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HEALTH 03-09-10 DM EE E3 BLACK
TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010
KLMNO
Science
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THE GREEN LANTERN
Post Carbon
6
washingtonpost.com/postcarbon
Nothing cut and dried about cleaning
Adapted from The Post’s climate change blog.
by Nina Shen Rastogi
Young people don’t seem to be
especially hot about climate change
I live around the corner from a dry
cleaner, but there’s also a “green”
Contrary to popular belief, young people are not more dry cleaner on the other side of
politically engaged on the issue of climate change than town. Am I total jerk if I keep going
older Americans, according to a new climate poll conducted to my regular spot?
by researchers at American, Yale and George Mason The problem with traditional
universities. dry cleaning is a liquid solvent
The researchers found “adults under the age of 35 are called “perc,” short for perchlo-
significantly less likely than their elders to say that they had roethylene. (Despite the moniker,
thought about global warming before today, with nearly a dry cleaning isn’t really dry; it
quarter (22 percent) of under-35s saying they had never just doesn’t involve water.) Perc is
thought about the issue previously. Only 38 percent of those what dissolves the gunk off your
between the ages of 18 and 34 say that they had previously clothes. It’s highly effective with-
thought about global warming either ‘a lot’ (10 percent) or out being labor-intensive and,
‘some’ (28 percent), compared to 51 percent of those 35-59 unlike the cleaning chemicals of
and 44 percent of those 60 and older. old, it’s not likely to burst into
“In addition, the issue of global warming is not flames. That’s why cleaners have
considered of any greater personal importance to under-35s been using it for the past 50
than it is to those 35 and older. Seventeen percent of adults years.
under 35 say that the issue of global warming is either People have been concerned
extremely or very important to them, a proportion that is about the chemical’s health risks
statistically equivalent to the 20 percent of those 35-59 and since the 1970s. Perchloroethy-
22 percent of those 60 and older who say this.” lene (also known as tetrachlo-
Matthew C. Nisbet, an assistant professor in AU’s School roethylene) is considered a toxic
of Communication, blogs about what news sources young air pollutant by the EPA, mean-
people trust when it comes to climate change. It turns out, ing that it’s “known or suspected
he writes, that “only 33 percent under the age of 35 trust the to cause cancer or other serious
news media as a source of information about climate health effects.” Short, intense
change, a proportion lower than any other age group. This blasts of perc can cause dizziness,
proportion is also only slightly higher than the 27 percent of headaches or loss of conscious-
those under 35 who trust Sarah Palin on climate change.” ness.
— Juliet Eilperin Indoor and outdoor air usually
contains a few micrograms of
SCIENCE NEWS
perc per cubic meter. At those
background levels, the New York
MICHAEL SLOAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
State Department of Health esti-
Without a wing, there’s not much of
mates that there’s a theoretical
risk of up to five additional peo- 5,000 micrograms per cubic me- than traditional perc cleaning,
a prayer for female mosquitoes ple in 1 million developing cancer ter. (The worst air was found in which may drive up the cost. The
after a lifetime of exposure. Some low-income and minority neigh- The Green Lantern is a weekly consensus seems to be that, with
First it was just swatting. Then poison. Then sterilizing
agencies have calculated slightly borhoods.) The authors of the environmental column from Slate. skilled technicians and the most
males. Is there anything people won’t try in the war against
higher risks. study noted that all of the clean- Read previous columns at up-to-date machinery, wet clean-
mosquitoes? The latest idea: Genetic engineering that results
According to one study done in ers involved were using up-to- www.slate.com/greenlantern. ing can be as safe and effective as
in flightless females.
New York City between 2001 and date equipment, so the difference dry cleaning.
Females do the biting, but if they can’t fly they can’t zoom in
2003, the air in apartments between the high- and low-emit- itself as eco-friendly. If the “green” cleaner in your
on their victims. They would be expected to die quickly on the
above dry cleaners had average ters was probably a result of poor One method that seems to area is using a different method,
ground, researchers suggest in a paper in a recent edition of
perc levels of 34 micrograms per work practices or lousy ventila- have gained relatively wide ac- the Lantern suggests doing some
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
cubic meter. The New York De- tion. ceptance from both environmen- homework before you start send-
The real goal is to prevent mosquitoes from spreading dis-
partment of Health estimates The problem is, there’s no easy talists and professional garment ing the business your suits and
ease, and the researchers, led by Luke Alphey of the University
that an additional 34 people in 1 way for you to figure out how cleaners is wet cleaning, which is blouses. A fact sheet from Cali-
of Oxford, are studying ways to reduce the spread of dengue
million would be at risk for devel- clean your local cleaner is. If you like a souped-up version of what fornia’s Air Resources Board — it
fever, found mostly in Asia, which mosquitoes carry.
oping cancer if they were ex- want to limit your personal con- you do at the laundromat. Gar- can be found at www.arb.ca.gov/
The researchers, several of whom have commercial inter-
posed to those levels over a life- tribution to the perc problem, ments are cleaned in computer- toxics/dryclean/Alternative
ests in the work, developed a method to genetically alter male
time. New York recommends that your best option is to check controlled washers and dryers Solvts_E.pdf — is a good place to
mosquitoes, then release them to mate with females in the
residential air contain no more whether any of the clothes you using soap and water, and then start. Be especially wary about
wild. The wing muscles of their female offspring would not
than 100 micrograms per cubic normally get dry-cleaned can be reshaped using specialized any dry cleaner that bills itself as
develop properly, preventing them from flying. (Males don’t
meter. You can start smelling laundered and pressed instead. equipment. Wet-cleaning has the “organic.” Sneaky “greenwash-
inherit the defect.)
perc, which has a sharp, sweet Meanwhile, if you do decide to added benefit of being the most ers” use the term in its strict
“It’s far more targeted and environmentally friendly than
odor, at around 30,000 micro- drive crosstown, remember the energy-efficient of all the alterna- chemistry-class sense: i.e., that
approaches dependent upon the use of chemical spray in-
grams per cubic meter. cardinal rule of responsible con- tives, since the used wash water the solvent being used is carbon-
secticides, which leave toxic residue,” Alphey said in a state-
Not all dry cleaners are created sumption: Just because a com- can go straight down the sewer. based. Under that definition,
ment. Other efforts to block transmission of diseases such as
alike. For example, in that New pany says its product is green, (In all other systems, solvents even perc is organic.
malaria have involved releasing sterile male mosquitoes,
York study, some apartments that doesn’t magically make it so. must be recovered, which re-
which could breed with females but produce no offspring. Bed
above dry cleaners showed perc There are a number of new gar- quires lots of additional energy.) Is there an environmental quandary
nets also are widely used, but the researchers said the dengue-
levels that weren’t much above ment-care processes on the mar- It does, however, require more that’s been keeping you up at night?
spreading mosquitoes bite in daytime rather than at night.
background, while others were ket, and just about every one that water than any other process, Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com,
Although this research is aimed at dengue, Alphey and co-
contaminated with as much as uses a non-perc solvent is billing and it’s more labor-intensive and check this space every Tuesday.
author Anthony A. James of the University of California at Ir-
vine said it could also be adapted to such diseases as malaria
and West Nile fever.
— Associated Press
SCIENCE SCAN
65 million years later, the question is settled
APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Developing a sharper image
sive wildfires, knocked down for- covered a 120-mile-wide, 1.5- in the current issue of the journal
WIRED MAGAZINE, MARCH ISSUE
Expert panel says
ests worldwide, and triggered mile-deep crater called Chicxulub Science.
massive tsunamis and earth- in Mexico of the same age as the “The answer is quite simple,”
It’s the hottest topic in applied math today: compressed one huge asteroid quakes of magnitude 11 or larger, K-T boundary. Most considered it Johnson, a co-author and spokes-
sensing (as opposed to all those other topics that we’ve been
doomed the dinosaurs
wiping out more than half of all the smoking gun for the extinc- man for the group, said in a tele-
so, ahem, diligently tracking). CS is an algorithm that takes species on Earth. tion. In recent years, however, phone news conference. “The cra-
low-resolution files and transforms them into sharp images. All of this may sound familiar. some scientists speculated about ter really is the culprit.”
For instance, a blurry digital photograph becomes crisp by by Thomas H. Maugh II In fact, the idea was proposed 30 alternative causes, arguing that Proponents of a multiple-im-
filling in all the missing pixels with a mathematical concept years ago by physicist Luis Alva- the extinction could have result- pact theory had pointed to sever-
called sparsity. The technique, discovered in 2004 by French It’s official: The extinction of rez and his son Walter after they ed from multiple asteroid im- al distinct layers of comet debris
mathematician Emmanuel Candès, has the potential to the dinosaurs and a host of other found abnormally high concen- pacts or, more likely, massive vol- near the Chicxulub crater as well
make data easier to gather, manipulate and interpret. For species 65.5 million years ago was trations of the element iridium in canic eruptions in India. as evidence that many species
instance, MRI machines could take seconds to produce im- caused by a massive asteroid that sediments from what was then To settle the question, re- survived the initial impact, only
ages that now take an hour — great news for claustropho- crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, known as the K-T boundary. This searchers assembled what Kirk R. to go extinct later. But the team
bics. Kudos to writer Jordan Ellenberg, an associate profes- creating worldwide havoc, ac- 65.5-million-year-old layer of Johnson of the Denver Museum concluded that those anomalies
sor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, for ex- cording to an international team Earth separates fossils of the Cre- of Nature & Science called “a K-T were created by jumbling of stra-
plaining the nitty-gritty of CS and sparsity in an of researchers. taceous period from those of the boundary dream team,” 45 re- ta when debris flowed back into
understandable way. No small feat. The 7.5-mile-wide asteroid was Tertiary period. nowned scientists from an array the crater after the impact.
traveling at about 10 times the Iridium is rare on Earth but of disciplines, to study possible And if volcanoes in India had
BLOGGING speed of a rifle bullet when it hit, common in space, and the Alva- causes of the mass extinction. caused the extinction, “we would
Nerd’s-eye view of science
releasing a billion times more en- rezes proposed that a giant aster- Funding came from the National expect to see events in the bio-
ergy than the Hiroshima atomic oid had hit the Earth, producing Science Foundation and from logical world associated with it,
WWW.OBSERVATIONSOFANERD.BLOGSPOT.COM
bomb. The impact blew dirt and the sudden decline in species. similar groups outside the United but we don’t,” Johnson said.
Christie Wilcox, 24, offers scientific snippets with wit rock around the world, set mas- Then, in 1991, researchers dis- States. Their conclusions appear — Los Angeles Times
(and citations!) on her blog, Observations of a Nerd. Her
nerd credentials include the fact that she’s working toward
a PhD in cell and molecular biology at the University of Ha-
waii and she stays home on Friday nights to watch the Dis-
covery channel. Recent topics include the habitat of tilapia,
the biological reason that women cheat on their partners
and a rant about the scientific inaccuracies in an episode of
one of her favorite TV shows, “Psych.” Wilcox’s blog is up for
three Research Blogging Awards 2010, given to Web sites
that discuss peer-reviewed research. Her work has been
nominated for best biology blog, best lay-level blog and best
blog post (for an exploration of the evolution of dogs). The
awards will be announced March 23.
— Rachel Saslow
Editor: Frances Stead Sellers • Assistant
HEALTH & Editors: Margaret Shapiro, Nancy
SCIENCE
Szokan • Art Director: Brad
Walters • Editorial Aides: Charity Brown,
Rachel Saslow • To Contact Us: health@washpost.com · 202-334-5031 ·
The Washington Post, Health, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
20071 • Advertising Information: Shawn Mckenna-Deane,
202-334-5750 · mckenna-deanes@washpost.com
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