Editor:
A submission to the Tribune described “hysteria” occurring at the public meeting about rail ties and asked for common sense.
I missed the hysteria part, but I am encouraged that the writer recommended common sense.
I am old enough to remember the smoking lung-cancer debate during the 1950s and early 60s.
Science discovered a link to lung cancer.
The tobacco companies and big money reminded the public that science had not “proven” the link.
When celebrity Humphrey Bogart was dying from lung cancer, he publicly stated, what was public awareness, that he knew his disease was caused by years of smoking.
Sixty years later, the link is definitive. There is a common public acknowledgement that when diesel fuel is used to apply creosote to wood that the resultant mix should not be incinerated because unhealthy emissions will be discharged into our air.
It’s common sense!
The power plant, when built, could reduce fly ash effectively.
However, in the intervening 25 years, science has closed the gap on understanding the negative health effects of ultrafine particles, measured in nanometers, and has concluded that these nano-sized particles create lung and heart problems.
Further work will eventually determine quantity and accumulation effects.
In the meantime, science will catch up to common sense.
There is another persistent belief that is generally regarded as “common” — that if one incinerates at high enough temperatures, then the toxic substances are rendered harmless.
Atlantic Power maintains that the combination of high temperature incineration in the presence of its electrostatic precipitator will remove particulate matter while burning rail ties, as it did when burning clean wood.
The public is asked to accept the high temperature-destroys-toxic-substance claim as common sense.
The data driven research group, Partnership for Policy Integrity, in the United States, in 2011 found that electrostatic precipitators’ ability to remove ultrafine particles was “not truly effective.”
And in 2010 the EPA recognized that nitrous oxides and sulphur dioxide are produced at high temperatures, not destroyed.
Even as late as 2015, the group Electrostatics’ stated the following:
The efficiency of removal of dust particles smaller than a few micrometers in diameter by conventional electrostatic precipitators decrease(s) with decreased particle size.
It is also common sense that government regulations will protect the public.
Atlantic Power insists emissions are within standards. The standards can be found on the MOE website, updated in January 2016.
The plant’s manager, in a letter to The Tribune, on March 1, 2016, refers to emissions in parts per billion.
The MOE has no guidelines for particulate matter in parts per billion for coarse (PM10) or fine (2.5) particles, and ultrafine particles are not mentioned at all.
It is, therefore, easy to be within non-existent guidelines.
Common sense was ahead of science concerning smoking and lung cancer in the 1950’s.
Common sense is still out in front on this newest danger to human health.
Peter Smith
Williams Lake
