From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill one wonders why they have not thrown the PM10 hammer (or ax) at trees to save humans from their terrible effects /sarc.
Researchers pinpoint how trees play role in smog production
After years of scientific uncertainty and speculation, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill show exactly how trees help create one of society’s predominant environmental and health concerns: air pollution.
It has long been known that trees produce and emit isoprene, an abundant molecule in the air known to protect leaves from oxygen damage and temperature fluctuations. However, in 2004, researchers, contrary to popular assumptions, revealed that isoprene was likely involved in the production of particulate matter, tiny particles that can get lodged in lungs, lead to lung cancer and asthma, and damage other tissues, not to mention the environment.
But exactly how was anybody’s guess.
Jason Surratt, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, now reveals one mechanism by which isoprene contributes to the production of these tiny, potentially health-damaging particles.
The study found that isoprene, once it is chemically altered via exposure to the sun, reacts with man-made nitrogen oxides to create particulate matter. Nitrogen oxides are pollutants created by cars, trucks, aircrafts, coal plants and other large scale sources.
“The work presents a dramatic new wrinkle in the arguments for reducing man-made pollutants worldwide,” said Surratt, whose work was published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Isoprene evolved to protect trees and plants, but because of the presence of nitrogen oxides, it is involved in producing this negative effect on health and the environment.”
“We certainly can’t cut down all the trees,” Surratt adds, “but we can work on reducing these man-made emissions to cut down the production of fine particulate matter.”
With the precise mechanism now revealed, researchers can plug it into air quality models for better predicting episodes of air pollution and potential effects on earth’s climate. The advance would allow researchers and environmental agencies to evaluate and make regulatory decisions that impact public health and climate change.
“We observe nature’s quirks, but we must always consider that our actions do have repercussions,” said Surratt. “It’s the interaction between these natural and man-made emissions that produces this air pollution, smog and fine particulate matter – and now we know one reason for how it happens.”
RoHa says:
April 25, 2013 at 10:16 pm
“I’ve never trusted trees. I’m sure they’re up to something.”
==========================================
Get an axe and take out as many as you can before they get you. My guess is you can probably outrun them if they go after you. Good luck.
So the movie The happening is factual. The trees are really out to get us.
“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.” ~ William Blake
Here’s a funny thing: Ihave to switch Java off, in order to be able to reply. With Java on, I get no “post comment” button.
Which is the limiting factor, isoprene or NOX? Do the particulates form cloud nuclei?
Full non-paywalled paper here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/03/1221150110.full.pdf+html
So isoprene in the presence of NOx photooxidizes to form highly hydrophilic airborne organic aerosols which then act as nucleating agents for cloud formation causing the earth to cool. Global warming solved. (Hey if “climate scientists” are allowed to make wild speculations so can I.)
philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2013 at 8:17 pm
dbstealey says:
April 25, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Thanks for the feedback. That is one thing I like about WUWT. The feedback gets your mind moving, even when you start the day sluggish. I started researching the flu and why dirt is good for children, and before I knew it you had stimulated me to write an essay:
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/h7n9-flu-doent-change-reality-kids-need-dirt/
Thanks again.
The toxicity’s in the dose.
A whiff of tobacco smoke never hurt anyone. Campfire smoke would have destroyed humans long ago, if breathing some every night was as toxic as claimed.
– I recently wrote of this I saw massive clouds of dust coming off pine trees & thought “surely this would effect the climate ?”
– When I was in Northern Cyprus some days were overcast and cooler than expected due to what I thought was dust in the clouds from the Sahara, but a few days later on the Troodo mountains I observed there were huge clouds of pine dust coming off the tree…surely this would effect the climate ? but I never heard anyone talk about it.
I think that people are missing the point here. A group of “environmental advocates” have been trying to get rid of cars for years. It was smog in the 60’s and 70’s, then lead, then global warming, then climate disruption. Since all of those have failed in the quest to get rid of the automobile they have to find a new “pollution” caused by cars. Cars put out NOX so THEY are the cause of the pollution. (which is “potentially” harmful.) Hence we have to get rid of cars, reprise.
They individual automobile of course represents freedom for people and a restriction on the governments ability to control where we go and what we do. To a large extent it represents western civilization. That is the real reason to get rid of the auto. Hence, “Good trees are forced to pollute by the evil automobile.”
Are you all mad enough to take ACTION and end Grant Science and the EPA – we the people have the power just go here and take action . .
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/take-action.html
Particulates, like “second-hand” tobacco smoke, are a bane on mankind, a self imposed scourge.
Or so we’re told.
My questions: Where are the bodies? Where is the catastrophe?
Point it out to me, please.
We can die from particulates.
Or, we can die from exposure and starvation and disease. Scourges that modern fossil-fueled prosperity does indeed ameliorate.
More misanthropic guilt trips.
I’m not participating. Gonna go sit amongst the trees and breath the fresh particulates.
LOL.
jknapp says:
> A group of “environmental advocates” have been trying to get rid of cars for years. It was smog in the 60′s and 70′s, then lead, then global warming, then climate disruption.
I respectfully request an exception for lead and Clair Patterson, who told us about it. The toxicity of lead was recognised long before automobiles. It is clearly not a good thing to have in your car fuel, at the concentrations required for TEL to have any useful effect. Workers at Ethyl Corporation and associated refineries were dying by the dozen from lead poisoning. But it took Clair Patterson years of heroic efforts to debunk the aggressive junk science that was used to attribute those deaths to something else. He was not an “environmental advocate” and did not belong to any group. He just knew about lead and how to measure it.
PLEASE tell me this research was not guv’mnt funded. We have the name “blue” mountains in both Eastern and Western parts of the US. And these idiots actually thought they were “discovering” something????? Has it come to this? A Ph.D. means that you officially have NO COMMON SENSE? Okay, now you have my red feathers RUFFLED!
I’m sorry that I am entering this discussion so late, but I would like to point out that this is not a new issue. It’s been talked about for well over fifty years. In the 1950’s some blamed trees for the smog problem in LA. Saying that there was an historic smog problem in the LA basis before current human development, that related to the trees. They were laughed at.
About 30 years ago the California University at Riverside conducted threshold research on photo-chemical smog. It was pretty sophisticated, using advanced molecular analyses to determine the exact components of photo-chemical smog. It turned out that Smog was an amazing hodgepodge of ever changing chemicals in a chemical brew that is excited by solar energy into new configurations. The LA basin is the perfect place to check that outcome since the sea breezes take coastal pollution from cars in the early morning and roll it through Pasadena to Riverside by mid afternoon. Today its Riverside that experiences the burden of the most unhealthy air pollution from autos and trucks and photo-chemical smog. Remember, its not smoke.
UC Riverside’s Smog Research on Photo-Chemcical Smog still stands as the strongest data base on Smog formation that we have. It remains the data base for CA’s Photo-Chemical smog reduction program in LA, the Central Valley and other non-attainment areas.
And yes, trees are a part of it.
Photo-chemical smog is an amazing mixture of Hydrocarbons and Nox. There is a roll for trees. They do emit. Realistically they are likely not the primary contributors to small particle PM.
Pamela Gray says:
> We have the name “blue” mountains in both Eastern and Western parts of the US.
And we have An Càrn Gorm in Scotland and Die Blauberge in Bayern. But all that these names tell us is that these mountains are visible from a great distance, or, alternatively, that there is light-scattering matter in line of sight. The greater the distance, the more matter, and all matter scatters light. If there was nothing but nitrogen, they would still appear blue, or even “smoky”.
I’ve been tired of the tree fetish for a long time. There’s so many trees along the roads it’s gotten like driving through a tunnel almost.
Gene, that is only a part of it. I live in the US SE. You can ‘literally’ watch the process happen once the air temps get above 15C and there is enough sunlight (sun zenith angle here at the equinox is 57 degrees (roughly 1 radian). The day starts off hazy from the water then that clears then it gets hazy from the ethylene and other VOC from the trees.