Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
Think of Switzerland and think of Alps, Mountain Lakes, and ozone.
Switzerland has the highest concentrations of ozone in Europe.
Scientists look for answers.
And disgusted with the way your lawn looks, get mad.
Get out the rototiller.
Fall is for planting especially grass seed.
And a crisis on the water.
André Mele says pleasure motorboats are killing American waterways.
So if Saddam Hussein sent people over here to dump 400 million gallons of oil into our
waterways, our lakes, our bays, our streams, our coastal waters, it would be an act of war.
These stories on the Environment Show, a national production made possible by Hemmings Motor
News, the national Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont, and by the
JM Kaplan Fund of New York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
Switzerland has some of the highest concentrations of ozone in Europe.
Although it is generally assumed the problem largely is due to heavy industry in neighboring
countries and dense north-south road traffic, the exact composition of Swiss ozone-based
smog and its formation are still unknown.
For this reason, research is currently being conducted jointly between Swiss scientists
and experts from the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Julie Hunt went along to Burns-Belp Airport to have a look at the airborne measuring equipment.
Here at the picturesque airport of Belpahanger is set assigned for the Polymetry Research
as Special Aircraft.
The project leaders showed me around.
I'm Bruno Nininger.
I'm the first function program director of the Polymetry project.
It means looking for organisation of the field phase measurements that are going on now.
As almost a hobby, I'm also involved in one of these measurements, for instance, with this motor glider.
We're standing right under a glider at the moment.
It's hanging precariously above our heads.
You cannot see the propeller now.
It's hidden behind the hood in the front and below the very long wings through our underwing
pods. These are containers 2.3 meters long and carrying each about 50 kg of equipment,
scientific equipment to measure ozone, nitrogen oxides, peri-site, metrological parameters.
And we measure in the air the air pollution and air flow condition of the air in general.
For three hours usually.
And what do the conditions have to be like to go there in the first place?
Sonny Sunshine, the ozone production is clearly developed in these underwing pods in the
free air stream.
The instruments take the air in and measure the concentration of ozone.
In the same hangar is a twin engine king air flown over from America.
It's been used for atmospheric testing all over the world and for measuring oil fire plumes
in the Middle East following the Gulf War.
The king air is more sophisticated than the glider and can make complicated measurements of exotic
substances.
For example, formaldehyde and organic peroxides, which could help to distinguish between the man
and the man made part of hydrocarbons emitted in the atmosphere and the biogenic compounds.
The plane can also measure nitrogen oxides more specifically and this is very important in this
final stage of research where very detailed information is needed.
Greg Koch, a scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,
Colorado showed me around the plane.
The Swiss are interested in the most effective control strategy for ozone pollution in the Swiss
middle-owned here.
The ozone can come from two different sources, either nitrogen oxides or the hydrocarbons.
And the question is which of these species, if you reduce the most, will give the most effective
ozone control.
And so on our airplane, we have measurements of nitrogen oxides.
We have collecting hydrocarbon canisters that are going to be analyzed by some people at
the Paul Sherer Institute here in Switzerland.
And we have another number of ancillary measurements that fit into this chemistry picture.
And so we can look at it after we're done flying and say this, either the nitrogen oxides control or the
hydrocarbon control will be the most effective strategy for this.
Okay, can we perhaps look at this in the instruments you used here?
Certainly.
Yeah, come on inside the aircraft and you can see it's very crowded in here.
You have to sort of crouch over and work your way along.
There's room for just myself to run the instruments in the back and we fly with two pilots up front.
We have a completely contained computer system that records all the data.
And then there's a computer screen that I can watch and get a immediate feedback on what concentrations of species were measuring.
And so far, where for you has been the most interesting pollution layer?
Well, we had a flight yesterday between Over Lake Narsha Tell and that showed a fairly homogeneous atmosphere.
And then we were flying between Hossley and Bergdorf and there seemed to be just a layer above that.
We can't tell where it came from yet, but there was a definitely elevated levels of nitrogen oxides and particles above those cities.
The recommended maximum level of ozone is 120 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
The problem is that the natural concentration of ozone isn't much below this, so it doesn't take many external influences to exceed the limit.
The high concentrations of ozone in Switzerland have a lot to do with topography.
The mountains suck air in during the day, densely populated cities produce gases which mix with the air at relatively high altitudes.
The high summer sun hits the air gas cocktail and turns it to smog. So how can the level be reduced? Bruno Nainiger?
Going back with these concentrations, it's not enough to say half the emissions of the pollutants and then we have only half of the ozone.
But it needs about 80% of reduction to get half of the ozone or even less.
But really society has to decide do we want to reduce to a level that we are sure that it doesn't harm or does society decide?
Well, we want to have a level that is above this, but then we can just do as we want. That's a political question.
Are the levels going up every year or are they generally stable?
No, they even came down during the last three years. That means the counter measures that were taken in the last few years,
they really had positive results and this shows that we really have it in hand to do something, but we fear that this improvement might turn back to a deterioration because of more mobility, more industry and so on.
So we have to be careful that the benefits we had during the last few years are not eaten up.
And is there any connection in all this with the destruction of the ozone hole that layer, the ozone layer higher up in the sky?
Not directly. I mean in principle both is a problem caused by man, by substances, the civilization is emitting, but it has absolutely nothing to do with each other.
And this makes this issue quite complicated to be discussed in the public.
Meteorologists and chemists applied for separate grants to study the effects of high ozone levels and the results are being pooled.
Experiments are now taking place all over Switzerland, for example in Zeland near Mount Voy and over the lake of BN.
Over the next few days, tethered balloons and other balloon systems as well as ground stations will be taking part in the smog studies if the weather is sunny.
And the results will be compared with those of the Pouloumette Research Program in Belp.
Julie Hunt reporting jointly for the Environment Show and Swiss Radio International.
You water your lawn, you give it fertilizer, you mow it faithfully and still it looks just terrible. Weeds, the wrong kind of grass in many places where the grass won't even grow.
Well before you give up, there is one more thing you might try. Larry Sumpke, the environmental gardener, says now in the fall is the best time to try this.
Before our next visit, he warned us though, prepare for quite a sight. So consider yourself warned.
Larry, what are you doing? Well, it looks like I'm out here tilling up my yard, which is exactly what I'm doing.
Larry, I got to tell you, most people mow their lawn. What are you doing with a rototiller on your front lawn?
Well, I'm going to replant my whole front lawn with new grass. And there's lots of ways of doing it. Typical landscape would tell you just to spray it with herbicide to kill everything.
But I'm not in favor of doing that for my lawn and anybody else's lawn. So I'm doing a field fashion way. I'm going to till up all the ground up matter. I'm going to till up all my old lawn, then I'll rake out all the big pieces and then I'll take it from there.
Why are you starting this project at the end of the growing season? Well, September, early October is a real good time to plant grass. It's actually the best time of the year in middle of August, the best time of the year to plant grass in most of the country.
Now, not in the deep south, the wayway deep south, in certain desert areas, but most of the parts of the country fall as the best time to plant the grass because you're not competing with annual weeds like crab grass.
If you plant grass in the spring, you're inviting the annual weeds like crab grass to germinate. They don't germinate in the fall. The crab grass has already gone through its season.
So now is a good time to plant the grass so that it has the whole plain field to itself.
What about the seed? I imagine that's going to be kind of an important part of your project.
Well, the main reason I'm redoing this grass is in my lawn, because first of all, it doesn't look too good anymore.
It's old. I've had this house for about four years now, and this lawn was here before. I moved in and grass seeds, just in the last five years or ten years, have advanced very much.
Science has caught up with grass seed, and we now have these new modern designs of grass seed that will fight off most bugs all by themselves.
And as a matter of fact, in the moment of show you the grass seed, I have... I just got this new bag of grass seed in.
What I'm going to plant is a blend, a mixture of different types of grass. And I've got a blend here of perennial rye grass and some fescue.
I got this from a company called North Country Organics. It's up in Vermont. I think Burlington, Vermont, or someplace like that.
I can get the address for you if you want it. And they have this new grass seed. Just look at that. I really encourage people to buy super premium grass seed.
The most expensive grass seed they can get, because as you can see with this grass seed... The lawn road is going to be worth it.
Yeah, because you get better germination. You have no... There's no chaff in here. That's just pure grass seed. And this is a nice blend.
One of the great things about the newer types of grass seed is that it's... The grass seed, especially the perennial rye grass and some of the fescue, is are treated with endophytic fungi.
Which is a naturally occurring fungi that when the grass grows, it's repellent to chinch bugs and bill bugs and all kinds of other bugs.
So you have this natural form of pest control without using any chemicals at all.
Also, what I'm going to do with this lawn is I'm not just going to go out there and plant the grass. I'm going to add natural organic fertilizer. I'm going to work some organic matter.
As a matter of fact, I'm going to work some of the compost in out of my compost piles. You've seen me work on my compost piles. So I'm going to put that up there on the grass. I'm going to till all of that in.
And then I'm going to put the grass seed down.
Can you do all that today?
Not today. I had it planned to do today. This was my big data plant grass.
But I just found out that I have to take my son to soccer practice. So if you come back tomorrow, I'm going to be putting down the grass seed.
I'm going to put the straw on it, tamp it in, get it water and get the grass growing.
Okay, I won't tell the neighbors what you're doing. They look at you're doing something strange with your rotatiller and your front lawn.
But we'll see you next time, Larry.
All right. Take care. See you tomorrow.
Bye-bye.
Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener, author of beautiful easy gardens.
His rotatilled lawn is in the front of his home in Hollowville, New York. This is Bruce Robertson.
Oil is not calming troubled waters. It is troubling calm waters.
Says Andre Mele in polluting for pleasure. A controversial new book documenting the appalling amount of oil spilled each year by motorboats,
applying America's waterways.
Outboard motors and all marine engines. The case is that through statistical analysis of engine emissions and quantities of boats and the duty cycles of boats.
There's an inescapable conclusion that pleasure voting accounts for as much atmospheric and water pollution as all the cars, trucks and buses in America today.
A relatively small number of boats, 12 million of them, of which 8 million are outboards, are emitting something on the order of 400 million gallons of toxic hydrocarbons every year.
And that would be like having 40x on-valid these oil spills every year in a slow, seeping manner. If you can envision that.
It's never a spectacular disaster like a tanker spill or a barred spill. In fact, often it can't even be seen.
In fact, numerous tests have failed to detect this stuff.
Andre Mele speaking to us on the shores of the Hudson River near his home in Woodstock, New York. He says the issue of long-term low-level oil pollution has not gotten a lot of attention for several reasons, as he just mentioned, a big spill such as the Exxon Valdez, while tragic is nevertheless something almost heroic, large, dramatic and demanding.
The oil spilled from just one outboard motor is barely noticeable at first, but writes Mele, there is more to the story.
I believe that it's escaped people's scrutiny through a number of reasons, primary of which are the diligent efforts of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the NMMA, which has spent millions and millions of dollars lobbying in Congress and in the media, promoting the potential of the public.
It's a remarkable concept that pleasure boat pollution not only is not bad or injurious to marine life, but that it's actually good for marine life, and that marine life thrives under it.
As these studies, dating from 1975 at the EPA, were flawed in their methods of gathering the data, with tests conducted in dug ditches, simulating a water body, not at all a real life situation.
Further says Mele, the studies were not even looking in the right place. Remember, oil does not mix with water.
The fate of oil from marine engines is twofold. The first is that it collects in the uppermost couple of millimeters of the surface.
This region is called the sea surface or water surface, if you will, microlayer. It's literally only a couple of millimeters thick, and that is where the oil goes.
That is also where the young of something like 90% of all aquatic species spend much of their time when they are very young, critically vulnerable, as larva, spat, fry, eggs, whatever, what have you.
That's where the phytoplankton and other major food sources for marine species also collect.
What happens to the young of the marine species and to their food is that the hydrocarbons, they enter the food web through their effects on the phytoplankton, and the process of bio-accumulation starts by which you get increasingly more complex and larger animals that have more and more of the stuff in them.
The most important thing to do is to get to the times where it reaches thousands of times greater levels, thousands of times greater than in the host waters.
You affect the reproductive rates of the marine species, whereas you might expect a normal population of a turbot or something like that to have, let's say, a 70, 80% reproductive rate.
Not only is the birth rate low, the mutation rate is high, surviving but badly deformed. This low level pollution is lethal in another way.
In vision that stuff has a thin scum on the surface of the water, it collects around the edges, like a bathtub ring.
In fact, this is actually the term that's being used by some researchers in the Pacific Northwest right now.
It vectors almost diabolically right into the chalos, the coastal chalos, the marshes, the regions, the silty, rich nutrient-laden regions, which are also nursery regions, the other big nursery regions for marine species.
So this pollution goes right to the heart of the reproductive cycle of marine life as we know it.
And there are lots of data that indicate that marine life in oceans and freshwater is diminishing, just slowly and inexorably diminishing.
And it's from obviously a number of sources, but this has got to be one of them.
Fine, you say, but what has this got to do with me? According to Milley, quite a lot.
Hydrocarbons have, there are some aspects of hydrocarbons that are deeply, deeply disturbing.
For instance, a lot of communities pull their drinking water from waterways that have pleasure-boding, lots of pleasure-boding.
Now, what happens then is that the hydrocarbons are taken into the water and they are processed and they are chlorinated.
The hydrocarbons are not filtered out by the water treatment process. They are passed along to you, the drinker.
Now, what happens at you, the drinker, is twofold. There are already known compounds that are related to chlorinated hydrocarbons that even naturally occur.
But it is my belief and it is my contention that hydrocarbons in a chlorinated environment, atmosphere, if you will, such as a water treatment plant,
will combine to form various chlorinated hydrocarbons. Now, chlorinated hydrocarbons give you the chemistry of things like carbon tetra chloride, which is a carcinogen,
and give you all sorts of things like DDT, HEPTain, all those horgandus awful pesticides that we thought we were getting rid of 20 years ago.
Once hydrocarbons enter our body, they mingle and bond with fatty tissues, interfering with hormones and even DNA. Cancer, malformation, low birth rate, and a long list of other problems could result from hydrocarbon buildup.
If all of this is the case, and MLA makes a convincing case that it is, the question is, what do we do?
All that is required is that automotive standards be applied to boats and that automotive technology be put into boats.
Boats still use this adivistic technology, some of it is 20, 30, 40 years old. You know, imagine 56 Chevy is driving around with no catalytic converters, no fuel injection, no nothing.
Sucking down gas at unbelievable rates, it is my belief from statistical analysis again that pleasure boats are the most profligate fuel guzzlers of any form of transportation, possibly with the exception of a combat, a single seat combat fighter jet in supersonic mode in combat.
That has fewer passenger miles, definitely. But the space shuttle gets better mileage than a typical family run about. Every car, a semi-truck, a bulldozer, anything.
So, a Sherman tank. So, there is no earthly reason why we cannot apply even simple automotive standards that exist today. There is no earthly reason why we can't have catalytic converters, fuel injection, engine management, some of which is beginning to creep into the marine product mix as the NMMA will be very proud to tell you.
The problem is it is much too little and much too late.
The NMMA, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, has mele clearly outlines in polluting for pleasure, is standing in the way of both public education on this issue and in the way of technological improvements to stop the pollution.
There is absolutely no excuse for this to continue. It is a 400 million gallon a year. It is an act of war. If Saddam Hussein sent people over here to dump 400 million gallons of oil into our waterways, our lakes, our bays, our streams, our coastal waters, it would be an act of war.
But if we do it to ourselves, we don't seem to mind. It can't go on.
Andrei Mele, Boat Builder, Sailor, and author of numerous works including a new book, polluting for pleasure. It is available from WWW, NJ.
So far, no official reaction from the NMMA except a closed or press conference held recently to issue a generic white paper statement on the association's commitment to a clean, healthy outdoors.
There is reason to believe, however, reaction will be felt soon, delayed the way a boat's wake comes ashore long after the boat has passed. This is Bruce Robertson.
Music
Well, that's our report on the Environment Show this week. Thanks much for joining us for a cassette copy of the program called 1-800-767-1929. Ask for the Environment Show No. 194.
The Environment Show, a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content, Dr. Ellen Chartock, executive producer, this is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York and by Heming's Motor News, the national Bible of the old car hobby, Monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
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