#vocs

[unbfacts]

Researchers at the University of Washington changed pothos ivy so it can pull chlorine and benzene out of the air. The plant uses a liver‑like protein called 2E1 to turn these harmful gases into harmless molecules it can actually use to grow.

[mindblowingscience]

Meet Neo Px: the super plant that attacks air pollution

It may look like an innocent green plant, but its name evokes something far closer to a robot or interstellar rocket.

It may look like an innocent green plant, but its name evokes something far closer to a robot or interstellar rocket. Neo Px is a bioengineered plant capable of purifying indoor air at an unprecedented scale, the first in a potentially long line of such super-powered organisms. "It's the equivalent of up to 30 regular houseplants in terms of air purification," said Lionel Mora, co-founder of startup Neoplants. "It will not only capture, but also remove and recycle, some of the most harmful pollutants you can find indoors." Five years ago, the entrepreneur met Patrick Torbey, a genome editing researcher, who dreamed of creating living organisms "with functions." "There were plants around us, and we thought that the most powerful function we could add to them was to purify the air," said Mora, during a tour of a rented greenhouse in Lodi, California, two hours from San Francisco.

Continue Reading.

[wtf-fun-factss]

It turns out that new car smell isn't very good for you. Click to read the full fact.

[gaynaturalistghost]

My favorite part is when they put intact leaves and the caterpillars in a faraday cage (YEAH) still sealed up, but with airflow to a non-wounded plant, which then produced chemical defenses (VOCs) as if it was being chewed. Those VOCs are different than those produced by mechanically damaged plants too! This process can start in seconds, which is amazing! (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2012.08.006)

They’re referred to as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and this is one way plants communicate, from cells to forests. The first time I learned this in botany I’m pretty sure it was Zebelo et al., they put tomato plants in gas-controlled chambers and fed filtered air in, took out samples and leaves. They had a species of caterpillar (Spodoptera litura) eat some of the plants, and identified the VOCs they produced, a control group, and a group that was mechanically damaged (“chewed”).

The other experiment we talked about was Song et al. (2010), which showed that VOCs traveled through mycorrhizal networks (fungal networks, usually Glomeromycetes)! (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2012.08.006)

…So could you say Poison Ivy has seductive pheromones?

But idk! I don’t think it’s that simple! Are the humans targeted as pollinators? Sex pheromones are ideally between members of the same species so I might call BS if her “plant powers” are the cause, unless they have a specific function. The only comparison I can think of off the top of my head is how some orchid flowers looked like bees? Idk any botanists are welcome to derail this, flowering plants are not my forte. I feel like flirting is/would be enough.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

On any given day, bulk storage tanks around the United States hold more than 2 billion gallons of asphalt or residual fuel, much of it No. 6, according to the Energy Information Administration. Some of the tanks sit at refineries, but a majority are located at terminals, known as tank farms, like the ones in the Liscord’s neighborhood in South Portland.

While emissions from petroleum products like gasoline or jet fuel have long been known to be dangerous and are subject to state and federal regulation, asphalt and No. 6 fuel oil, classified as “heavy refinery liquids,” have been largely ignored by regulators because it was thought that their emissions were negligible.

But in an 18-month investigation, Inside Climate News found that emissions from heated tanks containing asphalt and No. 6 fuel oil pose a risk to the health of millions of Americans who live close to the tanks, one that federal and state regulators have failed to adequately address.

Changes in the petroleum refining process over the last 30 years have resulted in significant emissions from the two products when they are heated in tanks, as they must be to keep their contents in liquid form. And these emissions often contain VOCs that can pose a threat to human health, in some cases at levels high enough to violate federal clean air standards. The chemicals also combine with other pollutants to form ozone, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.

Yet companies that own the tanks have been routinely underreporting the extent of their emissions because instead of measuring the vapors from tanks, they estimate them using a set of equations developed by the petroleum industry and approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And those equations, it turns out, are often wrong.

Federal regulators and some industry insiders have known this for more than a decade, but have taken no action to mandate that companies report emissions or measure them directly. As a result, some states do not even require companies to track emissions from tanks containing asphalt or No. 6, and an overwhelming majority of states that do require it rely on the estimates from the petroleum industry equations.

[oamormeexplicoutudo]

Dá tudo e pede tudo. Mas tudo que Ele dá excede infinitamente ao que Ele pede. Mas não deixa de ser tudo - parafraseando #moysesazevedo - e tudo é tudo mesmo. #senhordetudo #jesus #PapaFrancisco #papaChico #senhordaminhavida #vocs #vocacao #chamado #sh #cal #catolicos #Catolicismo #vidamelhornãohá #shalom #santidade #nacarne #comshalom #valeapena https://www.instagram.com/p/BtrJHG1BLlu/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=qo7tcifvndfe

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Household products can really pollute the air

Auto exhaust isn’t the only major sources of air pollution, indoors and out. A new study finds a laundry list of household products can — when used by millions — match the contributions of traffic.

AUSTIN, Texas — Families wanting to reduce their impact on air pollution might need to do more than trade in a gas-guzzling car, a new study reports. It found that simple household items also are dirtying urban air. One example: those nicely scented air fresheners.

Paints, cleaning supplies and personal care products (think deodorants and hair sprays) are among common products that send a host of chemicals into the air. These air pollutants — some of them sweet smelling — now contribute as much to lung-irritating ozone and to tiny airborne particulates as does the burning of gasoline or diesel fuel.

It might not seem that way, but the finding is a mark of success, says Brian McDonald. He is a chemist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, Colo. He also was an author of the new study. And he shared some of his team’s findings February 15 during a news conference. It took place here, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His group’s data also were published February 16 in Science.

Steps to clean up car exhaust over the past few decades have had a huge effect, says McDonald. As a result, he notes, in cities “the sources of air pollution are now becoming more diverse.”

Spyros Pandis works at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. He’s a chemical engineer who did not take part in the study. “When you have a big mountain in front of you,” he explains, “it's difficult to know what lies behind it.” Now that big sources (such as traffic emissions) are falling, other sources become more visible.

The new study focused on a class of pollutants known as volatile organic compounds. Most are derived from petroleum or other fossil fuels. These VOCs are hundreds of diverse chemicals that easily evaporate. These gases then may linger in the air.

Some VOCs can be harmful when directly inhaled. Bleach and paint fumes make people lightheaded, for example. But beyond their immediate effects, VOCs also can react in the air with other chemicals. (These include oxygen and nitrogen oxides, largely from vehicle exhaust.) Those reactions can create ozone as well as fine particulates. High levels of fine particulate, tiny dustlike motes, can make it hard to breathe. They also can help foster chronic lung problems, diabetes and heart disease. (And while ozone high in the atmosphere helps shield earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, at ground level it mixes with fine particulates to brew up breath-choking smog.

For six weeks, the researchers collected air samples in Pasadena, Calif. This was at a site in the well-known smoggy Los Angeles valley. They also studied indoor air measurements made by other scientists. The team traced the VOCs in these air samples to their original sources. To do this, they used databases showing the particular VOCs released by different household products.

Those household products had an outsized effect on air pollution, the team now reports. By weight, people use about 15 times more gasoline and diesel compared with VOC-emitting goods, such as soaps, shampoos, deodorants, air fresheners, glues and cleaning sprays. Yet those household products were responsible for 38 percent of the VOC emissions, the researchers found. That amount is 6 percentage points higher than the share due to gasoline and diesel use. The VOCs from household products also contributed as much as the fuels did to the production of ozone and fine particulates.

[libartsecology]