Blast rips West Side plant; 2 seriously hurt


Crews inspect the site of an explosion at a West Side plant. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

At least two people were seriously injured in a "massive explosion" that tore through a commercial biodiesel and vegetable oil plant on the West Side, authorities said.

The two victims were taken to Stroger Hospital, one in serious to critical condition and other in fair to serious condition, a Fire Department spokesman said. Other workers were being decontaminated on-scene following the explosion, said Fire Department spokesman Quention Curtis.

Another 10 people complained of illness because of fumes, possibly because of the explosion, at a nearby Metra yard in the 2900 block of Grand Avenue, and were being taken to area hospitals in good to fair condition, a Fire Department spokesman said.

The explosion also disrupted Metra's Milwaukee District North and West Lines, halting some trains and delaying others, according to the rail company's Web site.

A hazardous materials alarm was canceled about 10:15 a.m., although police continued to shut down all streets in the area within two blocks of the explosion. But there appeared to be no danger to residents of nearby condos and two-flats. They had not been ordered to evacuated and were milling in the street.

The blast occurred as chemicals were being mixed and a truck was being unloaded in the plant a little after 9 a.m. at the plant located in the 800 block of North Albany Avenue. The address is listed to Columbus Foods Co.

The 100-foot-by-100-foot building where the explosion happened handles between 20,000 and 40,000 pounds of biodiesel fuel each day, said Fire Department spokesman Will Knight. The building was partially collapsed by the explosion, he said.

Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford described the explosion as "massive."

Laura Hampton had just finished jogging in Humboldt Park when she heard the explosion and saw area apartment buildings shake. "I thought a semi had run into a building or something."

She said she smelled a strong odor of sulfur, but said it dissipated after a few minutes.

Sulfuric acid is used in the work done at the plant, and may have been involved in the explosion, Curtis said. A chemical cloud rose from the explosion, and area buildings were evacuated and streets blocked off, he said.

Five ambulances and hazardous materials team were initially called to the scene. A hazardous materials response was declared under control by about 10:15 a.m., but fire officials remained on scene, Knight said.

An experiment with low-cost, solar-powered light emitting diode (LED) lamps that is lighting up the lives of a handful of families in rural India could become a beacon of hope for millions of poor people worldwide who currently rely on kerosene lamps and other lighting solutions that are toxic--and frequently lethal--when used indoors.

Solar Lighting Eliminates the Need for Electricity in Rural Areas
The Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based nongovernmental organization that is committed to bringing light to rural India, installed the $55 lamps in about 300 homes. About 100,000 villages in India still do not have electricity, and the cost of lighting those villages by traditional means is prohibitive. The solar LED technology eliminates the need for electric lights. After the initial cost, solar energy continues to light the lamps free of charge.

“Children can now study at night, elders can manage their chores better," one relieved villager told The Christian Science Monitor. "Life doesn't halt anymore when darkness falls.”

LED Lamps Provide Safer and Better Light For Less
Replacing kerosene lamps with clean solar-powered LED lamps also provides healthier and safer living conditions as well as better light for less money. According to The Christian Science Monitor, about 1.5 billion people worldwide use kerosene to light their homes, but the fuel is dangerous.

Separate reports by the Intermediate Technology Development Group and the World Health Organization indicate that indoor air pollution from kerosene and similar fuels used for indoor lighting and cooking cause more than 1.5 million deaths annually. The risk of fire is another significant health hazard with kerosene lamps.

Kerosene Expensive and Dangerous
Kerosene is also expensive for people living in poverty. In rural India, for example, buying kerosene requires nearly 4 percent of a typical household budget. Finally, LED lamps are simply more efficient and provide more useful light. According to The Christian Science Monitor, LED lamps produce “nearly 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventional bulb.”

“This technology can light an entire rural village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100 watt light bulb,” says Dave Irvine-Halliday, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada and the founder of Light Up the World Foundation (LUTW). Founded in 1997, LUTW has used solar-powered LED technology to light nearly 10,000 homes in 27 developing countries.

Strategies Needed to Reduce the Initial Cost of LED Solar Lamps
For the program to work long-term in India, GSBF says it will be necessary to lower the cost of the LED lamps by manufacturing them inside India instead of importing them from China and elsewhere. Manufacturing the lamps locally would lower the cost from $55 to $22 per unit, but building a factory would cost approximately $5 million, and investment capital is not easy to find.

• New biofuel requires no car or plane engine modification
• Carbon Trust says production will take 'many years'

Gene scientist Craig Venter has announced plans to develop next-generation biofuels from algae in a $600m (£370m) partnership with oil giant Exxon Mobil.

His company, Synthetic Genomics Incorporated (SGI), will develop fuels that can be used by cars or aeroplanes without the need for any modification of their engines. Exxon Mobil will provide $600m over five years with half going to SGI.

"Meeting the world's growing energy demands will require a multitude of technologies and energy sources," said Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil. "We believe that biofuel produced by algae could be a meaningful part of the solution in the future if our efforts result in an economically viable, low-net carbon emission transportation fuel."

Transport accounts for one-quarter of the UK's carbon emissions and is the fastest growing sector. Finding carbon-neutral fuels will be crucial to the government meeting its target to reduce overall emissions by 80% by 2050.

Algae are an attractive way to harvest solar energy because they reproduce themselves, they can live in areas not useful for producing food and they do not need clean or even fresh water. In addition, they use far less space to grow than traditional biofuel crops such as corn or palm oil.

"Algae consumes carbon dioxide and sunlight in the presence of water, to make a kind of oil that has similar molecular structures to petroleum products we produce today," said Jacobs. "That means it could be possible to convert it into gasoline and diesel in existing refineries, transport it through existing pipelines, and sell it to consumers from existing service stations."

The Carbon Trust, a government-backed agency that promotes low-carbon technologies, has forecast that algae-based biofuels could replace more than 70bn litres of fossil fuels used every year around the world in road transport and aviation by 2030, equivalent to 12% of annual global jet fuel consumption or 6% of road transport diesel. In carbon terms, this equates to an annual saving of more than 160m tonnes of CO2 globally with a market value of more than £15bn.

Ben Graziano, research and development manager at the Carbon Trust, said that alge-based biofuels offered the potential for "major carbon savings". "Exxon Mobil is estimating that algae could yield just over 20,000

litres of fuel per hectare each year, which is in line with our own forecasts. However, producing biofuel from algae on such a massive commercial scale is a major challenge, which will require many years of research and development."

Venter, who is best known for his role in sequencing the human genome, said the new partnership was the largest single investment in trying to produce biofuels from algae but said the challenge to creating a viable next-generation fuel was the ability to produce it in large volumes. "This would not happen without the oil industry stepping up and taking part," he said. "The challenges are not minor for any of us but we have the combined teams and scientific and engineering talents to give this the best chance of success."

The research programme will begin with the construction of a new test facility in San Diego, where Venter says different techniques to grow and optimise algae will be tested. These will include open ponds as well as bioreactors, where the algae are grown in sealed tubes. "We will be trying out these different approaches … using newly-discovered natural algae to test the best approaches we can come up with to go into a scale-up mode."

Venter has spent several years trawling the world's oceans in search of environmentally-friendly microbes that could be used, in one way or another, to bring down the world's carbon emissions. The organisms he has found include those that can turn CO2 into methane, which could be used to make fuels from the exhaust gases of power stations, and another that turns coal into natural gas, speeding up a natural process and reducing both the energy needed to extract the fossil fuel and the amount of pollution caused when it is burned.

A new, near-production LED bulb means the future of lighting is about to look very bright.’ -

The race towards better, more affordable solid state lighting is heating up quickly. The U.S. government has sponsored a $20M USD prize for the first team of researchers to come up with an LED that meets a strict set of standards. New research has finally helped to eliminate the LED droop typically associated with the higher currents needed to provide greater energy saving.

Now a team at Cambridge University may be close to having a winning design on their hands, perhaps for the LED Prize, if they’re eligible, and for the consumer market. The university has produced a new design which costs a mere $2.85 USD and despite being the size of a penny,their LED produces similar light to a fluorescent bulb while lasting over four times as long with a lifetime of 60 years.

The new design triples fluorescent bulb efficiency and is 12 times more energy saving than incandescent designs. Also, it’s capable of instantaneous illumination, so the light lag associated with fluorescent bulbs may soon be a thing of the past.

If installed across all of Britain, the researchers estimate that it could cut the country’s lighting portion of the energy budget from 20 percent to 5 percent a year. An energy saving that is the equivalent of 8 power stations The U.S. could muster a similar energy saving of 10 percent drop with the design, according to recent DOE estimates. The new bulbs last 100,000 hours and unlike other “environmental” bulbs, they contain no mercury, a substance that can cause brain damage in humans. They also don’t flicker, while other environmental designs do, something that’s been blamed for triggering epileptic fits.


The new LED is bright and more efficient than traditional designs. And unlike other green bulbs they contain no toxic mercury, they turn on instantly, and they do not flicker. (Source: Matthew Power MASONS)

Officials say the new design could cut 40 million tons of carbon emissions in Britain alone. Britain recently stopped restocking certain incandescent bulbs in stores. The new design relies on a specially formulated gallium nitride semiconductor, which builds on previous LED work. It is brighter than traditional designs and relatively cheap from a chemical perspective, compared to more exotic chemistries.

The British researchers managed to make the LEDs even more affordable by growing them on silicon wafers instead of on sapphire wafers, the traditional method of production. This makes them at last cheap enough for the consumer market. Growing the LEDs on silicon was assisted by a number of advances at other U.S. and European research institutions.

While some designs take decades to reach the market, Cambridge’s design is already being prototyped and readied for production. RFMD in County Durham, England is the first manufacturer to jump at the opportunity to mass produce and ship the high-performing LED bulbs.

Professor Colin Humphreys, head of the team at Cambridge states, “This could well be the holy grail in terms of providing our lighting needs for the future. We are very close to achieving highly efficient, low-cost white LEDs. That won’t just be good news for the environment. It will also benefit consumers by cutting their electricity bills. It is our belief they will render current energy-efficiency bulbs redundant.”

From treehugger.com

When it comes to toxicity testing, what you don't know can hurt the most. For example, Monsanto has done a credible job of establishing that the active ingredient in it's Roundup week killer is harmless enough to mammals. However, the "inerts" mixed into the Roundup formulation apparently weren't tested for mammalian toxicity - until now. Environmental Health News reports on some recent research conducted at France's University of Caen that demonstrates human cell mortality from pesticidal mixture "inerts;" and, the issue encompasses pesticide formulations in general: not just Monsanto.

Via EHS, Weed killer kills human cells. Study intensifies debate over 'inert' ingredients.

...one of Roundup’s inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. The new findings intensify a debate about so-called “inerts” — the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Here's the money quote:-

Inert ingredients are often less scrutinized than active pest-killing ingredients. Since specific herbicide formulations are protected as trade secrets, manufacturers aren’t required to publicly disclose them. Although Monsanto is the largest manufacturer of glyphosate-based herbicides, several other manufacturers sell similar herbicides with different inert ingredients.

The term “inert ingredient” is often misleading, according to Caroline Cox, research director of the Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland-based environmental organization. Federal law classifies all pesticide ingredients that don’t harm pests as “inert,” she said. Inert compounds, therefore, aren’t necessarily biologically or toxicologically harmless – they simply don’t kill insects or weeds.

So basically all they have to prove is that the parts that kill insects or weeds are not harmfully to humans and pets for it to be called safe, regardless of how harmfull other ingredients in the concoction are.


For safer , green fertilizer and pesticides I'm sticking with John Perez's natural recipes

Rosina Buckman – Living Smart on the Sunshine Coast

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72 year old shows that you never to old to embrace green living

Summer is finally here, time to enjoy the garden, relaxing while the kids and pets run around the yard. Till its time to do some actual yard work of course. I was planning to fertilize the lawn this weekend and do something about those aphids on the roses so went to my local superstore. As always they had a wide range at the best prices. But everything had warnings on it, even something as simple as potting soil warned to use gloves when handling. When did gardening become so dangerous?

There must be greener alternatives and really green ones not just an admans idea of what sounds green. So rather than waste any more time at the garden center I ventured forth on the net.

I want something that

• will keep my children and pets safe from harmful chemicals

• Can be easily made up and replenished with natural ingredients

• Helps produce naturally bountiful fruit and vegetables

• A lush lawn that is the envy of my neighbors

Of course there is no one miracle recipe that does it all but there are a lot of recipes for natural fertilizers and insecticides out there. I even discovered genuine organic products ranging from fertilizer ( for those of you who do nt want to mix your own) to beneficial nematodes, a natural way to rid your garden of pests.

A few simple fertilizer recipes

Coffee : Use leftover coffee to water the plants. However make sure to dilute it before using it. You can make use of this ratio one part of coffee to 4 parts of water. You can use the solution once every other week. Do not do it frequently.

Coffee grounds : line a metal tray with newspapers and spread used coffee grounds evenly on the paper not more than ¼ inch. After the grounds are dry, put them directly on the soil around the plants

Eggshells : provide a rich source of potassium and calcium. Make powdered eggshell fertilizer by drying out empty eggshells. Put five crushed eggshells into the soil around every plant. It is the best fertilizer for outdoor flowers, fruits, and vegetables. You can even store the liquid eggshells for the plants. To make liquid eggshell fertilizer, boil 20 eggshells in a gallon of water. Allow them to steep for 8 hours before removing the shells. Store it in a covered container and use it just once a week. A solution of 1 tbs of apple vinegar and 1 gallon of water (especially alkaline tap water) will help houseplants to become lush green.

Simple Safe insecticide

Soak in water the following: Lemon peels and/or Orange peels, Mint leaves and/or sage leaves Lavender leaves

If you can soak them overnight and in the morning you'll have a strong "tea." Strain this and use half of this mixture and add witch hazel to make up the other half and put in a spray bottle. Simply lightly spray yourself down with this mixture and shall be good to go in the evening. This natural insecticide can also be used on the kids and the dog too. Do not use on your cats though

Please share some of your favorite green recipes

Click Here! for a great resource on recipes

More and more people today are looking for ways to go green in their homes, apartments & offices. If you're looking to bring new life to your home living room, bathrooms, kitchen or other areas, consider LED lights in place of traditional bulbs & other home lights. These are a great way to "go green" & do your part for the environment. There's also benefits to your wallet as well as you can reduce costs significantly


Now that energy efficiency in home lighting is becoming more prevalent, we also see improvements in lighting design and an increase in the use of LED lights in home lighting systems. Most of us should be familiar with the typical incandescent light bulb. It's filled with gas as well as a filament stretched across the inside. In traditional bulbs, electricity runs across the filament, it heats up and causes the bulb to glow. Incandescent bulbs create a lot of wasted energy as they produce more heat than light .

A new alternative exists- the LED (light emitting diode) bulb. Led lights give a brighter light, lower energy use & longer lasting bulb.

Another great thing about LED lights is that they now available in a variety of shapes & sizes to fit the lighting fixtures you already have in your home. This makes it easier than ever before to update your home with new, energy efficient, LED lighting. No expensive refitting, just screw in the new bulb and you on your way to a greener, cheaper lifestyle

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