Kent Armstrong and his Army of Turd Herders

William Cox

January 26th, 2016

Alan McIntyre

Everyone Loves a Good Turd Herder

Image from Da Begor Blog

In Proctor's Advanced Placement Environmental Science classroom on January 24th, we had a guest speaker who talked about his career as a Biologist, and how he plans on helping mother nature deal with the millions of toxic chemicals that are released naturally, and synthetically. His name was Kent Armstrong, and he introduced himself by telling a story from his ever present youth. "I have worn many hats," Says Armstrong, "I started out as a turd herder..." Everyone fell somewhat silent, as is typical of teenagers when they don't quite understand a joke. Armstrong started his career as a Biologist in a waste water treatment facility, conducting tests on the possibly contaminated water. He reminisced about the time he applied for the job, and how he had never seen a magnetically stirred beaker before: "Walk me through all these tests, If I can't do them in two weeks, I will fire myself... 

and I was there for three years." Expressing his constant will to learn, a value that has high praise at Proctor Academy, he kept the lecture interesting with stories from his past. He explained that his job is to test the chemical compositions of surface water in certain areas. "[Microbes] love carbon" Armstrong states, describing some of the larger carbons found in certain toxins, like gasoline. He says that the goal of his work is to add bio-stimulants to increase bioremediation. He also described the most common toxins to the Earth today. Including building materials, like lead paint or asbestos. Also including metals, like sand/dust, or Lead (Pb) Arsenic (As), and Cadmium (Cd). Finally, organic pollutants, like petrol, and solvents. Solvents are typically Chlorine (Cl) based, he adds. He also begins to talk about the dangers of Poly Fluorinated Solvents. Due to their molecular complexity, they are especially hard to fix through bioremediation. He begins to talk about how bioremediation actually works, how great Mother Nature has begun to design microbes who process the bad chemicals through respiration. One of Armstrong's goals is to engineer a microbe that will breath Poly Fluorinated Solvents.

PFo Molecular Diagram
Found on Google Images

"[Synthetic] Solvents were introduced in 1837 (or something like that) for dry cleaning. In 1940 they were mass produced to clean the grease off of metal for the production of war machines, especially for the air force... Since then, theres now about sixty genera of [microbes] who can breath this stuff" Kent describes Earth's resourcefulness in engineering new critters constantly to deal with toxins created and extracted by us insidious critters. 

Screenshot from Kent Armstrong Video 

Armstrong goes on to explain a complicated respiratory response from certain microbes, who breath in chlorinated molecules and eliminate chlorine atoms, one electron at a time. "I enhance their ability to breathe the chloride atom." Unfortunately, through this process, Vinyl Chloride is created, which is an extremely toxic carcinogen, and one of Kent's worst fears in life. He then goes on to describe some of the other toxic chemicals, and why we should avoid them. He talks about old hairspray and nail polish remover, "Like anything else, if it tastes really good, its probably bad for you" These chemicals are directly made out of Vinyl Chlorine, and are "One of the worst things you could put in your mouth."
Hopefully, there will be a day when Bioremediation of chlorine will result in Ethyne, which is a clean chemical that could probably be extremely useful, if humanity decided to adapt to it as a commodity. But this goal is some time off. "Why are these [Dangerous chemicals] in the ground? (turns off light) Because we love this... (turns light back on)." The instant gratification rewarded by the use of electricity is undeniable to most people. Kent Armstrong makes this clear as day, not by shutting the lights off, but by turning them back on. "But what is the Cost?" He asks. "Mother nature has a bucket, but we have a firehose pointed into that bucket, so what we do is try to help her" Says Armstrong, describing the production rate of toxic chemicals versus Earth's natural ability to balance them out through respiration. 

There are three major steps for the clean up of toxic chemicals

1.) Evaluate the site: Learn the site's history, and conduct tests.

2.) Survey out a map: Learn the history of the area in which the site rests.

3.) Clean up/Remediation: "Hog and Haul" or the removal of toxic chemicals in dump-trucks, costs about 100$ per ton. Or, Soil wash with "Magic fufu dust" (I didn't catch what this actually was, but I'm assuming it is something to counteract the solvents in certain soils.) The goal however, is Bioremediation. 

Kent Armstrong then talks about Bioaccumulation, a subject that has become somewhat farmiliar. Bioaccumulation is the magnification of the concentration of certain chemicals as an observer moves up the food chain. For instance, a plankton might only have .0001 parts per billion of any given chemical, but as the fish eat plankton, and the seals eat the fish, and the orca whales eat the seals, the orcas will have an exponentially higher number than the plankton, like 10 parts per billion. 

Kent also tells a story about his experience in the court of law, and how paid lobbyists will do anything to fight the exposure of their industry, which in this case, is the chemical industry. 

Finally, He describes the end result of his career in Biology: Bioremediation. 

Bioremediation is the injection of "nutrition" allowing the solvents, and microbes to breathe, so that they can eat the bad chemicals. This process takes lots of time and money, which is why it gets so often shut down by the government. However, Kent does describe a situation in which the government is more than happy to help. In cities, his business will often buy out old buildings that are in debt because they need remediation, they then ask for help from the city government to remediate the buildings, and flip them for money to go back into research. They call these old buildings Brownfields, and they are different Superfund Sites, which are massive contaminations. Towards the end of his speech, Kent references the Mad Hatter to stress the toxicity of certain chemicals once and for all. 

All of this talk about chemicals I find very ironic. Humanity causes a chemical mess, and Mother Nature's way of dealing with it is creating microbes that exhale carcinogens. I also find it ironic that I have been so angry recently, and I live in an old house where my room used to be painted from floor to roof in lead paint. And a lot of it would crack and fall down to the floor or even onto my bed. This is ironic, because I'm genuinely angry about this, and lead is known to cause anger, so I really don't know how to feel. I believe that if there is a way to make Ethylene out of bad Chlorines through respiration, then it would be a good temporary solution to the toxicity problem, but in the long run I believe we have messed this planet up to the point where we will kill off almost every animal on Earth, and Mother Nature will have to start from scratch, creating a new society in our ruin, perhaps these futuristic creatures will see our remains and learn from our mistakes. 

Toxicity of our City

The Toxicity of our City

"You know, its hard to know what happens to a life, or my life, if you change a central event." 
Andrew McGuire(Screen Shot from Toxic Hot Seat)

Andrew McGuire is a fire safety enthusiast. He was covered in third degree burns on his back, legs, and head as a child, due to a cooking accident when he was only eight years old. Ever since that incident his life has been focused on reducing fire danger for everyone. 

In the 1970s fire danger was becoming a severe problem here in the United States. There was about 2900 deaths every year from house fires. Back then almost everyone smoked cigarettes, and they were a leading cause of furniture related fires. The obvious solution was to change the cigarette, to make it self extinguishing. But even though they could manufacture this kind of cigarette, the cigarette companies refused. "They don't want their product associated with [fire] incidents." (Andrew McGuire). The cigarette industry instead put all the blame onto the furniture company, repeatedly throwing them under the bus in the court and in the media. "Everyone believes that you cannot take on the tobacco industry, its to big, its too powerful, and probably thats the single leading cause of nothing happening. That people think it isn't possible." McGuire said in an interview in the 80s, describing the struggle he and other fire safety enthusiasts were having against the tobacco industry. Andrew McGuire went on to win a MacAurthur award for his efforts to help the United States pass-fire safe cigarette legislation. Yet in 1975, in California, they had already come up with a different solution, and it was called Technical Bulletin 117: "...all upholstered furniture manufactured for sale for use in this state... Shall be fire retardant..."

No other state or even country had any standard for fire retardants in upholstered furniture. "Because California's market is so huge, its in all your furniture, throughout the country" (McGuire). They began to put fire retardants in everything, just because of California's Regulation. "Nobody knew about it except for the furniture company" (McGuire) The picture on the right is a picture of a flame retardant notice that you can find on nearly any upholstered furniture, even today (Found on google images). 

Many studies later came out in the 1980s with test results, showing how quickly many of these flame retardants can get into our bloodstream, and that they are, in fact, very toxic. In one study, a little girl's urine was tested 1 day after wearing pajamas treated with brominated Tris (a flame retardant), and the chemical was found in her urine sample. The scariest part about this study is that the chemical happens to be a carcinogen, or a cancer causing chemical. With the release of this study, Tris was banned from children's' clothing. However, brominated Tris is still the most popular flame retardant, and can still be found in almost any furniture, and even in baby products. 

Thankfully, We have found other ways to reduce the amount of fires in the United States. Including laws regarding sprinkler systems and fire alarms in nearly all new buildings. Also, cigarettes finally were made to be self extinguishing. "There are ways to mandate that the fabric meet a certain weave and thickness standard, with no chemicals added, that makes it fire resistant." (McGuire). There are ways that the furniture companies can make furniture now so that it is fire resistant naturally, with no toxic chemicals added. Yet still California required flame retardants in all furniture manufacturing. And because of the persistence and bioaccumulation ability of the chemicals, people all over the country were finding toxic flame retardant chemicals in their bodies. It was very hard to propose a successful bill to remove flame retardants from fabrics, simply because the flame retardant industry was able to release hundreds of media adds bashing the bill, stating that it would cause hundreds of fires, stating things such as: the average furniture in our homes without fire retardants will cause severe house fires. "Either you have people behind you, or money behind you, and we don't have the money" McGuire describes his fight against the Technical Bulletin 117. Thankfully the main legislature had enough people to back up their bill, and toxic flame retardants were banned in the state. It did not pan out that way in California, however. In 2008 Mark Leno, a California state senator, proposed Assembly Bill 706, to ban brominated and chlorinated flame retardants, which failed miserably against the opposing chemical industry. In 2010 Leno proposed another bill, Senate Bill 772, to exempt some children's products from TB117, so that they wouldn't have to be made with the chemicals. They were defeated once again by the chemical industry. Leno proposed another bill in 2010, Senate bill 1291 to reevaluate flammability standard, and he failed again to the Chemical industry. Countless bills were trumped by the money that backs up such industries as the chemical industry. "Theres gotta be national media coverage over and over to educate the public" McGuire states, describing the struggle of lobbying against the chemical industry without money to back them up. Finally, due to repetitive journalism coverage on the toxicity of flame retardants, the Governor of California at the time, Governor Brown, released a letter directing state agencies to revise flammability standards. Eventually through a public hearing there was a majority vote to regulate the chemicals released by the chemical industry, and that all synthetic chemicals should be tested for safety before they are released into the public, and from that point forward the flame retardant production companies folded, one by one, giving into the legislatures votes to revise the Technical Bulletin 117 regulation. 

To me it seems crazy that there could ever be such potential harmful chemicals released into the environment with no regulation. Yet that is what it was. There was no checks on the chemical industry. Thousands of chemicals were being released every year, and they would accumulate and spread in the environment to the point where synthetic chemicals can be found in polar bears across the globe from where these chemicals were being produced. Andrew McGuire states his support for "sane chemical regulations" at the end of Toxic Hot Seat. I believe that this notion cannot be stressed enough to not only US legislature, but to any country's leaders and lawmakers. It is not fair to anyone to have these toxic chemicals released into the environment, because these chemicals cannot be taken back, and they will persist in nature probably longer than humanity will even survive. It is not even fair to the earth, to pollute it so boldly, and without immediate consequence. This is why I agree with McGuire, who is still wary of chemicals even after their success in California, and urges everyone to also be wary of the many chemicals that make our lives toxic. 

Flame Retardants at Proctor

Flame Retardants at Proctor

Due to the flame retardant requirements of California Bureau of Home Furnishings Technical Bulletin 117, flame retardant furniture and other products can be found in nearly any facility, and even in your own home.

Image from Google Images

This notice tag means that the product has been doused in flame retardant. You cant find these tags on the bottom of most upholstered furniture. These flame retardants are made up of toxic synthetic chemicals that can be harmful or even cause death to humans. They also do not do their job very well, they only hold back fires for a matter of seconds, and they make the fire burn hotter than it would have without the flame retardants. There are far more effective flame retardant method's that are natural, such as tightly woven wool or cotton. However these methods are more expensive, and this is why most of the world had resorted to using the cheap chemical flame retardants that are in so many of our products today. 

Chart of Upholstered Furniture in Proctor Academy Facilities

The kind of room that we found the most potential flame retardants in was the meeting house, because of the sheer number of foam chairs and the electronic devices found in the room with the projector. We could not find a tag to confirm that there is flame retardants in each of the seats, but we have reason to believe that they had them. The most abundant product to be found doused in flame retardants would be electronic devices. These are most abundantly doused in flame retardants because they are most likely to start fires, like a projector for instance, in which the lightbulb can reach startling temperatures. The product that gets the most use from people, however, would probably be the chairs of the meeting house. They are used almost every day by hundreds of students and faculty. I believe that the electronic components will tend to have the least health risk because it is harder for flame retardants from to get from the electronic devices into the bloodstream of humans, where the stuff can become airborne just from a someone sitting in a foam chair. 

After watching Toxic Hot Seat, I believe that there is not much that can be done about exposure to PBDE and TB 117 from products already in existence, but what can be changed is the future. All companies should not be allowed to take the cheap shortcuts in the production of products, that in turn lead to the mass creation of dangerous synthetic chemicals. Instead these companies should have to find natural ways to make their products flame resistant. Concerns including PBDEs include that evidence shows that high concentrations of it causes neurological effects in Animals. Which could easily also be true for humans. Though there has not been enough time since the creation of PBDEs and TB117s for there to be conclusive evidence on the effect they have on humans, which is also very scary. Especially considering the amount of these chemicals that we are exposed to in our daily lives. 

Proctor Academy Meeting House