Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Conversation, people who use asthma inhalers release damaging amounts of greenhouse gasses.
Your asthma puffer is probably contributing to climate change, but there’s a better alternative
March 26, 2018 6.01am AEDT
Brett Montgomery.
Senior Lecturer in General Practice, University of Western Australia
I breathe all the way out. There’s a quiet puff of gas from my inhaler, and I breathe all the way in. I hold my breath for a few seconds and the medicine is where it needs to be: in my lungs.
Many readers with asthma or other lung disease will recognise this ritual. But I suspect few will connect it with climate change. Until recently, neither did I.
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These medicines are available in various sorts of inhaler devices. The devices fall into two broad types: “metered dose inhalers” and “dry powder inhalers” of various shapes and sizes.
In metered dose inhalers, the medicine and a pressurised propellant liquid are mixed together in a little canister, and then sprayed out of the inhaler in a measured puff of fine mist. This is inhaled, often after passing through a “spacer” which allows more of the medicine to reach the lungs. While the medicine is absorbed by the body, the propellant, now a gas, is exhaled unchanged.
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The one most often found in asthma metered dose inhalers, norflurane, is 1,430 times more potent than the best-known warming culprit, carbon dioxide. Another, apaflurane, is 3,220 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Such warming power explains why even the small amounts in an inhaler are significant. Globally, tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are attributable annually to these inhaler gases.
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A person using a preventer inhaler monthly, plus the odd reliever inhaler, could easily release the annual equivalent of a quarter of a ton of carbon dioxide — that’s like burning 100 litres of petrol.
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If metered dose inhalers are a better choice for you, please don’t panic or quit your medicines. These gases probably won’t be the biggest contributor to your personal carbon footprint. Asthma control is really important, and these medicines work really well. But consider changing if it’s an option for you — when it comes to reducing our footprint, every little bit counts.
As a lifelong asthmatic I’m familiar with different inhalers. I can tolerate the powder inhalers, but I know people who can’t – powder inhalers can irritate the airways. It would be unfortunate and harmful if this stretch of a climate warning develops into a movement to ban HFC propellent in asthma inhalers, or makes such inhalers more difficult to obtain or more expensive.
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I used to work for a government lab. One of my tools was a mass spectrometer running in the negative-chemical ionization mode. I used sulfur hexafluoride to check for leaks (a MS needs a high vaccuum to perform well). SF6 is also a very potent greenhouse gas, and I had to report usage, even though I didn’t use that much.
I’ll bet the emissions/potency quoted is “mouse nuts” in the big scheme of things.
These zealots are unbelievable. Don’t pee in the ocean to save the reef! The small percentage using these devices are drowned out by the CO2 breathed out by every person and animal. A sense of proportion, less angst and a sense of humor would reduce the need for these devices themselves.
in 2009 cfc based inhapers were banned and I know many had issues with inhalers after that.
others (hfa based. etc) didn’t work as well and cost more.
just another try to kill people.
Oh Dear….
Next, these gas bags will tell us ‘off-gassing hemorrhoid cream’ is a 1000X more potent ‘green house gas’ than methane. And all of those yeasty beasties making our ethyl alcohol? Oh Dear Gaia, NO! /s
You really have to admire the effectiveness of the socialist AGW indoctrination, on their useful tools like Brett Montgomery!
My inhaler probably realise about 1% of a lungful and i use it at most 3 times a day, now I take a breath every 8 seconds, so that’s 10,800 breaths a day of which about 10% will exhale CO2.
so that about a thousand lungfuls of CO2 compared to 3% of a lungful of propellant. ok if “The one most often found in asthma metered dose inhalers, norflurane, is 1,430 times more potent than the best-known warming culprit, carbon dioxide. Another, apaflurane, is 3,220 times more potent than carbon dioxide.” means the gas is 3300 times more potent, then that’s 3300 x 3% = 100 lungfuls of CO2 equivalent.
The answer is obviously to stop exercising – Cyclists and joggers are damaging the environment far more and as for Olympic class athletes – well they should be shot of course.
If you are a sufferer, you may wish to try a probiotic treatment. It is not hard to make your own water based probiotic spray or wash. I went from skeptic to believer, after all other treatments had failed over a period of 40+ years. There is a certain resistance to spaying live bacteria into your airways.
The key may be to use a large enough dose/strains that you get an immune response similar to a mild cold/flu on the initial treatment. (20 billion cfu/10 strains) After that, daily/frequent maintenance leads to symptomatic improvement.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5770906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5770906/
Reduce eosinophilic inflammation in the airway
Perhaps the most intriguing concept which, if successful, could have a big impact on asthma as well. This approach may include systemic probiotics influencing the gut-lung axis (Marsland et al., 2015). The gut-lung axis is poorly understood, but suggests that there is a considerable cross talk between the gut and the airway through the immune system. …
We need to ban these high-capacity, military-style, semi-automatic assault inhalers.
I am very wary of pharmaceutical companies and their machinations. Here in Australia some big name ones have been advertising in supermarkets since Xmas for people to get their flu vaccinations from then. The Medical Association of Australia have informed the public not to get vacs until at least the end of April because they are maximally useful for just three months then taper off and the flu season usually only gets underway around June or slightly earlier and peaks in August (The vaccination takes about two weeks in the body before it kicks in).
The idea here is that the proplent used in asthma inhalers might enhance the Earth’s radaint greenhouse gases caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. The big porblem with this is that the radaint greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse if fiction hence asthma inhaler proplent’s increaseing global warming is fiction as well.
Eric: From using inhalers multiple times a day I now use the reliever once or twice a year. I do not know where my inhaler is, it is used so little. I did the Buteyko breathing course in 1992 and have never looked back. Cannot recommend it enough.
There is no area of public safety, health or welfare that the Warmistas do not wish to invade and wreck for all others, with no conceivable benefit coming in return on the Climate Front.
There’s just so much disingenuousness in this. Not completing the comparison angle. I hear tens-of-millions of tons of carbondioxide and equivalent emitted by the propellant in evaporating from the dusts and aerosols that the puffer puffs. And I hear 2,220 and 3,200 of something like that ones mind naturally asks, what is the real volume? Nor in the same vein, is there a tie back to questioning or stating the fraction of this, compared to all emissions?
Because while tens of millions of whatever — I’ll take it as this — sounds like a big enchilada, is it more than a flea on a fly really? Well maybe that’s too small, but there must needs be a point where one might reasonably dismiss the discovery without abundant prejudice. Just having a “that’s ridiculous’ reaction is enough. So then compared to scores of billions, perhap tens of millions isn’t exactly suiting up. One part or less in a thousand? Mmmm… one might reasonably dismiss.
GoatGuy
Back to 2011, the ban on CFC inhalers.
Ban inhalers to save the environment? FDA and EPA gone mad.
Sep 22 2011 FDA: Over-the-counter asthma inhalers containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) will no longer be made or sold after Dec. 31, 2011
Users of Primatene Mist will need a prescription product to treat their asthma. Asthma accounts for one-quarter of all emergency room visits in the U.S. each year, with 2 million emergency room visits. Each day 11 Americans die from asthma. There are more than 4,000 deaths due to asthma each year, many of which are avoidable with proper treatment like over-the-counter asthma inhalers.
The reason for their phase out is U.S. in complying to a U.N. mandate to phase out all CFC’s since they burn up the ozone layer over Antarctica, and to a lesser degree over the North Pole.
During the heydays of CFC production we produced about one megaton annually of all types of CFC combined. This led to an increase in CFC of about 25 parts per trillion in the atmosphere per year. After 1994 the CFC’s were phased out and replaced with HCFC’s. The total amount of CFC’s in the air is now decreasing by about 1 percent per year.
A quick calculation shows that over the counter inhalers release maybe 100 tons of CFC’s per year. This would increase the level in the atmosphere by 0.002 parts per trillion per year. Since CFC’s now are decreasing by 20 parte per trillion /year it would speed up the decrease by 1/10000.
So this banning of CFC inhalers will decrease the time to return to previous levels from 100 years to 99 years and 361 days. And for this we are banning $10 inhalers and forcing asthma sufferers to use prescription devices at more than 40 dollars, and increase the number of emergency room visits, and even asthma related deaths. For four days in a hundred years?
In the meantime the Ozone hole is closing again by itself, maybe due to actions already taken.
https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/04/ban-inhalers-to-save-the-environment-fda-and-epa-gone-mad/