Jet Smoke:Conquest by Camouflage
HOWARD, WILLIAM E.
Jet Smoke: Conquest by Camouflage by WILLIAM E. HOWARD The strategy for President Nixon's war on pollution has been cast, and his problem now is to win some battles. Sewer cleaners need to show a...
...There is no trace element to single them out...
...It won't be all that neat and clean...
...That it may take years to obtain measurable improvement—and expose his promises to corrosion politically— Mr...
...The "tradeoff" thus is being made in the dark...
...And he has said he will press on with it...
...But hold on...
...Such favored treatment by the Administration may not stand, however, in any omnibus anti-pollution measure passed by Congress...
...Obviously, the big jets could stand major modification...
...The conquest of smoke still adds up to a transparent victory for President Nixon...
...Further, the 130,000 general aviation planes, most of which burn high octane gasoline, spew out lead in their exhaust gases...
...It is the hotter temperature, says the NAPCA, which steps up the production of NOx...
...California is delving into the NOx problem and is worrying about carbon monoxide wafting around Los Angeles International Airport...
...Sewer cleaners need to show a little light at the end of the tunnel...
...The reduction in jet smoke (up to eighty per cent), they say, will be won only at the expense of significantly increasing (by forty per cent or more) the jets' output of nitrogen oxide (NOx), one of the prime invisible ingredients in the formation of smog...
...His answer was: "But they aren't as bad as the shorter range jets...
...One NAPCA official, in rather lamely defending the decision to move now against this particular group of smoke-makers, told me that "unburned carbon particles from jets are a serious health hazard in the vicinity of airports...
...which he does care about...
...Officials of the National Air Pollution Control Administration (NAPCA) acknowledge — reluctantly — a certain "tradeoff" is involved...
...There will be no visible improvement...
...Moreover, a number of state officials are upset about aircraft pollution—and not just the smoke plumes...
...The pledge was made to the FAA and pointedly ignored by Finch, who, some airline spokesmen claim, threatened to seek legislation unless they yielded to advancing the modification deadline...
...One of the difficulties in attacking aircraft emissions per se is that they include the same contaminants as highway vehicles and other fossil fuel burning sources...
...WILLIAM E. HOWARD is managing editor of the Newhouse National News Service and has done special work in the field of aircraft and air pollution...
...This is the really unfortunate aspect of the whole affair...
...they are mingled in the total pollution soup...
...We want enforcement...
...One estimate pegs carbon monoxide (CO) from aircraft as accounting for three to five per cent of all CO emissions in Los Angeles County by 1980 versus a present figure of less than one per cent...
...By 1980, the NAPCA estimates the annual tonnages dumped on all FAA-controlled terminals will be: CO—1.27 million tons (up fifty-nine per cent from 1967) ; hydrocarbons—240,000 tons (up eighty-five per cent) ; NOx—58,000 tons (up 300 per cent) ; and carbon particulates —14,000 tons (up 133 per cent...
...I then asked him why, if smoke was such a concern, Finch had exempted the four-engine jets...
...But clear-cut decisions over villainous water and poisonous air promise to be as hard to come by as they have been over the stubborn foe in Vietnam...
...These figures are admittedly negligible...
...Though the actual amounts of NOx do not look significant, health officials are concerned because of the Boeing 747 and other superjets being introduced now and in the next few years...
...But nothing was done to correct it in the press...
...They gave in to Finch only after extracting a reciprocal promise that he would not press for either regulatory or legislative action on pollution controls—a commitment which Mr...
...Court actions are either in progress or under consideration in New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts to speed up and make binding the airlines' smoke abatement program...
...Yet Transportation Secretary John A. Volpe, under whom the FAA operates, felt qualified to state at the time of the Finch agreement that four-engine jets like the Boeing 707 and DC-8 need not be controlled because they are lesser polluters than the smaller jets...
...Jet Smoke: Conquest by Camouflage by WILLIAM E. HOWARD The strategy for President Nixon's war on pollution has been cast, and his problem now is to win some battles...
...This is the deadline the Administration has imposed on the nation's air carriers in a gentlemen's agreement to extinguish some of the black exhaust plumes so many people complain about from jetliners whistling in and out of their airports...
...He said the exemption made the agreement "essentially meaningless" as far as New York's Kennedy International, Los Angeles International, and other airports frequented by four-engine jets are concerned...
...It has saved them many millions of dollars...
...The amount of CO discharged during a LTO for the large planes is 175.5 pounds against 83.7 pounds for the smaller ones...
...These medium and short range airliners make a high proportion of all takeoffs and landings as they haul the bulk of inter-city traffic around the country, and the airlines are picking up the entire bill—they claim some $15 million—for smoke-reducing modifications to the engines...
...The number of private planes is increasing at the rate of 8,000 per year, and the commercial domestic fleet, now standing at 3,000 planes, keeps growing...
...But the NAPCA report says not much stock should be put in them...
...It has nine combustors or "burner cans" with interior elements so structured as to allow pockets of fuel to accumulate in a full-power condition...
...Nixon extended to his February 10 anti-pollution message to Congress by omitting any reference to airplane emissions...
...So it would appear this will be quite a victory to flaunt in the next Presidential campaign, having the virtue of being free to the Government and highly visible to the public as a clean-up step...
...asks New Jersey Attorney General Theodore A. Schwartz...
...hydrocarbon organics—89.7 pounds against 6.3 pounds...
...The agreement applies to approximately one thousand tri-jet Boeing 727s and twin-jet Boeing 737s and McDonnell-Douglas DC-9s—about one-third the domestic commercial fleet...
...California has a new law setting January 1, 1971 as the deadline for limiting smoke emissions to forty per cent opacity for up to ten seconds out of any hour...
...they may be off by "an order-of-mag-nitude error" because of sampling variations in jet engine emissions...
...Democratic Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, chairman of the Senate's Air and Water Pollution Subcommittee and a likely candidate to oppose Mr...
...Furthermore, from all official indications the aircraft pollution problem promises to get worse everywhere in the years ahead...
...smoke may be obscuring a much worse pollution problem...
...And this is true of piston-engine aircraft...
...The NAPCA report says the amount is unknown but lead compounds probably account for half of the particulate emissions from piston engines...
...It is interesting that the airlines, already under pressure from several states and cities to abate smoke, had pledged only a week before meeting with Finch to complete modifications of their Boeing 727s and 737s and DC-9s by the end of 1974...
...and NOx—13.24 pounds against 5.78 pounds...
...Pratt & Whitney has redesigned the cans to eliminate the pockets and burn the fuel at a higher temperature for more complete combustion...
...CO and hydrocarbon production are not affected and may even be decreased...
...The villain singled out in the Finch agreement is the Pratt & Whitney JT8-D engine powering the shorter range jets and is the easiest to fix...
...A NAPCA technician later conceded this was an "unfortunate omission...
...But because it affects only less than one per cent of all civil aircraft and none of the foreign carriers, the agreement will not change the arithmetic much...
...They are pretty fair smoke-belchers, too...
...Further modifications may be necessary once NOx emission standards are set...
...One table of emission estimates in the 1968 NAPCA report shows all civil aircraft in the United States responsible for 1.2 per cent of the total tonnage of CO in 1967...
...The report claims the four-engine jets blow out a little less smoke (2.80 pounds against 3.48 pounds) during a landing-taxiing-takeoff (LTO) cycle, but are more than twice the polluters in every other category...
...Nixon in 1972, has a bill designed to give HEW authority to regulate all jet emissions...
...What teeth does a gentlemen's agreement have...
...Not all the fuel is consumed in these pockets, producing carbon particles which go into the exhaust as smoke...
...Thus, pressure is building outside Congress for regulation, Finch and the President notwithstanding...
...These estimates were made before the Finch agreement...
...Somehow this invisible side effect never got mentioned when Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert H. Finch announced the smoke reduction agreement on January 20 after meeting in private with thirty-one airline representatives...
...Actually, there are no medical studies available to prove this charge...
...For he already has zeroed in on one easy conquest specifically timed to show results to the electorate "late in 1972...
...Nixon seems only too well aware...
...The NAPCA, in a 1968 report to Congress, lists jet smoke as the least of airliner pollutants...
...A Federal Aviation Administration official was more straightforward...
...They are aware the NAPCA has not established criteria for permissible limits of NOx, which is generated for the most part by automobiles, and won't get them nailed down until February, 1971...
...Apparently he did not read the 1968 NAPCA report...
...Hence, the actual pollutant factor is unknown today...
...Whoever engineered their sufferance must be a hero to the airlines...
...Government people on the inside of the air pollution battle become a little uncomfortable when questioned about this bit of camouflage as well as the timing and selective nature of the agreement...
...So the only impact of the agreement will be on the smaller airports serving "middle America...
...The superjets are expected to increase the output of nitrogen oxides considerably because their "smokeless" engines also run at higher temperatures and because they will use much more fuel while landing and taking off...
...Airline spokesmen say they will install them during major engine overhauls...
...7 per cent of hydrocarbons...
...These jntports, of course, are all situated in metropolitan areas which President Nixon's political strategists have written off anyway...
...1 per cent of NOx, and .1 per cent of carbon particulates...
...Much higher amounts of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and NOx are emitted during a takeoff and landing...
Vol. 34 • May 1970 • No. 5
