Right. The horror story that I remember from my first engagement with pollution issues was mine tailings in Lake Superior. The attitude of the mining companies was incredible. They claimed it wasn't their problem.
So, we struggle along with an agency that has to do things that are going to annoy people, or cost them money. So be it. There's no going back, for those of us old enough to remember how dismal things looked before there was an EPA.
Actually phosphorous in wastewater is not just a pollution issue. It is also a matter of cost for sewage treatment plants. Removing phosporous is the most complex and costly step in sewage treatment.
Well, based on some discussion in the (legitimate) greenie press out here a few years back, they don't even try in most of the wastewater treatment in this area.
It requires a biological holding pool, right? Algae or something.
There are special phosphorous absorbing algae, but most use reactions with various inorganic compounds that require a specific pH. Then the precipate has to be filtered or allowed to settle, then the pH re-adjusted.
Joseph Gwinn on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:43:47 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
Hmm, haven't had a chance to check that link.
But the question comes to mind, would this lack of phosphate also effect washing machines? Especially in a single bachelor house, where laundry generally gets done once a month, "need to or not". Although there have been times when I've let it slide for two months.
tschus pyotr
"Josepi" on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:40:10 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
Tain't just slick sales people, it is Energy Star ratings. Seems that the top loaders "just use too much water and electricity", so to get their usage down. the manufacturers have gone to front loaders. All things combined, they do not get clothes clean. Consumer Reports has a recent article about this, that they have been unable to recommend an top loader model, due to this failure to get clothes clean. Which is a result of the EPA/et al mandate to lower "energy usage". It doesn't help if I have to wash clothes twice to get them half clean.
Fortunately, I 'm a career bachelor. If they don't stand up by themselves, or aren't a hazard to have in contact with the skin, "good enough".
The units that have an "Energy Star" rating purchased for them shows the manufacturers can't sell them.
"Energy Star" trademarks do not indicate the most efficient appliances only the ones they are trying to squeeze more money, on the sale, out of. The real MPG is in the user's corner and most won't touch a front load next time. They use the same amount of water and take four hours to do their 15 cycles to save the water. Poor reasoning
If consumers or manufacturers really wanted to save water they would only purchase machines with suds savers on them. Try to find one. The phony eco-concern is only marketing hype to make you unhappy with your old obsolete machine in white.
eco = economics for the manufacturer.
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Fortunately, I 'm a career bachelor. If they don't stand up by themselves, or aren't a hazard to have in contact with the skin, "good enough".
[snip]
This is a false dichotomy, and in addition fails back-of-the-envelope reasonableness calculations.
The false dichotomy is the claim that we can have either clean rivers or clean glasses. Actually, there is no reason not to have both, as discussed next.
The main use of phosphate chemicals is fertilizer: "About 95% of the phosphate rock mined is used to produce fertilizers, animal feeds and pesticides." [1]
This leaves 5% for everything else, including dishwasher detergents. Modern dishwashers use a few ounces of detergent per wash, while farms use phosphate fertilizer by the ton. The difference is thus orders of magnitude.
So even if we stopped washing dishes altogether, nothing much would change.
As I said above, The basic problem [with the EPA] is that they don't know when to just stop, to just declare victory and move on.
Joe Gwinn
[1] "World Phosphate Production: Overview and Prospects", L. CISSE and T. MRABET, World Phosphate Institute, 3, Rue Abdelkader Al Mazini, 20001 Casablanca, Morocco, in Phosphorus Research Bulletin Vol. 15 (2004) p. 21-25, <
To be reasonable, the back-of-the-envelope calculations need to account for the fact that most sewage treatment systems do not remove phosphate, and often deliver it directly to water bodies vulnerable to algal blooms. On the other hand, fertilizers are applied to soil, which effectively binds the phosphorous. Which explains why, as someone else mentioned, septic systems with leach fields generally do not release much phosphorous.
Septic systems do release considerable nitrogen, which is the limiting nutrient in salt water, at least here in the northeast. Excess algae on the clam flats here is often a sign of nitrogen runoff in coves with limited tidal flushing, whereas phosphorous isn't really a problem.
Yeah, except when it does. Cumulative phosphate use from washing clothes, in densly populated areas, can be a much higher percentage of the phosphate load on rivers. I haven't seen the numbers for a while but I recall that it was a high percentage in the Delaware at one time. There isn't as much ag runoff in that river as in many others.
Too_Many_Tools fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@j15g2000yqf.googlegroups.com:
TMT, you paint the subject with too broad a brush.
IF you specify a particular chemical, you may say, "This does (or does not) stay in the water." Not all chemicals do, and household bleach - which was mentioned - is one of the ones that completely decomposes, quickly.
Don't fall into believing the nanny-state mantra that ALL things artificial are automatically permanent pollutants. They aren't.
LLoyd
Too_Many_Tools fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@j15g2000yqf.googlegroups.com:
TMT, you paint the subject with too broad a brush.
IF you specify a particular chemical, you may say, "This does (or does not) stay in the water." Not all chemicals do, and household bleach - which was mentioned - is one of the ones that completely decomposes, quickly.
Don't fall into believing the nanny-state mantra that ALL things artificial are automatically permanent pollutants. They aren't.
LLoyd
====================
I guess you must be saying that chlorine is OK to inhale then.
Quite moronic. I can't see it so it must be OK.
[snip]
There are a few problems here.
First, we are talking about dishwashing, not clothes washing, which makes for a big difference in detergent use, at least a factor of ten. I don't know about others, but I have not been having any problems with clothes washing detergents. The problem is with dishwashing detergents.
Second, Delaware is an outlier, being a very small state with a very large fraction of non-farming households. The Delaware River promptly flows into the Atlantic Ocean, joining the outflow from the rest of the Eastern Seaboard. What matters is the aggregate.
Third, animals (including humans) excrete phosphorus in their excrement: "However, where used, detergent phosphates contribute only 5 - 20% of phosphates in sewage (most phosphate in sewage comes from human bodily functions and food wastes), and sewage itself is only a minority source of phosphate to the environment compared to agriculture." [2]
To summarize, 95% of phosphate goes into agriculture, and thus to phosphate runoff. Of the remaining 5%, detergents are a fraction of that 5%. Of detergents, something like 90% was for clothes washing, and maybe 10% was for dishwashing. This was before the effort to remove phosphates from detergents was undertaken, but even then only (5%)(10%)=
0.5% went into dishwashing detergents. After the removal effort, this has been reduced to a fraction of 0.5%.So, the focus would have to be on agriculture. The problem is that crop plants cannot be convinced that they don't need phosphorus to grow.
Joe Gwinn
[2] "Questions and Answers on the use of phosphate in detergents", 10 February 2011, CEEP (Centre Européen d¹Etudes sur les Polyphosphates), .
Speaking of which, I drove over the Cuyahoga the day before it caught on fire. My luck was running good.
Right. I'm just comparing total househeld use versus the runoff. I didn't even know there were phosphates in dishwasher detergent until you brought it up.
I don't think I would have noticed except that I had Oakite as a client while it was happening, and their engineers brought it up in discussion. But I noticed as soon as I tried adding some TSP, per their suggestion, to really dirty loads of clothes.
Ok. As I said, I'm involved with the Delaware Estuary Project (I wonder what the mailman thinks when he delivers my copy of _Delaware Estuary News_ every month? ) The river has been important to me for most of my life. So I'm concerned specifically with the issues involved there.
We've had some discussion here about the fact that phosphates are difficult to remove in sewerage treatment, and I just followed up last night by reading up on it, trying to refresh my slight memory of it and to learn something. We apparently have poor sequestration of phosphates in much of the Delaware watershed. And, as you say, it's an outlier, with very high population in the watershed and relatively less agriculture. The lower Hudson is in a similar situation.
Overall, I don't doubt that.
The amelioration efforts in the Delaware watershed have been studied, and isolated to the degree that was possible. As I stated earlier, eliminating phosphates in clothes-washing detergent had a (claimed) measurable effect on oxygen levels in the lower Delaware. Consumer education programs about lawn and garden fertilizing and runoff did not. Commercial agriculture efforts and regulations also had a measurable effect.
Not having any background in this, I can't address the individual issues. But my understanding is that fertilizing timing is an issue; release rates are an issue; plowing practice is an issue; quantities are an issue. All are being addressed by one institution or another.
It's better than sitting around and sucking our thumbs, but I don't know the numbers.
I had a bottle or two of "Burning River" beer in Cleveland last week (along with an awesome sandwich at this place:
...
He's not saying that at all. Or implying it. Where do you get that?
Bob
Ha! We should try comparing that with New Jersey's finest, "River Horse," brewed on the banks of the Delaware in historic, scenic, Lambertville, NJ.
Feh. A pox on both their houses. Go Yankees. d8-) (yes, that's a Yankees cap)
Well, around the Chesapeake Bay, Frank Purdue and friends must build grass strips protecting waterways; the idea being such helps absorb the runoff before it overloads the watercourse with nutrients.
(...)
There is a 'slippery slope'! How much would a barrel of oil cost if we had to 'create' it from decaying plants?
--Winston
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