And I thought concrete was bad.  Polystyrene used to insulate the exterior of concrete is made with HFC-134a.

Are you assuming that your 10-oz can of cleaner produces 10 oz of gas? Why?

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.

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

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.

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."

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."

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.

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."

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.)

$50/lb would break the economy in a hurry!  I meant to say $50/ton, a bit under $0.03/lb

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."

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."

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.

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.