I live on the first floor apartment of a multi-family house. The house, like many, if not most houses in New England is heated by oil-burning furnaces. Growing up in the Midwest and later living on the west coast I’d never known anything about heating oil until moving to New England a few years ago. In New England, however, it’s the way people stay warm during the cold winters for the most part. For those not familiar with heating oil, I’ll give you a short description.
Heating oil refers to a petroleum-derived distillate with a fairly low viscosity. It is used as fuel (i.e. it is burned) in furnaces and boilers to produce heat. Heating oil is typically delivered by tank trunk a few times during the winter. Houses have oil tanks that are most often in the basement. In the case of a furnace the heating oil is burned and the resulting heat is circulated through venting systems to heat the house.
Last week my landlord told me that on Monday the oil company was due to service the furnaces, something they do each year. I thought nothing of this. It seemed like it would have little to no effect on me. I was mistaken. Early on Monday I awoke to hammering from the basement. I had forgotten about what my landlord had said and therefore I thought it must be my upstairs neighbor working on a project in the basement. Strange, I thought, but not a big deal. A little while later I noticed a faint smell of fuel. It wasn’t too cold outside and so I went to open the windows to air out the place. That was when I noticed the oil company van in the driveway. I put two and two together and realized that the fuel smell and the hammering were the result of the oil company servicing the furnaces.
Despite the fact that I had opened the windows and was getting a cross-breeze through the apartment the fuel smell continued to increase. Within 10 minutes it was overwhelming. I decided I would go to the basement to ask the technician if this was normal or the sign of a problem. However, upon opening the basement door the fuel fumes were even more overwhelming, and I decided against that approach.
I had an appointment shortly thereafter, and I decided to go early in order to get out of the apartment. I left the windows open in hopes that the place would air out by the time I got back in a few hours. When I went outside the technician was standing next to his van apparently taking a smoking break. I asked him if it was normal to have such strong fuel smells in the living quarters as the result of the furnace servicing. He replied something along the lines of, “well, it does require changing a bunch of filters.” This was hardly a satisfactory reply. However, to be honest, having been in the apartment with the fumes had taken its toll and I was not thinking clearly. I was in a bit of a daze. I just nodded as though what he said made perfect sense, and I walked off to my appointment.
When I returned from my appointment a few hours later the technician was gone. The fumes had decreased. However, it was still quite noticeable. I decided to keep the windows open. It still wasn’t very cold. I just kept my coat on inside and I was quite comfortable temperature-wise.
The problem is that all of yesterday I was in a heating oil fume-induced fog. It affected me physically (I felt lethargic,) mentally (I wasn’t thinking very clearly,) and emotionally (I felt rather depressed, which is quite unusual for me.) And though I was able to sleep yesterday, I was not able to get very restful sleep. All of this has caused me to consider a few things.
If for a moment we set aside whether or not it is normal and/or acceptable for servicing a furnace to cause the living area to be flooded with fuel fumes (something I honestly don’t know,) this situation still might cause a person to consider whether heating oil is worth the potential health risks. Furthermore, it might make a person consider what other implications heating oil poses, and what negative effects might be the result of heating oil use. And then one might generalize this entire thought stream and ponder whether fossil fuels in general are worth the costs to our health, to the environment, to society, to family, to individuals, etc. And even if no normal person would have pondered these things as a result of the events of yesterday, nonetheless I have pondered these things, and I’m now going to write a few of my thoughts on this matter.
Although it is probably clear to anyone who has read any of my writings, I should note that I am biased. Well before yesterday’s heating oil fumes and the fume-induced ponderings I already felt that fossil fuel use wasn’t worth the costs. But yesterday’s events really made this matter less abstract and more direct. I didn’t have to conjure up the imaginings of possible human rights abuses in Nigeria to feel that fossil fuel use might not be a good idea. I was literally breathing in the experience of the negative effects of fossil fuel use. This made my ponderings, even the abstract ponderings, much more impactful to me.
To be fair I think we need to consider the upside of fossil fuels. After all, if there wasn’t a significant upside then we wouldn’t be using fossil fuels, right? And to deny the upside is pure silliness. There are many reasons we like fossil fuels. They allow us to have unbelievable amounts of electricity, which powers lights even after the sun has set, washing machines, telephones, and all sorts of technologies which make life more convenient. Electricity allows me to type this and distribute my thoughts to the world. Electricity allows for countless conveniences and comforts in modern life. As sad as this might be to admit, I have never gone more than a few days without electricity. I have no frame of reference to even know what life would be like without electricity because the electrified lifestyle has always been the context of my experience. But I can see how electricity makes available nearly all of the conveniences of modern life, and life without electricity would be very different. Fossil fuels, whether eventually converted to electricity or used directly (as in the case of heating oil) provide many of us with heat in the winter months. We use typically fossil fuels to travel, whether by car or public transportation or airplane or boat. Fossil fuels are used extensively for the manufacture and distribution of most products. And some of modern life’s most popular materials such as plastics, nylon, vinyl, and polyester are derived from fossil fuels. Consider for a moment the number of products that don’t use at least some material derived from fossil fuels and you’ll realize that the scope of the use of fossil fuel-derived materials is staggering. And these products arguably make life much more convenient. We are able to have durable (yet disposable) products that are cheap and have qualities such as being water proof all because of fossil fuel-derived materials. Plus, these products can allow us vegans to feel guilt-free because we can buy, for example, synthetic shoes instead of leather shoes. Try that without fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used in everything, even “food” and “health” products. For example, by law petroleum can be used to produce “food grade” distilled vinegar in the United States. And fossil fuels are used to produce many vitamins sold in heath food stores.
Fossil fuels have an upside as we’ve already established. They provide conveniences and have completely transformed our lifestyles such that it is difficult for most of us to imagine a life without fossil fuels. But are fossil fuels without the negatives? My contention is that our use of fossil fuels is rife with negatives. And, furthermore, I actually think that the negatives may well outweigh the positives.
As I said earlier all of these ponderings were initiated by the event yesterday in which my house was flooded with heating oil fumes. Therefore, the most obvious negative of fossil fuels is the potential for adverse health effects resulting from their use. Have you ever read the signs at gas stations that read “long-term exposure to vapors has caused cancer in laboratory animals”? Well, I’m saddened that someone felt it was necessary to mistreat animals in this way when just basic “common sense” probably ought to have yielded the same information. I don’t know anyone who likes the smell of gasoline. Usually when we find the smell of something repulsive it is for good reason. And we’re exposed to these vapors all the time. At the gas station we inhale the fumes. Apparently when we get the furnace services we inhale these fumes. Have you ever been to a marina? All those boat engines spew out fumes. Do you have any small-engine devices like a lawn mower or a chain saw? More fumes.
I remember hearing a report years ago about how frequency of asthma and other respiratory problems is much higher among children who attend schools near major roadways, especially highways/freeways. I hadn’t thought too much more about it until a short while ago when I was driving a long distance and I wondered to myself similar results might not be found for people who spend a lot of time on the road versus those who do not. It seemed logical to me that driving hours on a high-traffic highway in lane behind other cars would necessarily result in higher amounts of dangerous chemicals in the air the driver breaths. I looked this up online and found a few reports that backs up this theory. It looks like that hour commute might be worse for your health than you thought.
I grew up across from a farm that used conventional farming practices, including the use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides, all of which are derived from fossil fuels. I remember summer days when the air was filled with horrible smells that smelled like rotting eggs and cabbage. At the time I didn’t know what it was. But now I know it was when the farmer sprayed the fields. Pesticides and herbicides are designed to kill. That is their purpose. Although the chemical companies (Dow, Monsanto, Syngenta, etc.) and the FDA would like to you to believe that these chemicals are not dangerous to your health as long as they are “used properly” that simply doesn’t jibe with good sense. If a product is designed for the purpose of killing (albeit killing insects or plants) and you live in a neighborhood where you can smell the chemical then I would say that any reasonable person would know that isn’t good for their health. But the effects don’t stop there. We drew our water from a well, as did all of my neighbors. Do you think those chemicals didn’t make their way into the ground water and then to our taps? One of the most common herbicides on the planet is called Atrazine, and it’s marketed under a variety of names. It’s manufactured by a Swiss company called Syngenta. Atrazine is now banned in the EU. But it’s still used in the United States. Tests have demonstrated that Atrazine has demasculizing and even feminizing properties. These tests were on frogs. The male frogs exposed to Atrazine were effectively chemically castrated and they began to produce chemicals normally only produced by female frogs. But you don’t live near a farm, you say. Well, I’ve got news for you. Atrazine has been shown to travel at least 600 kilometers in rain water. Most people live within 600 kilometers of a farm.
Maybe it’s also useful to consider specific fossil fuels and a few of the specific negatives associated with there use.
Coal is one of the fossil fuels with the longest record of human use. The earliest records of coal used for fuel go back more than 2000 years. Coal is typically mined and then burned. Both the mining and the burning of coal have negative health effects associated with them. Coal mining is a classically dangerous profession. Miners are at risk of collapses even with modern technological advances. For example, most of us can remember the Sago disaster several years ago. Historically diseases such as “black lung” were common causes of death among coal miners. Though the frequency of these diseases has lessened in the United States in recent times, coal miners in many other countries world-wide are still frequently victims of these diseases.
But mining coal doesn’t just negatively impact the miners themselves, it can also have a negative impact on the health of other people and the environment as well. One of the important ways in which coal mining can adversely affect people is through changes and contamination of water. Coal mining can cause aquifers to drain, reducing water available to local residents. And coal mining can and frequently does contaminate much, if not all of the local water sources, potentially making the water toxic to humans (and other forms of life.) The changes to the environment caused by coal are often rather drastic. These can include draining bodies of water, removing land, and contaminating water and food supplies. The effects can be devastating to plant and animal life near the mines.
I’ll continue this tomorrow.