InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.

WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.

Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.

For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, e-mail Constance Griffith cbgriffith@utk.edu.

Screen Test

A new study identifies the environmental impacts associated with the manufacture, use, and ultimate disposal of your desktop computer display.

By Elise LeQuire

While sales of PCs are slumping in the U.S. market, flat panel displays—the hot new item for the desktop environment—are flying off the shelves. Flat screens look sleek, take up less room than the old cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors, and use less energy to power than their clunky predecessors.

But what are the overall environmental impacts of switching to the liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology that makes your slimmed-down desktop monitor possible? That’s the question a team of researchers at the Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT)—an arm of the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Energy, Environment Resources Center (EERC)—began to investigate five years ago through a partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and private industry. The recently published report presents one of the most detailed analyses available to date for determining the environmental footprint of the two technologies from cradle to grave: from the extraction of natural resources, through the use stage, to the end-of-life disposal or recycling of monitors and their components.

Industry leaders know that if image is important in the office environment, corporate image is paramount in the global marketplace. “Manufacturers in Japan and Europe have recently had more regulatory pressure than those in the United States to address some of the environmental concerns, such as electronic takebacks—mandatory recycling by the manufacturer—of the products they produce,” says Maria Leet Socolof, a senior research associate at EERC. Many companies in the United States—driven by marketing and image concerns—are taking action toward environmental stewardship on their own, without external regulatory pressures. Consumers and local and national government interests are also increasingly concerned about the environmental footprint of electronics. “We are buying so many electronics so quickly, we are beginning to think twice about where they windup—either in a landfill or a recycling facility,” she says.

Disposal is only one part of the environmental equation, however. Consumers may be interested to know the direct effects, such as energy consumption in the use stage for the LCD, which uses about one-third less energy than the CRT. “When you include energy from all life-cycle stages in the equation, however, the CRT energy drain is about seven times more than that of the LCD,” Socolof says. Basically, it takes more energy to make a monitor than it does to use it over its lifetime, primarily from the high energy requirements for glass production.

On a global and social scale, consumers increasingly want to understand the overall environmental impacts throughout the manufacturing process, impacts they are paying for either directly in the cost of the monitor, or indirectly in terms of environmental and human health. Chemical toxicity, for example, has rarely been addressed in traditional life-cycle analyses. “We looked at several impact categories, including human health and ecotoxicity, more closely than most other studies do,” Socolof says.

Socolof says her team was originally concerned about the mercury used in the fluorescent backlights in LCDs. They were surprised to find that the energy required to power CRTs produces toxic emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants that exceed the amount of mercury contamination estimated in the manufacture and end-of-life stages of LCD monitors.

To gather and verify the extensive data used in formulating this report, Socolof’s team traveled to suppliers’ facilities in Japan, where many of the components used in assembling the monitors are made. This kind of detailed information is vital to manufacturers looking far down the research road in their decision-making process. In fact, since the release of preliminary data in 2000, several companies have approached Socolof’s team with requests for more information.

Companies sensitive to corporate image, and looking to replace old computers or build new facilities, have expressed interest in the results of the study. Likewise, state governments pondering landfill regulations, and consumer groups interested in the overall environmental footprint of new technologies, also want to know the results of the project. “That is the kind of information this research is valuable for, to put these long-range decisions into perspective,” Socolof says.

The research separates the various components of environmental impacts—including extraction of materials from the earth, emissions from energy use, manufacturing impacts, air and water toxicity, and landfilling or recycling—and puts these components into impact categories such as global warming, energy use, or public health effects. Consumers and manufacturers, using the best data verified to the best of the research team’s abilities, can draw their own conclusions about the relative merits of various components of the manufacture, use, and end-of-life disposal of the product. “It is very difficult to declare a winner in life-cycle analyses,” says Kathy Hart, senior project manager with EPA’s Design for the Environment (DfE) Program, “because you have to make judgments about which categories are more significant than others, assuming that one product is not better in all categories. I think people are moving to LCDs because they take up less space, they are perceived to be a newer technology, and most people know that they use less energy to run,” she says.

Hart stresses that a primary purpose of the study is not to compare the technologies, but to examine the strengths and weaknesses of each, and particularly to identify areas of improvement for LCD manufacturers. “The consumer can look at the results of our study and see the energy savings in the use stage. And as we have seen through industry news articles, manufacturers are indeed looking at ways to improve the LCD manufacturing process, which to me is what makes this project a success,” Hart says. 

This detailed assessment of the complete life-cycle environmental impacts of desktop computer displays can also serve as a model for future research on other electronics technologies. The project was a cooperative venture of the DfE Program in the Economics, Exposure, and Technology Division of EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics; UT’s CCPCT;  the electronics industry; and other interested parties, including the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

* * *

For more information contact Maria Leet Socolof, Project Manager, CCPCT, University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-9526, or access the report online at the CCPCT website <www.cleanproducts.org> and EPA’s DfE website <www.epa.gov/dfe>

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The Public Bang for the Federal Buck

Do the federal government’s investments in energy research pay off? A UT/ORNL research team says yes.

By David Brill

Each year, the U.S. federal government spends billions of dollars on research and development (R&D) on project areas as wide-ranging as defense, energy, the environment, agriculture, and human health. Between 1978 and 1999, the government spent $85 billion on energy research alone.

Among recent programs receiving federal energy research funds is the Automotive Lightweighting Materials (ALM) Program. ALM, part of the Department of Energy’s Office of FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies, seeks to develop and validate technologies that produce advanced lightweight materials for use in vehicles. These materials can significantly reduce the weight of vehicles without compromising safety, performance, recyclability, and cost. Less weight can mean improved fuel efficiency, which reduces harmful tailpipe emissions per driver mile and curbs dependence on foreign sources of oil.

But how much of the money invested in these programs has actually produced results? That’s a critical question, according to Jean Peretz, a research scientist with the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC). EERC is an affiliate of UT’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute.

“With limited funds available for R&D, Congress and federal agencies are placing increased emphasis on determining if federal spending on research is benefitting the general public,” Peretz says.

But assessing benefits can be a complex task because payoffs come in many forms. For one thing, benefits are often more intellectual than monetary. For instance, a project may increase knowledge and understanding even if a specific technology fails to work.

For another, unexpected benefits may result. For instance, knowledge gained on one project might improve the efficiency of future federal R&D projects. Beyond that, an R&D project may result in improvements in a process rather than creation of a new technology, or it might facilitate new collaboration among researchers whose combined expertise produces benefits not likely to derive from their individual efforts. Finally, benefits may not be realized for several years. 

Peretz, along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researcher Sujit Das and Bruce Tonn, a professor with UT’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, was involved in the latest evaluation of three selected ALM projects. The effort was led by ORNL. The first project sought to improve design and production of lightweight, high-strength cast-aluminum components for auto chassis and interiors through development of a database of the properties of cast light metals, an automotive design guide, process-monitoring sensors, and quality-assurance methods.

The second set out to reduce the tooling time required to create molds, or dies, for casting aluminum components, from the existing time span of 48-52 weeks to less than 12. And the third sought to improve the durability of such composite materials as fiberglass and carbon fiber through development of design criteria and performance standards. These historically fragile-but-lightweight composites are used in manufacturing cargo boxes and pick-up trucks and may eventually be used to make side panels for passenger cars.

Assessment Criteria

In evaluating these projects, the research team relied on three proven assessment methods.

A qualitative assessment is based on the judgment of participants concerning the benefits that can be attributed to the project. Through this assessment, participants are asked to respond to such questions as: Were project objectives met? Were technologies improved? What is the potential for commercialization of the new and/or improved technologies? Would the participating companies have engaged in research in this field without federal funding?

Economic measures are based on responses to such questions as:  In the absence of federal funding, how long would it have taken this technology to reach the market? What would private-sector companies have had to pay to achieve the same technical capability? What resources over what time frame would companies have had to invest to achieve similar results?

As Peretz points out, government’s R&D funding often offsets reluctance among private-sector firms to invest heavily in untried technologies. Once these technologies have been developed and tested on the federal dime, these private-sector firms can support the technologies’ commercialization.

In calculating the benefit-to-cost ratio, the researchers also evaluated the potential market penetration of new vehicles built using the lightweight materials produced by the projects under study.

“This required us to create forecasts that address when the new technologies will be commercialized, what vehicle components and parts will be produced using the new technologies, and how many vehicles featuring these technologies will be sold each year,” says Das. The researchers then assigned a dollar value to projected gains in environmental protection (reduced impacts associated with extraction of raw materials and production, use, and disposal of automobiles), energy (improved fuel efficiency), and security (reduced reliance on foreign oil).

“We assumed that the primary benefit of the project was to bring new technologies to the automotive market,” says Peretz. “Commercialization of these technologies produces measurable secondary benefits in the form of reduced energy use and reduced emissions of air pollutants.”

National Research Council indicators for evaluating R&D project success include, among other criteria, the number of related publications and presentations that disseminate the information to wider audiences.

What They Found

The researchers calculated ratios ranging from base case (lowest level of market penetration of the technologies) to high case (highest level of market penetration). In the moderate-case scenario, the cast light metals project achieved a benefit-cost ratio of 69, the rapid-tooling project achieved a ratio of 211, and the composite materials project achieved a ratio of 63.

“We know intuitively that much good has come from the federal investment in energy research, but the level of benefit often remains unknown,” says Peretz. “Studies like ours can help the federal government quantify the benefits of R&D.”

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For more information contact Jean Peretz, EERC, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-3803, or email <speretz@utk.edu>.

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Exercising Caution

The ozone-cloaked ridges of Great Smoky Mountains National Park may be harming those who take to the hills for exercise and fresh air.

By Elise LeQuire

Editor’s Note: Each issue of InSites features an article from Sightline, a semiannual publication that focuses on the environmental health of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sightline is a collaborative effort among the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Energy, Environment and Resources Center; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park; and Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association. The following article will appear in the fall/winter edition of the publication. To receive a complimentary copy of Sightline, contact Constance Griffith at cbgriffith@utk.edu or 865-974-1156.

As one of the richest biospheres on the planet, Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) is a natural record-setter. It’s also the nation’s most visited national park, with more than 10 million visits per year. But human activities have helped the Park set a less sterling record: it consistently ranks at or near the top of the list of national parks with severe air pollution problems.

Since the 1970s, researchers in the Park have documented the adverse effects of ground-level ozone, haze, and acid deposition on vegetation and streams. Now, researchers from the University of Tennessee (UT), Western Carolina University (WCU), and Emory University are assessing the effects of air pollution on the pulmonary health of people hiking in the Park, particularly during May through October, when air pollution is worst, and at higher elevations, where ozone levels remain high day and night.

“Ozone is created and destroyed all the time by natural processes,” says Greg Reed, the head of UT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the principal investigator on the project. “In the valleys, when the sun goes down, ozone levels fall to a very low value. But the higher elevations of the Park—along the Appalachian Trail, for example—see these high levels 24 hours a day.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is funding the $750,000, two-year study. Congressman John J. Duncan Jr., whose district includes parts of GSMNP, initiated funding for the project.

Breathtaking Views

“We have known since the 1970s that ozone and particulates harm vegetation and contribute to stream degradation,” says Susan Smith, an associate professor in UT’s Department of Health, Safety, and Exercise Science. “This is only the second study of its kind to assess the effects of air pollution on adults exercising at higher elevations in a national park.” The current study replicates research conducted in 1991 and 1992 at Mount Washington, elevation 6,300 feet, in New Hampshire. That study found statistically significant adverse effects of even moderate concentrations of ozone on hikers at higher elevations.

In August 2002, the research team began testing volunteers at Newfound Gap. At 5,050 feet above sea level, the gap, situated on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, offers stunning vistas of valleys and peaks…at least when haze doesn’t shroud the view.

Researchers explain the project to volunteers as they embark on a popular eight-mile round-trip trek along the Appalachian Trail to Charlies Bunion. Those who participate are informed that the study seeks to determine whether air pollution affects lung function. Participants then breathe into a spirometer, a device that measures lung capacity, before and after the hike.

“It can take the body’s large airways up to two days to be affected by ozone, but the small airways are affected immediately. This test is so sensitive it measures lung volume in small airways,” Smith says. Hiker volunteers also record their pulse rates at points along the trail, as well as any unusual respiratory events such as wheezing or coughing.

For decades, permanent air monitors at both high and low elevations in and around the Park have documented rising levels of air pollution. For the current study, researchers are adding highly accurate, portable monitors that measure ozone and fine particles at various sites in the Park, including the Newfound Gap trailhead.

These monitors measure the actual concentrations of ozone and particulates hikers may encounter on sampling days. In addition, the portable monitors, which weigh about four pounds and can be carried in a backpack, will be deployed along the trail to Charlies Bunion to detect variations in ozone levels on exposed ridges and under the tree canopy that covers much of the trail. Ozone levels can vary somewhat depending on the direction of the wind and the amount of vegetative cover.

The data from permanent and portable monitors will be used to determine if hikers report more respiratory problems or experience decreased lung function on days when ozone and fine particle concentrations are high.

Tailpipe Sources

Though stationary sources such as power plants contribute about 40 percent of the nitrogen oxides that lead to ozone, haze, and acid rain, at least a third of the total emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides spews from the tailpipes of motor vehicles, including everything from diesel trucks to light-duty cars. In another phase of the project, Wayne Davis, a professor in UT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his colleagues at UT and WCU, will collect data on traffic patterns in and around the park. For the past 10 years, Davis has been tracking mobile emissions, based on national EPA data, in Tennessee.

But traffic conditions in and around the Park are not necessarily typical of the national average. By counting the number of vehicles on the roadways, classifying the types of vehicles, clocking speed, and assessing the operating mode—idling, cruising, accelerating, decelerating, or hill climbing—the research team will be able to home in on specific conditions associated with local mobile emissions.

“We have refined our models to get better information on the Park region,” Davis says. “For example, we know that rural interstate travel is 20 percent diesel, and the light-duty vehicles are composed of about 40 percent light trucks and 60 percent automobiles. In the Park, there are no transfer trucks. Mainly, it’s light-duty vehicles, about 40 percent cars and 60 percent light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles and minivans.”

Adds Reed: “We also know that emissions from mobile sources are worst at very slow and very high speeds.” These more-refined models can help determine the degree to which local traffic contributes to overall emissions.

“The bottom line is that most of the ozone in the Park and in Knoxville is not created here,” says Reed. “It’s transported by air moving in from all over the region. Solving this problem is a regional issue. Knoxville, the Park, and Atlanta cannot solve their own air-quality problems. There has to be a regional solution.”

Caveat Hiker

While volunteers in the hiker health study will not be advised of the levels of ozone and particulates during their hike, anyone who might be concerned about air pollution in the Park can easily obtain the information.

“If there’s any kind of an air-quality alert, the Park Service contacts its employees and the local media,” says Jim Renfro, air resource specialist with GSMNP. “The information is also available at Sugarlands Visitors Center’s real-time air-quality display, in brochures, and on the Park’s real-time air-quality Web site. We issue ozone advisories and predicted ozone levels to the public just like in an urban area.”  

In 1999, one of the worst years to date for air pollution in the Park, the highest ozone levels reached 123 parts per billion (ppb) for an eight-hour average, which is considered a severe code-red, or unhealthy, day, according to EPA’s air-quality index. EPA recommends that during code-red conditions, “active children and adults, and people with respiratory disease such as asthma, should avoid prolonged outdoor exertion; everyone else, especially children, should limit prolonged outdoor exposure.”

As of August 2002, the highest seasonal ozone levels reached 105 ppb for an eight-hour average, a low code-red day, “but we are on pace for setting the record of high ozone days, with 36 exceedances of the eight-hour standard of 85 ppb as of mid-August,” Renfro says.

* * * 

For more information contact Gregory D. Reed, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the University of Tennessee, 865-9742503. For current conditions at Look Rock, visit GSMNP’s Web site http://www.aqd.nps.gov/ard/parks/grsm/grsmcam/grsmcam.htm>

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Endangered Ridge Tops

While Knoxville has made the news in the past few years as one of the top-10 most ozone-polluted metropolitan areas in the United States, the city, as well as lower elevations of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP), gets some relief thanks to Mother Nature, as ozone levels decline at night. Not so at higher elevations in the Park.

The National Parks Conservation Association and the nonprofit, grassroots organization Appalachian Voices recently released a report showing that, from 1997 to 2001, GSMNP experienced the highest levels of haze, acid precipitation, and ozone of 10 national parks with similar monitoring programs.

For that time frame, in fact, the Smokies’ ridge tops had higher cumulative ozone exposures of 60 parts per billion (ppb) or more, calculated from the sum of all the hourly readings between April and October, than Atlanta or Los Angeles. Concentrations of 60 ppb are known to cause damage to sensitive vegetation, while 85 ppb is a level known to harm human health.

Precursors of ozone—hydrocarbon compounds and nitrogen oxides—are emitted all night, "but when the sun comes up, and traffic picks up, and the trees and other biogenic sources increase output of hydrocarbons, the air begins to mix vertically," says Wayne Davis, a professor in UT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "By midafternoon it is well-mixed to a level of 8000 feet." The sun’s ultraviolet rays react with these chemicals to create ozone, O3, a powerful oxidant.

"Ozone oxidizes everything. It reacts with you and me, trees and leaves, even the books in this office and the paper on this desk. Trees are leafy and organic and highly reactive," Davis says. 

At lower elevations, after dark, "ozone levels may fall to 5 to 20 parts per billion," much lower than EPA’s eight-hour standard of 85 ppb deemed harmful to human health. "But ozone aloft doesn’t have anything to react with," Davis says. Moreover, at high altitudes, ozone is wafted west to east for hundreds of miles, at the same concentrations at 3 a.m. that occur at mid- to late-afternoon in the city.

About 30 species of vegetation suffer visible leaf damage from exposure to ozone, and the effects are more pronounced at higher elevations. "Generally, the higher the elevation, the higher the exposure, and the more foliar injury," says Jim Renfro, air resource specialist in GSMNP. A three-year study conducted by researchers at Auburn University in the early 1990s showed that about 25 percent of black cherry leaves in the Park showed visible damage at Twin Creeks, elevation 1,900 feet, while nearly 75 percent were damaged at Cove Mountain, elevation 4,150 feet.

"Black cherry and yellow-poplar are symptomatic species," Renfro says. "These trees, which had visible stippling from ozone pollution, also showed slower growth rates."

                                                —Elise LeQuire 

For more information, contact Air Resource Specialist Jim Renfro, 1314 Cherokee Orchard Rd., Gatlinburg, TN 37738, 865-436-1200.

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Staff Citings

Governor Don Sundquist recently spoke at a meeting in Nashville to highlight a state partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Industrial Technologies. At the same meeting, Randall Overbey, president of Alcoa Energy, mentioned a $25,000 contract awarded last year to EERC Senior Research Associate Greg Harrell for conducting energy assessments at Alcoa facilities. Overbey said some $480,000 worth of energy savings resulted from the audits. Harrell has been tasked to do assessments at Alcoa facilities overseas as well.

The Energy Division within the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development has awarded funding to EERC Research Associate Jonathan Overly to develop the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition. The coalition, which includes  the Tennessee Valley Authority, AmeriGas Propane, Knoxville Area Transit, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the city of Sevierville, is working to gain designation as a participant in the U.S. Department of Energy Clean Cities Program and promote the use of alternative-fuel vehicles.

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