I have an untidy habit of eating while I'm working on my computer. Heck, I'm eating a doughnut while I write this post.
Unfortunately, my habit inevitably results in little crumbs of sandwich or potato chips or whatever making their way onto my computer keyboard. Every once in a while I look down at my crumb-ridden keyboard, get disgusted, and embark on a cleaning frenzy. And as many office workers may know, one of the easiest ways to clean a keyboard is with those compressed chemical canister thingies (pictured above). So the other day, while I was merrily blasting away at my keyboard I decided to read the contents. Big mistake.
My little 10-ounce canister contains 100 percent tetrafluoroethane, a greenhouse gas that's sometimes known as HFC-134a (meaning it's a form of hydrofluorocarbon). Before your eyes glaze over, just keep in mind that over a 20-year period, HFC-134a is roughly 3,300 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Nice.
So unless I missed something in the number crunching, using up my 10-ounce can of cleaner will have the same climate-changing effect over the next 20 years as burning at least 100 gallons of gasoline. With that much gas I could drive my trusty Honda Civic from Seattle to New York City. And then back to Chicago. And I would likely still have plenty of fuel left over for side-trips.
All that, packed into a canister retailing for $10.99 at the Office Depot around the corner.
This is not a good idea.
And it strikes me as an instance where the best remedy is pretty simple: just ban it.
Now, it may not be possible to completely ban HFC-134a. It's also used in refrigerators, auto A/Cs, some medical devices, and in some industrial applications. I have no idea how feasible it would be to ban or reduce HFC-134a in those uses. But there is absolutely no good reason why a keyboard cleaner should pack that kind of climate wallop. A feather duster works just as well.
Interestingly, there's a backstory here that's sort of tragic. The reason the manufacturer put HFC-134a in my air canister wasn't out of some nefarious plan to despoil the environment. It was actually to avoid ozone depletion. (HFCs and some other compounds were introduced on a large scale in the 1990s to replace ozone-damaging CFCs.) While HFC-134a is awful for the climate, it's almost totally benign when it comes to the ozone layer. In fact, my canister even sports a little "non-ozone depleting" label. It's a sad example of how our attempts to invent our way out of a jam, led us into another problem.
And here's another reason to ban these little canisters: getting high with them is dangerous.
EPA affirms California’s right to set tougher automobile emissions standards
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Comments View as Flat
sunflower Posted 6:07 am
27 Apr 2007
HFC-134a in polystyrene
And I thought concrete was bad. Polystyrene used to insulate the exterior of concrete is made with HFC-134a.
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b e r n a r d o Posted 6:30 am
27 Apr 2007
Can't TerraPass Offset Use of the Can for Me?
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rjl20 Posted 7:00 am
27 Apr 2007
An alternative
I've got a pair of "ReAir" refillable pressurized air bottles, as seen on Cool Tools. They work almost as well as the single-use chemical ones, and only cost a little more. Until there's a ban, those are a good replacement.
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d41295 Posted 7:54 am
27 Apr 2007
10 oz
Are you assuming that your 10-oz can of cleaner produces 10 oz of gas? Why?
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Eric de Place Posted 8:15 am
27 Apr 2007
because
d41295, good question. It's actually a bit of a puzzler. Here goes.
The canister's label says that the contents' net weight is 10 fluid ounces (and the canister's label says elsewhere that the contents are 100% percent HFC-134a). The nutty part is that the weight is also listed as 284 grams. That's odd because 284 grams would be the weight of 10 fluid ounces only if the contents weighed exactly the same as water, and it doesn't. HFC-134a is heavier than water.
So either the canister contains less than 10 fluid ounces, and the figure of 284 grams is correct; or, more likely, somebody made a quick (but inaccurate) conversion to grams using the "standard" (i.e. water weight) conversion. If there really are 10 fluid ounces of 134a, then there would something like 346 grams in the canister. And in that case, everything is much than the estimates I made in the post.
Whatever the weight -- 284 or 346 -- the contents' weight will be the same whether compressed into the canister or distributed into the air.
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Eric de Place Posted 8:18 am
27 Apr 2007
premature comment submitting
Sentence should read: "And in that case, everything is much WORSE than the estimates I made in the post."
There's also a lively discussion of this post going on over at Sightline Institute's Daily Score blog, where this was orginally posted.
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 8:54 am
27 Apr 2007
hisss
Wow, I have one of those little greenhouse bombs on my shelf. Even though I use it so infrequently that it's lasted 6 years so far, now I want to get rid of it. But I guess I gotta hang onto it until someone figures out how to neutralize HFC-134a (doesn't seem too likely, does it?).
Here's another Cool Tools recommendation: Vacuum Micro Attachment Kit.
I can't believe kids are huffing this stuff and dropping dead and it hasn't been banned yet. According to Wikipedia, at high concentrations it also causes testicular tumors.
Ped Shed Blog
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Dawn Pillsbury Posted 9:25 am
27 Apr 2007
Alternative keyboard cleaning strategies
There's always this approach.
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:30 am
27 Apr 2007
Thanks a lot awn.
I just turne my keyboar upsi e own an now the amne " " key is stuck!
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:33 am
27 Apr 2007
Anytbo y know how to unstick a fricken
keyboar key?
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:39 am
27 Apr 2007
Never mind
I think I got it. ddddddddddddddddddd d.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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bralessliving Posted 1:10 pm
27 Apr 2007
start a rumor on wiki
Start a rumor on wikipedia and say that HFC-134a can kill you instantly.
No probably youtube or myspace, which has a higher percentage of gullible moronic tools?
Long term death for people's grandkids doesn't seem to inspire people, but potential death for you right now...well...the fear of death thing has ennacted with a quickness all kinds of stupid laws.
How about we use that technique for one smart one?
In bounciness, Lo Fleming
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GreenEngineer Posted 1:35 pm
27 Apr 2007
getting rid of it
until someone figures out how to neutralize HFC-134a (doesn't seem too likely, does it?).
I know that freon (the old ozone-depleting CFC) is required by law to be captured when servicing the A/C system of a car. Apparently those rules apply to the HCFCs too. What happens to it then is unclear. Likely it can be filtered and dewatered and returned to service.
So there is probably a way to dispose of it without releasing it, though you might have a tough time convincing them to take seriously such a small quantity of the material.
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sm00bs Posted 2:39 pm
27 Apr 2007
This will probably make me look like an ignoramous
Our canister of "Perfect Duster" contains only Difluoroethane. My Google search didn't produce enough information for me to know how different this is from the tetrafluoroethane mentioned in this post. Is ours just as bad? The canister states it contains no CFCs but says nothing about HFCs.
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:45 pm
27 Apr 2007
Well
I dunno if this covers HCFC 134a
But this looks interesting:
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/phaseout/hcfc.html
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 3:33 am
28 Apr 2007
one-tenth
Difluoroethane has a GWP of 140, or one-tenth that of tetrafluoroethane. Better, but still not good.
Ped Shed Blog
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JMG Posted 6:00 pm
28 Apr 2007
Good lord --
So today, walking into a Costco store, I see an entire pallet of the damn things ... if I recall right, Costco is based near Grist, and should be amenable to a little pressure to discontinue that particular item and replace it with something a little more sensible.
I'm thinking of something along the lines of the windup flashlights --- a little squeezeball/stress reliever type toy that uses a check valve to hold the air (compressed by squeezing the larger chamber) in a second, smaller chamber leading to a trigger and a small outlet nozzle.
Make it out of decent natural rubber and metal and the thing might last a goodly long time and keep the keyboards clean without any marginal global heating impact at all (the energy of production of devices replaced every 10 or 20 years being far less than the energy used to make that many cans to hold the incredibly powerful global heating gas).
Heck, Goodwill Industries or some similar group ought to be able to make these in North America, providing jobs for people who need them, minimizing the energy of shipping, and displacing a truly horrible product.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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JMG Posted 6:03 pm
28 Apr 2007
Oh yes,
Also, need to contact your state and federal legislators to say, even if you won't ban these outright, how about banning purchase by your part of the government.
I bet you anything that a buttload of the demand for these little climate hand grenades comes from being on the GSA contract for office supplies. Get the federal GSA (which many states use as their approved purchase list) to delist these products and issue a directive that they are not allowed in government buildings and you've gone a long, long way to getting rid of these.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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JMG Posted 6:15 pm
28 Apr 2007
Address for Costco
If you are a Costco member, here's the address for suggestions, where you might want to suggest that the company refuse to stock these little stinkers any more:
https://www.costco.com/CustomerService/EmailUs.aspx?secure=1
Similarly, if you shop at Office Max/Staples/Office Depot/Sams/Wal-Mart or wherever, send them a link to this story and ask them to discontinue carrying these things.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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mihan Posted 12:48 am
29 Apr 2007
Pet Peeve (one of many)
I hate to get all physics-teacher, but labeling on products really irritates me sometimes.
For example, the confusion here because of the "fluid ounces" label. A fluid ounce is a unit of volume, not weight, as most observant cooks could tell you.
I just got some of those nifty white LED lights, and the box says that they save "x kW each year". A kW is a unit of rate of energy use. This would be like saying that you drove a distance of "60 miles per hour each year." Makes no sense.
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GreenEngineer Posted 7:48 am
30 Apr 2007
verification
Has anyone verified that Eric's assumptions and calculations are correct? A quick web search suggests that this is not a widely appreciated problem, assuming that it is in fact as big a problem as it seems.
I did run across one company making a climate sensitive duster. It uses HFC-152, which has much less warming potency than HFC-134, but happens to be flammable.
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GreenEngineer Posted 8:52 am
30 Apr 2007
global warming potential
As noted on the wikipedia link above, the GWP of HFC-134 is 3,300 on a 20 year timescale, but only 1300 on a 100-year timescale, because it has a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere (~14 years). For what it's worth, the LEED system uses the 100-year number.
But HFC-152 is still a much better deal, with a lifetime of ~1.4 years and a 100-year GWP of 120.
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JMG Posted 9:22 am
30 Apr 2007
Ummmm
isn't that like saying that "Don't worry, it won't kill you immediately, it's a slow acting poison?"
I mean, I cleaned my keyboard the other day with the invert and shake method at zero greenhouse gas cost, and then I used the upholstery attachment for a few seconds on it when I was vacuuming ... a few seconds of electric use, yes, but a hell of a lot less impact than eithr of those little climate bomb canisters.
Why allow these things at all?
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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GreenEngineer Posted 10:26 am
30 Apr 2007
relative badness
Why allow these things at all?
Because there are things that require this tool for cleaning. Anyone who is using this to clean their keyboard is being pretty silly, but lets say I need to get the lint off the lens of a $5,000 professional digital SLR camera. A little squirt from one of these cans is just the thing. And compressed air isn't as good, because it contains water vapor and potentially debris. Canned HFC doesn't.
Point is, banning technologies outright is sometimes a good idea but rarely necessary or optimal. Judicious use motivating by a true rendering of costs generally leaves you with more options and a better solution. So, tax the hell out of them, in proportion to their GWP, and go from there. (A carbon tax of $50/lb of CO2 would add $0.05 to the cost of a gallon of gas, but would add $5 or more to the cost of one of these dusters. Rough calc, but it's in the right ballpark, I think.)
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sunflower Posted 11:35 am
30 Apr 2007
$0.30/lb. carbon = $1.50/gallon gasoline
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:47 pm
30 Apr 2007
oops
$50/lb would break the economy in a hurry! I meant to say $50/ton, a bit under $0.03/lb
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JMG Posted 5:50 pm
30 Apr 2007
Base the tax on climate destroying power then
If the tax is $50/ton, then big deal -- even if your proposed tax adds $2.50 a can, then a 4-pack goes from $10 to $30 ... and I'm guessing that most of the sales are to businesses or government agencies already, so there's no real incentive felt by decision makers to run them out. Doubtless sales will dip some, but not nearly enough.
Moreover, when rely on taxes, you invite smuggling and tax evasion. There have been articles on that with respect to freon and other prohibited gasses already.
And then, making that problem worse, is that green taxes ought to be based on damage done, not volume.
So if you're going to talk about taxing these things climate hand grenades rather than an outright ban (which would be far easier to enforce) then you have to at least think about applying the tax so that it goes up in proportion to the global climate destabilizing power, rather than just its bare carbon content.
That is, not all carbon is created equal.
So if we want to use taxes, we need to normalize the tax so that something that is twice as bad for the for climate as CO2 pays about twice the tax.
Thus, combustion of coal and natural gas would be taxed the same because they both result in CO2 (although use of nat gas should carry an extra penalty to account for pipeline losses, which are in the form of methane, 21 times more heat-trapping than CO2).
But these little climate bombs should be taxed at something closer to 3300 times more than an equivalent volume of CO2 would be.
I bet you your high end camera owner can buy a lot of lens cleaning solutions that don't destroy the climate for that kind of money.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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JMG Posted 5:51 pm
30 Apr 2007
Sorry, math alert
I meant "$5/can" adds $20 to the price of a four-pack.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:54 am
01 May 2007
$5/can
That price is intended to reflect the higher GWP. Think about it: If a gallon of gas gets a $0.05 price bump, then a product with 100X the GWP of that gallon of gas gets a $5 bump.
In terms of estimating the impact of these taxes, I think that the percentage increase in product price is probably the best indicator. I haven't bought one of these things is a very long time, but I recall the basic price is in the $5-6 range. So a $5/can global warming tax (not really a "carbon" tax at that point) just about doubles the price. That should hurt their sales substantially.
This is particularly true when you consider that this makes for a huge price differential between the HFC-134 duster (at $10/can) and the HFC-152 duster (at $5.50/can). That sort of price differential will mean that HFC-134 quickly gets relegated to very specialized applications only, and most of the market shifts to HFC-152.
I don't see how your suggestion of a ban is any more practical than a tax. A ban is, essentially, an infinite tax. Since the incentive to engage in evasion tactics (e.g. smuggling) go up as the tax goes up, an outright ban will create a black market faster than a tax will. Of course, if you are correct and most of these are B2B purchases, then the potential for a black market is greatly reduced since it is rarely in the interests of a mainstream company to take the risks associated with black market goods.
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Pandu Posted 4:46 am
01 May 2007
mass
Regarding the 284 grams to 10 fl.oz., I think it's mislabeled. It should not be fluid ounces. It would be odd to label a compressed, liquified gas can like this with a mass and a volume. Obviously someone reading the can could see how big the can is, so the volume of liquid in there would be hardly relevant.
I normally just shake the keyboard upside down. If I'm really ambitious, I'll put the vaccum to it, or maybe put the hose to the blower and really move some air.
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GreenCooling Posted 11:29 am
28 Oct 2008
HFCs a big problem, but keyboard sprays trivial
While it's great to see the very powerful global warming HFC gases getting any attention, there are many frivolous uses of these substances, including paint ball guns, spiderman web blaster toys, silly string, window 'snow' sprays, wine bottle openers, and yes, even dog poo freeze sprays, but the latter only in America, I understand. If we really thought climate change mattered these products would have been banned years ago, but one lives in hope.
The far more substantive issue is the use of HFCs in automotive air conditioning and commercial refrigeration because of the very high leakage rates. Domestic and Commercial air con are also big and rapidly growing slices of the HFC emissions pie. Whilst these gases are thought to contribute around 2% of radiative forcing emissions now (let's remember they've been with us for less than 20 years), projections are they could reach 8% or more by 2050, so they must be a priority for phase out now.
The Europeans are doing this from 2011 in new model vehicles and in all vehicles by 2017, and CO2 is the leading contender to replace HFCs in vehicles, in spite of efforts by DuPont and Honeywell to get a new low GWP HFC-1234yf to market (see www.r744.com). Here in Australia highly purified hydrocarbon refrigerants are widely accepted in the service market, and although available in the US too, still face large regulatory barriers, which is a shame as they have very little environmental impact and great performance and cost advantages.
CO2 is also making great strides in supermarket refrigeration in Europe and Australia, and is being introduced in Thailand and soon elsewhere in Asia, but very little seems to be happening in the US, in spite of very progressive proposals from the California Air Resources Board to crack down on fluorocarbon emissions.
I'll leave it there for now, but look forward to making further contributions on a massively neglected contributor to global warming that is being strongly pushed by US corporate interests, hopefully the tide will begin to change after next week?
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