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Wojtek Gurak
Hot, dry Madrid aims for a cooler, greener future.
The goal is to create a so-called "green envelope," protecting Madrid from the effects of climate change.
Tourists flood the area of Madrid's "Museum Mile" — a stretch of the huge, eight-lane Paseo del Prado thoroughfare that's home to Spain's most renowned art museums. It's smoggy and crowded with all the traffic.
At the CaixaForum, an arts foundation, people pause. It's what's on the outside of this museum, rather than what's inside, that's halted them: a giant vertical garden with more than 15,000 plants from 300 native species — begonias, yucca plants, ferns — coating an entire outer wall stretching the length of a city block.
"I just think it's really cool to see all the different vegetation!" says Laura Laskin, a visitor from Philadelphia.
"We honestly just ran into it by accident, but it's really cool," chimes in her daughter, Sarah. "We didn't know anything about it prior to coming here."
The CaixaForum's vertical garden is quickly becoming a tourist attraction. Installed in 2008 and designed by the French botanist Patrick Blanc, it consists of a polyurethane sheet, plastic mesh and a non-biodegradable felt blanket coating the exterior wall of a former power plant adjacent to the museum. Irrigation hoses line the top. The felt layer acts as a sponge, absorbing water and allowing the plants to take root without soil.
It's both a work of art and something practical for the environment.
Walls like this one are part of Madrid's new strategy to fight climate change. The Spanish capital is one of the hottest, driest cities in Europe — on the front lines of this battle. It's just emerging from a punishing recession and doesn't have a lot of money.
Enlarge this image
Tourists snap photos of a vertical garden outside the CaixaForum, an arts foundation in Madrid.
Lauren Frayer for NPR
So the city has come up with a simple, low-tech solution: plants. Lots of them. Madrid aims to cover as much of its surface as possible with greenery — roof gardens, walls and empty lots.
"You can see it changing — in summer, it's an incredible panel of colors," says Isabel Fuentes, director of Madrid's CaixaForum. "It helps to avoid noise, and it also helps to fight contamination because 460 [square] meters of plants give a considerable amount of oxygen to the air."
The vertical garden also insulates a south-facing wall from heat in summer and cold in winter. And it helps to lower Madrid's overall temperature, by boosting green space.
Scientists recognize the importance of greenery in combating climate change, and Madrid is not alone in enlisting in the fight. When it comes to climate change, there's a lot of focus on coastal cities and the risk of flooding from rising sea levels. But Madrid is hundreds of miles from the coast, at nearly 2,200 ft. above sea level. There's no risk of flooding here. Instead, it's become a different type of island — "the heat island," says Juan Azcarate, the city official who heads efforts to fight climate change. "We are a city where the main risks will be related to heat and the scarcity of water resources."
In an urban heat island, dark, paved surfaces and buildings absorb warmth from the sun, boosting the air temperature around them. Madrid is several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside.
In a municipal office building that's been renovated to install heat-deflecting windows, Azcarate and his team pore over climate change data. Scientists estimate that by the year 2050, Madrid will experience 20 percent more unusually hot days — in which the temperature is several degrees hotter than historic averages on that day of the year — than now, and it'll rain 20 percent less. So city officials have allocated millions of euros in public funds to to try to head that off — or at least prepare for it — by expanding existing parks, painting roofs white instead of black to reflect the sun's rays, converting vacant lots into green space and building roof gardens and walls.
Enlarge this image
An artist's rendering of Madrid's Gran Vía, one of the city's biggest and busiest avenues, shows what the thoroughfare would look like if building facades were covered in plants. Madrid is offering tax incentives to companies or private owners willing to install roof and facade gardens, to combat the effects of climate change.
courtesy of the Ayuntamiento de Madrid/Madrid City Hall
"Big, green areas have an effect of cooling the city at night, and also have an added value of capturing carbon," Azcarate says.
Greenery also shades the pavement and releases water vapor into the air. Last summer, temperatures were measured at 7 degrees Fahrenheit lower in pilot neighborhoods, where the first of these gardens have been installed, than in neighborhoods with vacant lots, black roofs and no parks.
To water them, the city is re-paving plazas with porous material that captures rainwater. There are also tax breaks for companies that coat their roofs or facades with greenery.
This is all part of a larger environmental strategy that started with burying a major city highway in 2003 — routing it through an underground tunnel and then planting trees above. The area has since become one of the city's most popular parks.
Madrid has also spent tens of millions of euros on anti-pollution measures that include improving public transit, restricting cars from narrow central streets and creating the world's first municipal electric bike scheme.
PARALLELS
Car-Centric Spain Begins To Embrace The Bicycle
On a walk from Puerta de Alcalá, one of Madrid's busiest traffic circles, into the neighboring greenery of Buen Retiro park, Susana Saiz, one of the consultants behind Madrid's climate plans, explains that the transformation from smog to greenery is exactly what she seeks to create in her work.
"As you can feel, we just came from the noisy street and now we're just surrounded by trees," says Saiz, who did her Ph.D. on how vegetation in roof gardens can change the climate in urban areas. "It's colder. You can really feel the heat island is reduced. The climate is nicer."
Saiz works as an architect at Arup, one of a growing number of environmental design and sustainability companies that help cities like Madrid prepare for the climate future. The city commissioned Arup to prepare a report called Madrid + Natural, which includes designs the city wants to implement for roof gardens, water catchment areas and urban forests.
The goal is to create a so-called "green envelope," protecting Madrid from the effects of climate change. Arup's research shows that if 10 percent to 25 percent of city buildings were to coat their roofs or facades in greenery, it could reduce urban noise by up to 10 decibels, reduce temperatures by up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit and reduce particle pollution by up to 20 percent.
"It's absolutely quantifiable — the impact of these solutions on air pollution, mitigation of heat island, water storage and management," Saiz says, as she walks out of the park and back into a concrete jungle of traffic, heat and noise — a reminder of what Madrid is up against.
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The disturbing climate implications of this sailboat's Arctic voyage.
An unreinforced sailboat managed to circumnavigate the top of the world in 20 weeks.
On August 14, the 48-foot sailing vessel Northabout was in a sheltered location north of Siberia, battling hurricane-force winds. Held in place by 100 feet of chain tied to an anchor, the crew hunkered down as the storm built through the late summer Arctic night.
At times, the anchor dragged across the bottom of the shallow sea, making a terrible grinding noise.
The seven-person-crew of the ship thought they might have to beach the vessel and brave the elements. Vdeo footage and photos show them huddled below deck in survival suits.
"I’ve not been that scared for many a year," said expedition leader David Hempleman-Adams, in an interview.
"... We were in shallow waters, and the anchor was dragging," wrote 14-year-old crew member Ben Edwards in an as-yet unpublished ship's diary entry provided to Mashable.
"Before we went into the saloon we had to get into our abandonment suits. Basically massive really thick wetsuits. They protect you somewhat if you end up in the sea. We looked like Telly Tubbies," Edwards wrote.
"I don't mind telling you that I thought we were all going to die," he added.
In trying to sail through both the Northeast and Northwest Passages in the same year — a feat that would have been impossible as recently as 2007 — Hempleman-Adams, Edwards and the rest of the Northabout's crew ran smack into the capricious face of the new Arctic reality.
Sea ice is rapidly thinning and melting as the world warms, hitting the second-lowest level on record this year. At the same time, weather patterns in the Far North seem to be growing weirder and more menacing.
For example, the storm that hit the ship this summer was more typical of the intense tempests that sweep across the region during the winter.
The storm was one of several major low pressure areas that transported unusually mild air into the Arctic this summer, helping to shift and melt sea ice and vault temperatures above freezing in many areas.
The Northabout crew, for example, recorded a high temperature during that storm of 17 degrees Celsius, or 63 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hempleman-Adams, a veteran Arctic explorer, says he never experienced such warmth in the Far North before, and he was shocked at the lack of sea ice he saw during the journey.
Since the boat did not have protection against thick sea ice, potentially becoming stuck whenever it encountered ice floes of about 10 feet in thickness, its successful Arctic circumnavigation was only possible due to the rapidly warming world.
The Arctic is warming at double the rate of lower latitudes, which is having widespread consequences, from sea ice loss and melting of the Greenland ice sheet to earlier spring snow melt.
Voyage aimed at raising global warming awareness
Hempleman-Adams put the expedition together as a way to raise awareness about global warming. But even he didn't anticipate how little ice he and his crew members would encounter during much of their voyage.
During the Northabout's two-week transit of the famed Northwest Passage, for example, he said there was a near complete absence of sea ice.
The passage was blocked with ice throughout all of human history until sea ice loss from global warming opened it briefly during the summer of 2007. It has been seasonally open during several summers since, including 2016. This year, in addition to the Northabout, a cruise ship carrying more than 1,000 people also sailed through the passage.
"We went through the Northwest Passage in 14 days and didn’t see one drop of ice, not even enough ice for a gin and tonic," Hempleman-Adams said.
He compared a previous group's voyage using the same boat just a few years ago. That team took four years to complete both the Northeast and Northwest Passage, largely because they kept getting held up by thick ice floes.
"Whereas when you see the photographs of their trip and how they were in the same boat and the conditions they had with the ice, and what we had, they are massive contrasts..." Hempleman-Adams said. "They had ice where we had just open water."
Other than an iceberg or two in Lancaster Sound, Hempleman-Adams said the crew didn't encounter any sea ice in the traditional choke points of the Northwest Passage, which is actually a series of twists and turns between islands and straits through the Canadian Arctic.
Northern Lights
The voyage, which covered a total of about 15,500 miles in 20 weeks, was aimed at raising awareness of climate change. Hempleman-Adams saw Edwards, the youngest crew member, as a sort of youth ambassador on global warming.
"I felt my generation has helped fuck up the world, but I wanted to make the younger generation more aware of their environment," he told Mashable.
Hempleman-Adams, who is the retired chairman of Global Resins, a UK-based epoxy and polyurethane resin systems company, plans to sail the Northabout to Greenland this summer with a crew of young people from inner cities.
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Michael Coghlan/flickr
Growth in artificial lawns poses threat to British wildlife, conservationists warn.
The growing trend to lay fake lawns instead of real grass causes loss of habitat for wildlife and creates waste that will never biodegrade.
Growing trend to lay fake lawns instead of real grass causes loss of habitat for wildlife and creates waste that will never biodegrade
Artificial grass companies are reporting an increase in sales.
Artificial grass companies are reporting an increase in sales. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
Sandra Laville
Monday 4 July 2016 02.00 EDT
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Environmentalists have warned that a growing trend to lay artificial lawns instead of real grass threatens the loss of wildlife and habitat across Britain.
From local authorities who purchase in bulk for use in street scaping, to primary schools for children’s play areas and in the gardens of ordinary suburban family homes, the sight of pristine, green artificial grass is becoming a familiar sight. One company has registered a 220% year-on-year increase in trade of the lawns.
But as families, councils and schools take to turfing over their open spaces with a product which is most often made from a mix of plastics – polypropylene, polyurethane and polyethylene – there is growing alarm amongst conservationists and green groups.
They say the easy fix of a fake lawn is threatening the habitat of wildlife, including butterflies, bees and garden birds as well as creating waste which will never biodegrade.
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Mathew Frith, director of conservation at the London Wildlife Trust, said: “You are using fossil fuels to make it, so there is a carbon impact there, you have to remove a significant amount of soil to lay it so you are reducing the direct and indirect porosity of the soil, you are removing habitat which a wide range of species are dependent on and at the end of its life this is a non-biodegradable product which ultimately goes back into landfill. So yes we are concerned at its proliferation.”
But the demand for the flawless vibrant green carpet, which needs little or no maintenance and does not need cutting, is growing. Some landscape gardeners are dropping their traditional gardening work in favour of spending 100% of their time excavating soil, laying hardcore and installing fake lawns.
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Paul Wackett, a landscape gardener from Cobham in Surrey, said: “It has gone absolutely crazy this year. Ninety nine percent of it is domestic homes – from small houses up to large houses with big gardens who use it as a feature around their hot tubs.
“Everyone is living in a very busy world now, no one has time to do anything except work. They work hard and they play hard so they are having this laid if they have children or dogs and they want to enjoy the garden but don’t have want to maintain it. There is no lawn mowing, no watering.”
Companies from small start-ups to longstanding market leaders that began life providing artificial turf for football and hockey pitches are reporting similar demand.
Eamon Sheridan, managing director of Artificial Grass London, said there had been an increase in demand across the board. “We have seen a 63% increase in sales in our case, but we are part of a group of companies, one of which, Artificial Grass Direct, has been established a lot longer, and so far they have seen a 220% increase in sales this year on last year.”
Research in 2011 revealed that 3,000 hectares (12 sq miles) of garden vegetation had been lost over eight years in the UK – which amounts to more than two Hyde Parks a year. Much, if not all, of this loss was down to decking, concreting over gardens, and the use of artificial grass, Frith said.
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Paul de Zylva, senior nature campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: “I think the negative impacts of artificial grass are substantial. For the sake of convenience and not wanting the children to get muddy, what is it we are losing here?
“You will find bees burrowing into lawns which are a mix of grass seeds, other insects will be in there too, and worms – which are incredibly important in terms of the ability of the soil to absorb nutrients and keep soil structured, so that when you have heavy rain or drought you have a soil system which can cope. By using artificial grass, you lose all this. You are creating a ‘Don’t come here sign,’ for wildlife.”
Even those who have benefited from the boom in fake grass are finding that high demand does not always mean an easy life.
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Robert Redcliffe, managing director of Nam grass, which has been in the UK for six years, said the demand was now so great that his high-quality European-made product was increasingly being undercut by cheaper imports from the far east.
“It is becoming, as everything does, a very, very competitive market; we can use all our unique selling points but at the end of the day it’s the price that talks,” he said. “Every day there are boatloads of low-quality, cheaper products being shipped over from China. That is our greatest problem at the moment.”
And Redcliffe has some sympathy for the environmental case. “I would agree them; it’s not for everyone, and it’s not for every bit of the garden. Half my garden is artificial grass, where the children’s play area is, but the rest is natural lawn with lots of shrubs and plants. I spend all my time trying to make the lawn look as good as the artificial one.”
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