Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 04/14/2006
This is the weekly bulletin of the TURI Library, reporting a selection of recently published titles we have acquired. Our pledge is to keep the bulletin relevant to your work and brief -- no more than 10 titles. You are
welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more
information on any of the articles listed here.
- Let There Be Light: Organic LEDs Use Fluorescence to Pump Up Efficiency
- Safe
- Highly Reactive, Blocking Agent-Free Polyurethane Powder Coatings
- Shaping the Future of Sustainable Finance: Moving from Paper Promises to Performance
- Washington
- Evidence that Monochloramine Disinfectant Could Lead to Elevated Pb Levels in Drinking Water
- Nanotech Consumer Product Recalled in
- EPA Technical Study on the Safety of Emission Controls for Nonroad Spark-Ignition Engines Below 50 Horsepower
- Obstacles to and potentials of the societal implementation of sustainable development: a comparative analysis of two case studies
- Yale Researchers Find Environmental Toxins Disruptive To Hearing In Mammals
1. Let There Be Light: Organic LEDs Use Fluorescence to Pump Up Efficiency
AUTHOR Peplow, Mark
SOURCE News@Nature.com, 12 April 2006, www.nature.com
ABSTRACT The traditional light bulb's days could be
numbered, according to scientists who have taken an important step towards
making white organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) commercially viable. They
expect that, for the wealthy at least, it could be just a few years before
rooms are lit by gently glowing thin panels. The lights should be ultra
efficient, saving on energy bills and helping to lower energy consumption.
Lighting accounts for about 22% of the electricity consumed in buildings in the
2. Safe
AUTHOR Taylor, David A.
SOURCE Environmental Health Perspectives, April 2006, v114 n4, ppA236-239
ABSTRACT With five of the largest harbors in the
3. Highly Reactive, Blocking Agent-Free Polyurethane Powder Coatings
AUTHOR Spyrou, Emmanouil; Loesch, H.; Weiss, J.-V.
SOURCE PCI, Paint & Coatings Industry, November 2005, v21 n11, pp58-62
ABSTRACT Polyurethane (PU) coatings are known for their
excellent coating properties, good weather stability and versatility of
formulation. In particular, powder coating technology — besides water-based
dispersions — has made it possible to apply PU formulations in a solvent-free
and, hence, environmentally friendly manner. However, conventional PU powder coatings
release blocking agents during the hardening process, which are undesired both
ecologically and economically. Internally blocked and, hence, emission-free PU
powder coatings do not have this drawback. Unfortunately, up to now these
blocking agent-free PU powder coatings required hardening temperatures of 180
°C and higher, excluding the possibility of applying these coatings on
temperature-sensible substrates like wood, plastics and pre-assembled parts. In
this article novel catalysts are described, which allow decreasing the
hardening temperature to 120 °C and even lower.
4. Shaping the Future of Sustainable Finance: Moving from Paper Promises to Performance
SOURCE WWF, in association with BankTrack
ABSTRACT Until recently, most major commercial and
investment banks did not consider environmental and social concerns to be
particularly relevant to their operations. Today, however, they and their key
stakeholders agree that financiers bear significant responsibility for the
environmental and social impacts of the operations they finance. Within the
banking sector, addressing environmental and social issues is now considered
critical to the proper management of transaction, portfolio and reputational
risks. The question is no longer whether commercial banks should address the
sustainable development aspects of the activities they support, but how they
should do it – what substantive standards should they apply? How should they
implement them? And how should they assure compliance? The primary objective of
this report is to review the environmental and social policies adopted by key
institutions in the commercial banking sector (as of September 2005). It provides
a detailed analysis of how these policies compare with each other, and, perhaps
more crucially, how they measure up to international rights, standards and best
practice. The report assesses the environmental and social policies of 39 banks,
including all the private sector banks that had signed the Equator Principles
by September 2005, plus eight others. 9 As originally conceived, this report
also had a secondary objective – to assess the implementation and application
of the sustainable development policies adopted by the banking sector. However,
a comprehensive evaluation of the banks’ implementation was foreclosed by the
near total lack of information they have placed in the public domain. The
banks’ lack of transparency regarding implementation not only makes independent
evaluation impossible, but also leaves them open to legitimate charges of
“greenwash” – that they are adopting environmental rhetoric with little
commitment to changing their performance.
5. Washington
SOURCE Washington State Department of Ecology and Washington State Department of Health, January 19, 2006
ABSTRACT This is the final version of the Chemical Action
Plan (CAP) for a class of flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl
ethers, or PBDEs. It is the second CAP done as part of the Department of
Ecology (Ecology)’s Proposed Strategy to Continually Reduce Persistent,
Bioaccumulative Toxins (PBTs) in Washington State (issued December, 2000).
Ecology is also finalizing a rule (Chapter 173-333 WAC, Persistent Bioaccumulative
Toxins Regulation) to guide the development of CAPs. This CAP is consistent
with both the Strategy and the PBT rule. The first CAP, for mercury, was
completed in January 2003. This document builds on the Interim PBDE CAP which
was released in December, 2004. Based on the available information at that
time, Ecology and DOH believed that a ban on products containing PBDEs was
warranted. However, further study of how a ban could be structured was needed,
including research on chemical alternatives for PBDEs and on costs and
benefits. This research, and a thorough review of the most current scientific
information about the environmental and human health risks of PBDEs, was
considered in the development of this plan. In addition, Ecology and DOH kept a
close watch on the experiences of other states and
6. Evidence that Monochloramine Disinfectant Could Lead to Elevated Pb Levels in Drinking Water
AUTHOR Switzer, Jay A.; Rajasekharan, Vishnu V.; Boonsalee, Sansanee; Kulp, Elizabeth A.; Bohannan, Eric W.
SOURCE Environmental Science & Technology Research ASAP, April 12, 2006
ABSTRACT Many water districts have recently shifted from
free chlorine (in the form of HOCl/OCl-) to monochloramine (NH2- Cl) as a
disinfectant for drinking water to lower the concentration of chlorinated
hydrocarbon byproducts in the water. There is concern that the use of NH2Cl
disinfectant may lead to higher Pb levels in drinking water. In this study, the
electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance is used to compare the effects of
these two disinfectants on the dissolution of Pb films. A 0.5 ím thick Pb film
nearly completely dissolves in a NH2Cl solution, but it is passivated in a
HOCl/OCl- solution. X-ray diffraction analysis shows that the NH2Cl oxidizes Pb
to Pb(II) species such as Pb3- (OH)2(CO3)2, whereas the stronger oxidant,
HOCl/OCl-, oxidizes Pb to Pb(IV) as an insoluble PbO2 conversion coating.
Although NH2Cl may produce less halogenated organic byproducts than HOCl/OCl-
when used as a disinfectant, it may lead to increased Pb levels in drinking water.
7. Nanotech Consumer Product Recalled in
AUTHOR Thayer, Ann M.
SOURCE Chemical & Engineering News, April 7, 2006
ABSTRACT On March 31, the German Federal Institute for
Risk Assessment (BfR) issued a warning against using a household product
containing nanoparticles that has led to what is apparently the first recall of
a nanotechnology-based product. In a period of less than two weeks, regional
poison control centers in
8. EPA Technical Study on the Safety of Emission Controls for Nonroad Spark-Ignition Engines Below 50 Horsepower
SOURCE United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Transportation and Air Quality
ABSTRACT The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
has prepared a report evaluating the potential safety effects of applying new
emission controls to nonroad spark-ignition (SI) engines. The technical study
concludes that adding emission control technologies would not increase the risk
of fire and burn to consumers, including fire due to contact with flammable
items and refueling.
9. Obstacles to and potentials of the societal implementation of sustainable development: a comparative analysis of two case studies
AUTHOR Kastenhofer, Karen; Rammel, Christian
SOURCE Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, Fall 2005, v1 n2, pp5-13
ABSTRACT Currently, a growing societal awareness of
problems in the context of unsustainable development meets with conflicts of
interest, and the actual implementation of sustainability research, and
sustainable innovations and technologies, has only been mildly successful.
Sustainable development demands nothing less than a radical change in our modes
of consumption, production, technology, and decision-making. We have
investigated the obstacles to and potentials of such a change in two
representative case studies, one focusing on the role of sustainability
research within science, the other on the energy-efficient refurbishment of old
buildings. A short presentation of the methodological approaches, and the
respective results, is followed by a comparative systemic analysis of the two
fields of investigation. Finally, we discuss possible implications of the
discovered systemic comparisons for societal transition processes.
10. Yale Researchers Find Environmental Toxins Disruptive To Hearing In Mammals
SOURCE ScienceDaily, www.sciencedaily.com, April 11, 2006
ABSTRACT Yale School of Medicine researchers have new
data showing chloride ions are critical to hearing in mammals, which builds on
previous research showing a chemical used to keep barnacles off boats might
disrupt the balance of these ions in ear cells. "Our data are the first to directly show that chloride ions are
crucial for our exquisite sense of hearing," said Joseph Santos-Sacchi,
professor in the Departments of Surgery and Neurobiology and first author of
the study in the Journal of Neuroscience. "These data also indicate that
the hearing in marine and other mammals could be affected by environmental
toxins, such as TBT (tributyl tin), because they appear to alter the balance of
chloride ions in the outer hair cell."
Compiled by the TURI Library, University of Massachusetts Lowell
This page updated Friday April 21 2006