Banned industrial solvent sheds new light on methane mystery

[rangerrebew]

Banned industrial solvent sheds new light on methane mystery

Date:
    April 17, 2017
Source:
    University of Bristol
Summary:
    Since 2007, scientists have been searching to find the cause of a sudden and unexpected global rise in atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, following almost a decade in which concentrations had stayed relatively constant. A new paper investigates one possibility: a rise and fall in the concentration of the substance that destroys methane in the atmosphere, the hydroxyl radical.
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FULL STORY

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170417182928.htm

[Suppressed]

Geez....methyl chloroform's IUPAC name is 1,1,1-trichloroethane.  While it might not be in your bottle of Liquid Paper anymore, it's definitely still seeing limited industrial use in some areas.  Plus, 1,1,1-TCA is still present in the environment, where it is volatilizing into the atmosphere to some extent. 

The story doesn't tell the magnitude of what they're seeing, but I have some questions about this work.

[Elderberry]

Production   http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/1%2C1%2C1-Trichloroethane

Production of 1,1,1-trichloroethane has been drastically reduced in the last quarter century. Following the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocol, production of 1,1,1-trichloroethane was to be phased out incrementally with the goal of ceasing production in 2002, however somewhere between 100-500 million pounds of 1,1,1-trichloroethane continued to be produced in 2002 (#ATSDR Toxicological Profile). Production has continued to be phased out with 125 million pounds produced in 2005 (NOTE: some places produce and store on-site and those numbers are not known exactly) (#ATSDR Toxicological Profile). It is only used currently for essential applications (#ATSDR Toxicological Profile)