Mani-Pedi Judgment

Cleaning up browser windows, I am going to write a couple of quick blog posts. 

I am pretty laissez-faire about most things, but I am very judgmental about people who use nail salons. 

Nail salons should not exist. 

No one needs nail polish or acrylic nails. The chemicals used are not just toxic to the clients, but they poison and permanently disable the nail salon workers. 

From Nail Salon Technicians Inhale 10 Times More Chemicals Than E-Waste Workers

For a lot of people, visiting a nail salon for a manicure and pedicure is about treating themselves to a cheap but still luxurious pampering session. But for nail salon workers, it’s not only the low wages and extremely long hours while being cooped up in a small room that takes a toll on their health. A recent study found that nail technicians who work in discount salons are exposed to a wide range of chemicals that are used as flame retardants and plasticizers. 

A group of researchers from the University of Toronto found that nail salon workers’ exposure to these chemicals was 30 times higher as compared to to exposure within households from everyday products and 10 times higher than electronic waste facilities’ employees.

The damage can be cumulative and cause permanent and debilitating health damage to the workers. 

The CDC says that it also causes damage to salon workers' children. 

OSHA says 

Nail technicians working in salons across the United States face possible health hazards every day. Workers exposed to chemicals found in glues, polishes, removers, emollients and other salon products may experience negative health effects such as asthma and other respiratory illnesses, skin disorders (e.g. allergic contact dermatitis), liver disease, reproductive loss, and cancer. Additionally, workers often endure muscle strains from awkward positions or repetitive motions; and have a high risk for infection from contact with client skin, nails, or blood.

So, if you frequent nail salons, I am going to be judgmental. Harming other people needlessly is a major red flag.  

Guidance for the Metro Active Transportation Corridor: Redondo Beach Blvd Survey from a Local

Urgent Action Alert 

Deadline Extended to May 30, 2023 May 15, 2023 so read on and fill out the survey now 

I need you to fill out a public input survey about a vital active transportation project for Redondo Beach and surrounding cities in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County. This is our chance to reverse some of the damage wrought by past auto-centric road design in North Redondo Beach and allow those who can ride a bike to make school and shopping trips with confidence that they can make it home alive and in one piece. 

There's also a Story Map about the Redondo Beach Blvd Active Transportation Corridor Project with more information. 

Short version if you are in a hurry:

The current street allocation with car parking on both sides and massive SUVs speeding down our streets is not safe or welcoming for cyclists. The proof is in the declining bicycle mode share. 

When filling out the survey, select the options that give a protected bike lane every time. Scroll down past the background info to see my recommendations and why. 

Paint is not protection. Never select an option with a paint-only bike lane in the door zone. If someone opens a door, a cyclist in the door zone will be knocked off their bike and suffer grievous injuries. If they swerve to avoid the door, or are knocked into the traffic lane, they could be killed. No one wants to be killed or have their child killed while riding to school. 

Two-way cycle tracks are a good option, particularly near schools. When kids are arriving or leaving school, there will be a lot of traffic congestion on all modes. But cars are particularly dangerous. The less car traffic they cross while leaving the congested area, the safer they will be. Keep them on the school side of the street, with wide lanes so that there is passing room in the bikeway (keep the kids out of the car traffic lane). 

Plastic poles are not physical protection, but likely the best we can get as a first step.  Plastic poles can be replaced with bollards or concrete barriers later if we allow enough buffer space to install the plastic poles in the first place. Do not let the perfect get in the way of actions we can do right now. 

You can skip the background (but I hope you read it when you have more time).  

Background: The Connection with Schools

The project area below was originally going to be along the old freight route from Redondo King Harbor to the inland rail routes, but Ripley was found to be too steep (several areas with 15% grades) to be feasible for safe cycling. 

A Redondo Beach traffic study determined that 30% of the city's AM/PM peak traffic is the child school run. This travel corridor includes

• Adams Middle School: 1066 students: 6-8 grades
• Washington Elementary School: 801 students, K-5
• Jefferson Elementary School: 509 students, K-5

That's almost 2400 K-12 students arriving and departing each day on this corridor. 

But that's not all, because all students in Redondo Beach Unified School District (RBUSD) attend Redondo Union High School (RUHS) in South Redondo Beach*. Jefferson ES students also attend Parras Middle School south of RUHS. 

Assuming 350/grade at Adams MS and 90/grade at Jefferson ES, 

350*4 + 90*7 = 2030 students cross 190th Street to attend school and return home each day. 

About half of all RBUSD students traverse this corridor every school day.

But that's not all; El Camino College (ECC, 22,000 students, many from the Beach Cities) is on the eastern end of this travel corridor. Some RUHS and MCHS students do concurrent enrollment and take classes at ECC while they are in HS. Due to many factors, including cost and lack of housing at UC campuses, a large number of students are enrolling in grades 13/14 at ECC before transferring to a 4-year college/university. 

When filling out the survey, think about what you would send your kid to school on. Think about what you would be comfortable riding on as you accompany your younger child to school or run your errands. I ride this area 1-2x/week to run errands in North RB or West Torrance. I want better infrastructure for my safety, too. 

Watch this video of the horrifying existing conditions as ridden by two fit MAMILs (Middle-Aged Men in Lycra). Would you ride these steep hills? Next to fast-moving busy traffic?

 

Here's another video of the area where Kyle, an area father, rides his kids to preschool. 

My opinionated guide for the survey choices and why they matter: 

Every cross-section shown is facing either Eastbound or Northbound.

Q1: For the westernmost portion of the corridor, which alignment(s) do you prefer? 

I picked D because that would give us a 2-way cycle track on Lilienthal and the longest length of protected bike lanes on 190th. 190th St is also the only way to avoid steep hills. 

The problem with B: The first video shows just how steep Ripley is. Notice that the lead cyclist on a light road bike has trouble getting up the hill (and the trailing cyclist with the camera is on an eBike). Going up a 15-16% grade is difficult, but going down them is downright dangerous. Do not send kids on this route. 

A and C are better, but still steep in some sections. Also, if those are the official routes, there will not be likely any road changes except Sharrows, which are shown to be more dangerous than not doing anything. 

Only Option D along 190th St will yield any road space allocation for cyclists. 

What is a Sharrow? 

Why are Sharrows so dangerous? 

Q2: The proposed street section for 190th St (Alignments C and D) is shown here. How satisfied are you with this proposal?

I picked Very Dissatisfied: These cross-sections are looking towards the east, with Torrance on the Right Hand Side (RHS) and Redondo Beach on the LHS. Cars are coming down the hill from Flagler and often speeding 50 eastbound mph. People drive with the sun in their eyes during the morning and evening commutes. Do you feel safe with just paint and plastic poles designed to bend when run over by vehicles?

I recognize that people living in the apartments in Torrance on the right need overflow parking, but let's swap the bike lane and parking lane. Install a parking-protected bike lane like this one in Long Beach on the Torrance side with breaks to preserve sight lines at each driveway or street crossing. 

On the RB side, I'd like to see real bollards or a curb. Imagine something like these without the parking lane. Images courtesy of National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). 

Q3: Select Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the east side, next to Washington ES. 

Option 1 provides separation from cars, and is wide enough for passing, and allows parents to ride side by side with a child gaining confidence in their bike skills. In 2-way cycle tracks, people riding opposing car traffic are facing approaching cars, so they can see and react to dangerous drivers. It would be better to have solid protection here, but Option 1 gives us room to retrofit with more solid barriers later. 

Option 2 puts kids in the door zone on one side and makes them cross the street to get to school. It's a dangerous situation. 

Q4: Select Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the east side, next to Washington ES.  

Don't be distracted by the stock visualization image with a tall solid wall. There is currently short solid wall on the parking lot side and a wood and rope fence on the road side. 

Option 1 gives a clear place for kids to ride that is physically separated from cars. The 2-way cycle track would replace the wide grassy area.

Option 2 is sharrows in a place where drivers are more focused on making a turn at Ripley than cyclists approaching from behind them. 

Motorists trying to make a right turn will pull over to the right, trapping cyclists behind them. Small children on bikes and tall, boxy hoods on todays trucks and SUVs mean that parents may not be aware of cyclists in front of them. This has led to an epidemic of frontover crashes where drivers run over people in front of them because they can't see them over their hoods. Or, they look at their screens and forget that there are children in front of them. 

Option 2, sharrows, is a safety disaster. 

Q5 on Ripley: Pick Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the Adams MS side

Option 1 keeps the kids on the school side as long as possible. It also preserves the car unloading curb space that people are currently using. 

Option 2 puts kids in the door zone, at precisely the time that kids being driven to school are unloading. This is a safety disaster. 

Q6: Grant Ave from Inglewood to Kingsdale; I am very dissatisfied but I selected other and explained why we need solid protection instead of plastic bendy poles

They are proposing paint, a buffered (space separation) and plastic bendy poles. 

This is better than existing conditions, but not safe. Cars pick up speed heading downhill and frequently misjudge the curve, so they end up sideswiping cyclists in the bike lane. We really need a concrete barrier on the downhill (right hand) side. 

I ride by bike to shop at the Galleria and this is the scariest part. I saw a guy almost get killed here. If we want more people to bike through this area, which connects to shopping, the South Bay Transit Center, and the 300 new homes under construction, then we deserve solid protection in this dangerous area. 

I gotta break for lunch but I'm going to hit Publish on this so you can get started. I'll finish after lunch. 

...

I'm back. Stay with me because we are on the home stretch, but the most dangerous one that crosses the 405 Freeway and has the most high-speed traffic. 

Q7: Artesia Blvd from Kingsdale Ave to Redondo Beach Blvd pick Option 2.  

Existing conditions are awful and you see very few cyclists brave enough to ride here. If they do, they are often on the sidewalk, conflicting with pedestrians. 

Option 1 puts cyclists next to vehicle lanes, but protected with a concrete curb. Pedestrians and cyclists would intuitively understand where they are supposed to be, as faster bike traffic is at the street level. However, this would interfere with bus stops. 

Option 2 puts pedestrians next to the vehicle lanes, but also next to the bus stop. Trees would provide shade. There could be some confusion with pedestrians wandering on the bike path, but that can be solved with good signage.

Our community has experience with pedestrian and bikeways next to each other in the North Redondo Beach Bikeway (NRBB). While there is some spillover, people have already learned where pedestrians and rollers have priority on the NRBB. Option 2 will work best for us and we already know how to use it. 

Q8: Redondo Beach Blvd from Artesia Blvd to Hawthorne Blvd. Is a tossup but both Options are so much better than the status quo.

Option 1 pits cyclists against pedestrians, but provides 2-way access to Walgreens and Starbucks. It's not terrible as long as cyclists slow down when passing pedestrians and motorists exiting the parking lots look both ways. 

Option 2 provides a clear separation between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Cyclists are curb-protected on the eastbound RB side, and parking-protected on the westbound Lawndale side. However, coming westbound from Walgreens/Starbucks, people will likely bike on the sidewalk until they meet the 2-way cycle track. 

Although you lose a traffic lane, it's not the cyclists' fault. One can just as easily blame the space allocated to free car storage (on-street parking) and a turn lane. Motorists are losing a travel lane to other motorists, not cyclists. Don't forget that. 

Option 1, the 2-way cycle track, provides a better alternative not suggested by Metro for the next section. 

Q9: Redondo Beach Blvd from Hawthorne Blvd to Prairie Ave. I am Very Dissatisfied & propose a better solution. 

Although the status quo is very bad, we shouldn't rush into the proposed door zone bike lane next to high-speed traffic heading to the freeway onramps. It is extremely dangerous. This will greatly reduce the number of people brave enough to ride to Alondra Park and El Camino College. 

If there is enough room for on-street parking, then there is enough room for a parking-protected bike lane. That may require narrowing the car lanes a bit, but that would also inhibit speeding, making that stretch safer and quieter for all road users. 

The freeway onramp is on the north side of RB Blvd. A 2-way cycle track on the south side of RB Blvd would keep cyclists away from the crazy line of cars trying to merge onto the 405 on-ramp. Suggest that in Q11. 

Q10: Redondo Beach Blvd from Prairie Ave to Dominguez Channel. Pick Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the North side, next to the park and El Camino College. 

Option 1 puts cyclists next to the park and ECC. Although it is shown with plastic bendy straws, it can easily be fitted with bollards or a concrete curb for better protection when cycling to and from evening classes at ECC. 

Option 2 puts cyclists in the door zone, where they can be knocked into fast-moving traffic and killed. Drunk or malicious drivers can also harm cyclists easily with only "paint as protection". 

Q11: Additional Comments: This is where we ask for a protected 2-way cycle track on on the south side of RB Blvd between Hawthorne and Prairie. 

What do you need to be comfortable bicycling this corridor? Tell them!

Keep in mind that younger Beach Cities kids will probably only ride the western side of this corridor, west of Inglewood or Kingsdale. But older teens and young adults may need to ride to ECC or to retail jobs between Kingsdale and Crenshaw. 

There are a lot of children and seniors in Lawndale and Torrance who would benefit from these bike facilities, whether they are riding a bike, trike or mobility scooter. 

We should make this corridor welcoming for ages 8-80. 

Think about who needs to travel through this corridor and at what times. What kind of cycling facilities do they need to get there comfortably and safely?  What about seniors in mobility scooters or electric wheelchairs? Would you like to see food delivery robots in the bike lane or more food delivery by privately-owned cars?

With better bike facilities, I may choose to bike to stores further east than I currently feel safe. Every trip I make by eBike instead of car, I am "sparing the air", not taking up road space in front of you, and not competing with you for parking. 

Another thing that excites me about this project is that it connects us to the Dominguez Channel. In a separate project, LA County Public Works will be extending the bike path along the channel southwards. It currently goes north to 120th St, past Amazon, Space-X, Lowe's and to the Metro Green/C Line. A southbound channel bike path would connect to the Harbor Gateway Transit Center, with very fast connections to the Silver/J Line to USC/Expo Park (15 min) and Downtown LA (20 min). Harbor Gateway TS is already linked up to CSU Dominguez Hills. This is a large step forward for a transportation transformation for the South Bay. 

Bike lanes benefit you even if you don't ride a bike, but your neighbors do. 

Bike lanes will save you time currently spent chauffeuring your kids short distances. 

Bike lanes will benefit your kids because students who get exercise before school do better. 

Bike lanes will benefit you when you age out of driving. 

Bike lanes may allow your family to shed one car, saving you over a million dollars per lifetime. 

Finally, I want to close with this terrific video of a #BikeBus led by Coach Sam Balto in Portland. 

https://twitter.com/CoachBalto/status/1656353963489501190?s=20

This bike corridor will touch the lives of half the students in RBUSD and can be transformative for the way our community gets around. If half of our households can shed just one car, we would be richer, our street parking and traffic congestion problems will evaporate, our air and water will be cleaner, and we will have done our part to slow climate change. Oh, we'll be fitter and happier, too. 

* A very few students living in North RB attend Mira Costa HS in Manhattan Beach, but only if MBUSD will take them. 

Diagonal Single Curb Cuts: I don't care if you live or die

I was walking home from the library and thinking about all the ways that my city doesn't prioritize people trying to make trips without cars.  

Behold, the Single Curb Cut, set at 45 Degrees (on the diagonal) with respect to the crosswalks. It's hard to see underneath the car blocking the crosswalk.

Here's the view after the car made a right turn right in front of me as I approached the crossing. If I were in a wheelchair, or using a walker or shopping (granny) cart to get to the grocery store on the other side of the crosswalk, I would have to step out of the marked crosswalk, make a 45 degree turn to the left, cross in the sidewalk, then pull out into traffic again to go up the other diagonal ramp. 

Notice the dark stain at the foot of the ramp? That's the damp spot left after the recent rain because the Diagonal ramp cut is a gravitational well at the intersection of two crowned roads. People who roll things will always be directed into a puddle with these kinds of curb cuts. 

Imagine yourself in a wheelchair, trying to roll to the grocery store. You have to turn, roll yourself diagonally into the street, slowing yourself down so you don't roll off the sidewalk into speeding traffic.  After you stop yourself, you need to make a sharp turn to get into the crosswalk, then roll outside the crosswalk to approach the diagonal curb cut. 

Turning slows you down, so you could be at a near dead stop. To get back onto the sidewalk, you have to push uphill starting from a dead stop in a low point. Now imagine yourself coming home from the grocery store, laden with food.  Do that in reverse with the extra weight. 

At this intersection, there isn't even a marked crosswalk in the other direction; why direct the ramp towards the middle of the arterial intersection? Omission of a marked crosswalk and a traffic signal across this 35 mph arterial road (40,000 vehicles/day) means you want to suppress people from walking across the arterial at this intersection.  You've already decided to pay for only a single curb cut. So why not align it with the marked crosswalk? 

CA Car Rebates and Our Underfunded Active Transportation Program

There's been much hoopla about California's budget surplus and high gasoline prices. So why not use some of that surplus to alleviate pain at the pump? That may be good political messaging when the impetus is the much more mundane Gann Limit on CA public spending. The ghost of Howard Jarvis strikes again. Not content to limit just property taxes, they sponsored and got the electorate to approve caps on overall spending that limit public investment overall.

I don't want to belabor the stupidity of giving people who own cars $400 per car, up to $800 per person, while not similarly rewarding people who are either too poor to own cars and/or care enough about the common good to not own a private car in the first place.

In a world without all the stupid laws that we inherited, we could have fully funded our Active Transportation Program (ATP) to increase the proportion of trips accomplished by biking and walking.  The majority of ATP-funded projects are Safe Routes to Schools--to help children get safely to and from school. Basically, we need to protect kids outside of cars from the cars chauffeuring them around. 

Because of limited funding, ATP grants are extremely competitive. 

In 2014, cities and counties across the state requested about $1 billion in funding for pedestrian and bicycle safety projects, but there was only $368 million available, meaning about 37 percent of applicants were funded that cycle. Fast forward to Cycle 5 in 2020 when over $2.5 billion in funding requests were submitted for $554 million in available funding, a success rate of about 22 percent. In Los Angeles County, only 14 of 64 applications were awarded even partial funding, or 22 percent total – demoralizing, yet consistent with the statewide average.

The 2023-24 ATP budget is even grimmer. ATP has $147,670,000 to spend that is not already committed to other projects. That means, the 6-county SCAG region of 20 M people (including LA County, has only $31,242,000 or about $1.50/resident. 

In contrast, Governor Newsom's proposed 5-year infrastructure plan will devote $10 B to electric cars and $20 B for roads, roughly $5 B/year (pages 7-8).  This isn't even counting the $ spent on CHP and traffic enforcement. Due to the Gann limit, every $ spent in one place is a $ we can't spend somewhere else. This is extremely discouraging. 

In the mean time, we depend on volunteers and advocates such as Safe Routes Partnership to help communities hone their proposals to improve their odds of winning an ATP grant. "In ATP Cycle 5, four out of the five communities we worked with scored an 86/100 or above." In other words, communities can compete to get technical help to further compete to get funds to improve street safety for school children. 

My community finally won an ATP grant, but the funds allotted are well short of what we really need to remodel our streets.  We're likely to end up with some paint and street signs. Sigh. 

We have so much work to do. Spend some time exploring the California ATP Transportation Injury Mapping System.  (You need to register to create a free account, but it's worth it. UC Berkeley researchers built the system and don't do anything nefarious with your search terms.)

Here's a heat map of the 2017-2021 carnage. 

People who live in the neighborhoods with the larges blotches of red are least likely to own a car but most likely to be killed or maimed by one.  In Los Angeles County, over 5 years, 173 cyclists dead, 1323 pedestrians dead, thousands more injured and maimed. Their lives will forever be marked by pain and disability. (I'm not even counting the effect of air pollution in their neighborhoods.)

The Gann Limit requires CA to give out rebates. I wish that the rebates be used for restorative justice instead of rewarding people for owning cars. Who's with me?

World Water Day 2022: Groundwater

We've circled the sun one more time to another World Water Day. This year, the theme is Groundwater. 

I co-organize a monthly (Zoom) series for the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County that grew out of a one-time water walking tour I led in the Beach Cities. We record and post all the Water and Infrastructure Group (WIG) lectures along with the slides. Occasionally, I add articles about what we learned or add further information on each month's subject. 

Please take some time to watch Groundwater 101: Introduction to Sustainable Groundwater Management in Southern California or look through the Groundwater 101 slide deck.

   

Mr. Matthew Hacker is a registered geologist in California and is currently a Senior Resource Specialist at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He has more than 27 years of experience in water resources planning and local resource development in the areas of groundwater, stormwater, and water recycling. Currently, he is striving to create a more resilient water future for Southern California through innovative new projects such as Metropolitan’s groundbreaking Regional Recycled Water Program. 

His prepared talk is under an hour, half the video is Q and A. 

One fascinating thing I learned is that Metropolitan stores imported river water in the vast LA coastal aquifer. That water we pump out, treat, and deliver to our homes, may have originated in Northern California or Colorado. 

You can learn more about that by watching the Who Fills Your Taps? Video or reading the Who Fills Your Taps? Slide Deck. This is a marathon one that is better ingested in two bites. WIG co-organizer, Kathy Kunysz, is a scientist & planner who has had a long & varied career in water. She knows so much, it's an honor and an education to co-host this series with her. 

LTN: One possible solution to decarbonizing transportation

Bad Dad and I were featured in A Local Travel Network for the South Bay Story Map* riding my Ebike and an Escooter we bought for combining with transit just before the March 2020 lockdown.

Click through to see the full wide picture that also includes a BMW electric car.  I have mixed feelings about this project.  I think it is a reasonable baby step, but the South Bay Cities Council of Governments does not appear inclined to offer more than sharrows.  In fact, their South Bay Bicycling Master Plan counts roads with 50+ mph traffic and a sign on the shoulder saying it is a bike route as a bikeway.

The Story Map makes some good points about the South Bay region of Los Angeles County.  This area is home to roughly 1 Million people and 750,000 cars.

70% of South Bay trips are less than 3 miles, yet we do most of them by car. It's both a problem of habit and the built environment. We don't provide safe spaces for people out of cars, so people make trips in cars, even if they would prefer to do otherwise. Spend some time exploring pedestrian and cyclist data using UC Berkeley's Transportation Injury Mapping System. 

In 2009-2020, there were 100,000 collisions involving pedestrians and cyclists, including ~3100 deaths,  in Los Angeles County.

This is just the people that braved the streets outside of cars. This doesn't even represent the suppressed active tranportation trips that people took in cars or forwent out of (quite rational) fear.

I'll take allies where I find them.  I am accepting the LTN (if they actually build it) as a down payment, but not as payment in full, for the safe streets that we deserve and need as we decarbonize local transportation.

* We were told to be near the intersection of Pacific and 10th street in Manhattan Beach, CA one Saturday morning to film.  We bike through that area on our way to the beach several times a week.  It's one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the region.  The organizer wanted a quintessential South Bay setting with the ocean.  But, I would not have selected a neighborhood that aggressively protects Single Family Home Zoning to preserve the affordability of $30,000,000 ($30 Million) dollar homes.  We have to quit showing SFHs as if they are normal or representative. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Plastic

I vent sometimes on Twitter. Earlier this month, I ran a Twitter poll and learned how hard it is to write an unambiguous multiple choice question.

Is plastic petroleum?

Of the 164 votes, 

• 72.6% chose "Yes, duh"
• 3% chose "No"
• 4.3% chose "Don't know"
• 20.1% chose "Not enough info to answer"

It's a good thing that I don't have to come up with a grading rubric for this question because you can make a valid argument that any of the choices are correct. 

I started to write an explanation for the answer, but it became quite a long thread.  Since it took so much research and time, it deserves to be put up on the blog.

Until 2 years ago, I didn’t know that materials scientists consider plastic a property instead of a material. You can make plastic from all sorts of polymers that are soft when warm and rigid when cooled. Eg potato starch plastic. 2/ 

Most plastics used in the world are made from fossil hydrocarbons, typically ethane. It used to be made mainly from petroleum distillates but is now often made from fossil gas aka natural gas. 3/ 

Worldwide, plastics use is increasing alarmingly. We should question whether we really need to consume so much. But, in the US, our car dependence is a much, much bigger problem. Landfilled plastics are sequestered. Gas tank hydrocarbons get burned and add CO2 to the atmosphere 4/ 

4/ Quote Tweeted this AirQ thread about how CO2 is lower on weekends because people drive less.

I’m not a big plastic user and live in a community that supports reduce, reuse, recycling. Angelenos produce much less garbage than US avg. Many areas, including mine, haul away yard and kitchen waste for industrial composting. Our recyclables are collected, sorted and recycled 5/ 

The rest of our trash is incinerated at SERRF on Terminal Island, Long Beach. It generates electricity for SERRF and feeds the grid. The ports of LA/LB use a lot of electricity 24/7 so this is synergistic. My city diverts 74% of waste (typical for LA County) and burns the remaining 26% 6/ 

(Our regional solid waste stream is also smaller than the US avg due to state/local government policy choices. Our family also made lifestyle adjustments to reduce it even further. The main driver is that government policies support solid waste reduction.)

I’m still using a roll of Saran Wrap purchased 10 years ago. I used Parafilm in lab when I needed it. I have zero guilt about using plastic when I need it. Right now, my trash is full of takeout containers from local restaurants that need our support during the pandemic 7/ 

Try to reduce single-use plastics in your day to day life as much as you can. Carry that refillable water bottle daily, but keep a case of water bottles in your earthquake kit. The American Chemical Society devoted a special issue to plastics recycling 8/ 

In short, mechanical plastics recycling chops up the long-chain polymers and weakens plastic. So, the current methods of plastics recycling, where new and old plastics are mixed together, is not closed loop or sustainable. Eventually, the plastic will be too weak to do its job of holding stuff. You don't want a container that breaks unpredictably.

THE DYSFUNCTION OF PLASTICS RECYCLING Plastics recycling, as it exists today, is a mess. In 2015, the US recycled only 9.1% of the 31 million t of plastics that consumers threw out, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The vast majority ended up in either landfills or incinerators. In contrast, two-thirds of paper, a third of metals, and a quarter of glass were recycled that year. In the European Union, about 14.8% of the roughly 27 million t of plastic waste was recycled in 2016, according to the European Commission.

But, there's active research into using enzymes to break down plastic back to its pre-polymerized raw feedstock shape. About 40% of it will remain, but it can be turned into low-sulfur diesel fuel--not a bad fuel for long distance trucking or ocean-going cargo ships which operate away from urban areas. 

One of my husband’s former classmates at MIT is working on enzymatic fuel production from plastics and agricultural waste. I am optimistic about the technology, though it is still too expensive. 9/ 

Driving an ICE car is single use petroleum. Using plastic, even if it is incinerated after 1 use, gets 2 uses out of the material. If it is landfilled, it is at least sequestered vs burned and released into the atmosphere 10/

Gasoline accounts for 45% of US petroleum use while all chemical feedstocks (paint, solvents, cleaners, pharmaceuticals, plastics) account for 1.5% https://eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/use-of-oil.php 11/

In summary, that smarty pants state senator is operating on old information. Plastics are made from a variety of sources & petroleum is one of the top 2. Plastics in waterways is a problem, but tire particles are the overwhelmingly major source 12/ 

[oops, I skipped 13/]

EVs, because of their weight, increases tire wear, exacerbating water and air pollution https://greencarreports.com/news/1127424_study-particulate-emissions-from-tire-wear-is-higher-than-from-tailpipes 14/ 

I wrote a detailed blog post about this 15/ Leaf blowers, street sweeping, car tires, fish and you

“Non-exhaust emissions...are currently believed to constitute the majority of primary particulate matter from road transport: 60% of PM2.5 and 73% of PM10.” https://tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations/pollution-from-tire-wear-1000-times-worse-than-exhaust-emissions.html 16/

Under-inflated tires are a huge contributor to tire particles. Remember the Ford Explorer rollover scandal? SUVs are top heavy. To reduce rollover risk, they use special tires that don’t burst when inflated much lower than passenger car tires 17/ 

SUVs and pickups need larger tires, often at lower pressures, so they don’t roll over. Want to know why our regional PM 2.5 just keeps increasing? The answer is almost always cars, especially SUVs. Electric SUVs are greenwash. Electric bikes/trikes in every garage instead 18/fin

I'm not the only one who sees EV-only approaches without remaking our streets to help us move out of cars as greenwash. 

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities: 

Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions. 

Only getting out of cars will solve the urban particulate air pollution, road congestion and parking/land use problems. I said URBAN. Rural areas have different problems and different solutions. But, since California is the most urbanized of all US states and Los Angeles is among the most urbanized of all CA and US counties, this is what we need to do right here, right now, where I live. 

10 Million people live in Los Angeles County, 5.6x as many people as Idaho. So I don't want to hear any critiques along the lines of this will not work in Boise or on my Montana ranch. The Netherlands has a bike culture with just 511 people per square kilometer vs 905 for Los Angeles County. 

Sure, NL is flat and LA is surrounded by steep mountains. But that also means we live more densely because most of us live in the flatter broad valleys and coastal plains. Ebikes flatten the hills anyway.  It sure does rain a lot more in NL, though.

Followup 10/1/21 

The US Department of Energy, who runs the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, started a new program to fund research in chemical recycling of plastics.

Leaf blowers, street sweeping, car tires, fish and you

I heard arguments for easing up on street sweeping parking tickets during a possible second covid-19 shut-down from both the left and the right.  I'm going to explain why that is a very, very bad idea.

Cities don't spend money to sweep the streets as an excuse to issue parking tickets.  They really do need to clean the streets, especially in coastal communities like Los Angeles.  If we don't clean up our streets, storm drains and waterways, toxins get dumped into coastal waters and we get fined by the EPA.  The fines have enough teeth to prod cities to clean up our street runoff.

Car tire dust is a big, big problem.  

Chemicals in tires break down into a very dangerous toxin that is decimating salmon populations.  This solves the mystery of why, when fish habitat and water flow are restored, salmon continue to die.

Zinc in car tires is a leading source of heavy metal toxins in coastal waters (along with copper from brake dust).

Tire particles are the largest source of microplastics in coastal waters.

I read the microplastics paper and blogged about the painstaking methodology and their results in Heavy Metal in LA.

The tire industry acknowledges that car tire particles make up 60% of PM2.5 and 73% of PM10 particulate air pollution.  This has been confirmed by both microscopic manual separation and identification studies like the one above and by elemental analysis of road dust.

Tire Technology International devoted an entire special issue to the problem of tire dust. It's nice to see industry discuss issues ahead of regulation.  This gives us one more reason to keep our tires inflated.  It will reduce tire dust, improve fuel economy and lower our CO2 emissions.

While regulators are still fixated on fighting the last battle, tailpipe emissions, tire emissions are largely unregulated.  But, the EPA does indirectly regulate tire particles through water quality regulations.

I've written about my loathing for leaf blowers and the health hazards that they pose. Leaf blowers churn up pollen, dust and particulate pollutants. Cars create particulates (road surface wear, tailpipe, tire and brake dust) and churn up road dust as well.  Cars also grind down larger, less dangerous particles into finer, more dangerous ones that can lodge deep in the lungs.

We are in the midst of a raging pandemic. Studies around the world have shown that covid-19 is deadlier as PM2.5 particulate pollution rises. An increase of just 1 microgram per cubic meter of PM2.5 exposure leads to a roughly 10% rise in covid-19 mortality. The Harvard study of the US covid-19 mortality and PM2.5 also studies race and concludes that PM2.5 alone (holding race constant) increases risk by 8% for each microgram/cubic meter.

I bought a home air quality sensor and moved it around the house.  When I put it near a window facing the street, I could see the PM2.5 spike whenever a car drove past.  The road dust got really bad while our city was not able to sweep the streets all the way to the curb due to parked cars.  

When parking enforcement for street sweeping resumed, I saw a decrease in road dust when I opened my windows.  It hasn't rained, so the reduction in road dust is most likely due to more thorough street sweeping.

In the middle of a pandemic, when we are urged to open our windows and ventilate our homes, isn't it important to keep the street air as clean as possible?

Isn't it our self-interest to move our cars and let the street sweeping machines do the most thorough job possible?

Also, why are we storing private property (cars) on the public right of way (street)? What is the point of mandating so much off-street parking in zoning regulations if we're all going to dump our cars on the streets?  

Parking on the street is privatizing public property. Then that leads people to get mad about getting parking tickets when they don't move their cars for the 2 hours a week that the street is swept.  Moving a car off the street is the minimum that people need to do to keep our cities and water clean.

The real outrage is that people privatizing public space is keeping our kids from being biking safely down the street.  The kids are penned between twin rows of parked vehicles with no space for cars to pass them safely--even if they could be seen through the visual clutter of all the parked cars.

Addendum:

The number one thing we can do to reduce tire particulate pollution (in terms of biggest reduction) is to drive lighter cars.  Drive the smallest, lightest car you need for everyday activities. Rent a larger car for occasions where you really need a larger vehicle.

Number two is to drive them less.

Number three is to keep your tires properly inflated.

With climate change, our rain season is going to get shorter.  This means we will have to rely more on street sweeping instead of rain to clean up our tire particle pollution.  The best way is to create less in the first place.

Face Mask Science 3, August 2020 edition

Do you have face mask confusion?  Do conflicting headlines give you headaches?

I sort of feel like I've read enough to know that I should wear one whenever I am indoors in any place that is not my own home.  I should also carry one whenever I am outdoors and be ready to put it on whenever anyone is nearby.

There is no way to reduce risk 100%, but we can reduce it to pretty low by:

• Social distancing in the sense that we minimize going out where we could encounter other people--especially in poorly-ventilated indoor places
• Social distancing in the sense of putting as much space (and air) between you and others outside your household when you do go out
• Universal mask wearing, especially indoors
• Good hygiene (cleaning surfaces, washing hands, not touching face, etc)

The even better news is emerging evidence from multiple countries and situations/studies that show that universal masking reduces the severity of Covid-19 illness if you do catch it. The idea is that viral load matters.  The higher the viral load, the more severe the illness. 

• Try to avoid situations where you can be exposed to the virus.  
• Assume that everyone is contagious (even though usually, it's less than 1%, often much less than 1% of the population.) 
• Then minimize your exposure.

The shaped 2-layer cotton masks I sew are fine for essential shopping trips and the occasional doctor visit.  The problem is finding masks that are comfortable enough to wear when being active (walking, biking, gardening.)

I made some gaiter-style masks with poly/lycra knit sewn into a tube, with a ponytail port at each end.  They were comfortable enough to wear for exercise, but a recent article said that gaiter masks might be worse than nothing.  That made no sense.

Fortunately, Professor Brent Stephens wrote 6000 words about what we know and don't know about masks, different materials, and Covid-19. What kind of mask should I be wearing to protect against COVID-19?

He has some thoughts on Gaiter-Gate, which I need not replicate here. Go read his analysis on why that gaiter measurement (with no control) is highly suspect.  Other scientists pointed out that the measurement that showed a "fleece gaiter" was worse than a bare face at containing droplets might have been measuring fleece fiber shedding instead of droplets.

Professor Linsey Marr wrote how she runs with a gaiter and doubles it up when anyone is nearby.  She posted a presentation on the blocking efficiency of neck gaiters.  The bottom line is that the thin kind that I sew blocks 50-90% of particle sizes that matter when worn in a single layer.  When doubled over, they block 90% over the entire range.

Lab setup:


The data:

The airbrush and spray bottle produce large droplets that, in the absence of a mask or neck gaiter, land on glass slides attached to the opposite manikin’s face. When either neck gaiter was affixed to the spraying manikin, no droplets were observed on the opposite manikin. Thus, the neck gaiters are 100% efficient at blocking these droplets from reaching the opposite manikin’s face.

I know that I sound like a broken record, but the best mask is the one that you will keep on.

Anyway, I am heartened from all of this advice from scientific experts.  It makes Covid-19 less scary.  I have enough to worry about with the elections and the census. 

In other news, this pandemic has made me read up on indoor ventilation and reminded me of sick building syndrome.  I was the canary in the goldmine for that and remember being treated like I was crazy.  One doctor even told me that he ordinarily sends patients who present with my symptoms to psychiatrists but he didn't think that was my problem; after all, I don't dislike technology and chemicals if I decided to major in it.  I'm assembling a blog post with very interesting things I learned.  I even ordered test equipment for my home. 

The mask series.

More face mask science

I'm emotionally exhausted by the pandemic and all the crappy news.  I've posted links to useful Covid-19 information when I come across them on microblogging platforms like IG and Twitter.  It's just easier than blogging.  But, there is also value to putting it on a blog, with more context and explanations.

I've written about masks in The mask/no mask dilemma back on March 18, when some US government messaging was that masks were not effective for the lay public. A lot of people have written about that bad messaging and I'm not going to belabor it here.  Professor Zeynep Tufecki does it as well as anyone.

Anyway, I also posted some cool visual proof of the efficacy of masks in This is why we wear masks. Those are Schlieren images and show breath vapor, not the motion of aerosols and droplets, which will stay even closer than the images shown.

Almost any type of cloth face covering will catch droplets. Most multi-layered ones will catch the majority of the aerosols as well. Masks hold your air closer to your face than without masks.

As Dr Lucy Jones says, "don't share your air."

In my first post, I (and many readers) didn't know what they meant by "Cotton Mix" but were impressed by its filtration efficacy.

After reading this subsequent article, I learned that it was Cotton/Poly blend. Polyester, and any fabric that has static cling, has electrostatic properties that attract and hold particles. That's why your furnace filter is made of polyester fabric. In fact, some people were buying furnace filters and cutting them up to insert inside their DIY masks.

Read Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks. I excerpted some figures and a table from the paper. Even though it is published in a scientific journal, it's written so they lay public can understand it. It is freely available and I hope you download and read it. It's good.

We have carried out these studies for several common fabrics including cotton, silk, chiffon, flannel, various synthetics, and their combinations. Although the filtration efficiencies for various fabrics when a single layer was used ranged from 5 to 80% and 5 to 95% for particle sizes of <300 and="" nm="">300 nm, respectively, the efficiencies improved when multiple layers were used and when using a specific combination of different fabrics. 

This figure shows that filters can trap particles by either mechanical filtration (tight weave) or by electrostatic attraction.

Cotton, the most widely used material for cloth masks performs better at higher weave densities (i.e., thread count) and can make a significant difference in filtration efficiencies.

Notice that Cotton Quilt fabric (medium weave 120 threads per inch) performs better overall than the 600 threads per inch Cotton except at larger particle sizes?  Looser weave Cotton (cheaper quilting cotton at 80 threads per inch) does a lousy job.

Filtration efficiencies of the hybrids (such as cotton–silk, cotton–chiffon, cotton–flannel) was >80% (for particles <300 and="" nm="">90% (for particles >300 nm). We speculate that the enhanced performance of the hybrids is likely due to the combined effect of mechanical and electrostatic-based filtration.

The hybrids do a better job than pure Cotton. Some even outperform surgical masks, which were never designed to catch smaller particles.  (They were designed to catch larger droplets exhaled by health care workers to protect the patients.)

Our studies also imply that gaps (as caused by an improper fit of the mask) can result in over a 60% decrease in the filtration efficiency, implying the need for future cloth mask design studies to take into account issues of “fit” and leakage, while allowing the exhaled air to vent efficiently.

The biggest factor is fit. Isn't that the #1 reason why we sew?  We can customize the fit.

We also sew for improved comfort and face masks are no exception.  If the mask fits and is comfortable, we can wear them for as long as we need.

Pay attention to the pressure drop.  It doesn't matter if the weave and fit are tight, but it's too hot and uncomfortable to wear.  I know that I can wear a real surgical mask while riding my bike or for a long-haul airplane flight.  So I want a combo that has a similar pressure drop of 2.5.  I'll sew something with a good enough filtration efficiency, with the same comfort rating.

Overall, we find that combinations of various commonly available fabrics used in cloth masks can potentially provide significant protection against the transmission of aerosol particles.

Notice that, in every case, more layers offers more protection. 

If you read up on Brownian motion, you learn that smaller particles move faster and encounter more obstacles than larger particles.  So your fabric or filter material doesn't have to be tight enough to mechanically trap the smallest aerosols.  A filter can alter the particle trajectory so that it comes at a slant instead of perpendicular to the filter.  That makes the particle more likely to be caught by subsequent layers. 

That's the magic behind multiple layers.

Knit fabric structure kind of has those layer properties, which is why just one layer of t-shirt jersey can be effective.  Aerosol expert, Professor Linsey Marr, Tweeted that she wears a knit gaiter-style mask single layer when running outside and then doubles it up (by rolling the top over her nose and mouth) if anyone is nearby.

I've come to the realization that I need a wardrobe of masks for different situations.  I'll make some knit gaiter ones for outdoor exercise.  I'll make some fitted woven ones for my essential trips to indoor locales.

It's time to bust out all my cotton/poly or cotton/silk mixes for fitted masks and some high-performance poly knits for gaiters.

I wear a mask to protect you. You wear a mask to protect me. We can sew our own and make it a fashion statement.

Finally, read Masks offer much more protection against coronavirus than many think. Even if the mask is not 100% efficient at filtering out aerosols and droplets containing Coronavirus, it reduces the dose of exposure. So, even if we do get sick, the illness is milder.

"Perfect is the enemy of good," means that waiting for perfection to act is a bad strategy.  We can always strive to do better, learn more.  But we already know enough and have the tools to reduce our collective risk by a huge amount.  Let's all be good enough and defeat this pandemic.