Sulfur

Q. My 12-year-old son will be going back to camp this summer. He came home last year with chigger bites all over his legs. A year later, you can still see where the bites were. Is there something he can put on his legs to deter these nasty pests? A friend recommended sulfur, but the pharmacist said this was not a good idea because sulfur can burn. Can you help? A. Chiggers are the bane of campers, gardeners and berry pickers. These critters are also known as red bugs or harvest mites.

It isn't hard to recognize an example of false economy in the average household budget. The vegetable gardener who spends $500 on supplies to produce $12 in produce, the inexpensive home repair that falls apart in a month or the avid shopper who saves $5 online but pays an extra $20 in shipping and handling. Yet for some reason many of us are blind to the false economy of providing gasoline at the cheapest price possible regardless of its impact on our lives and society. To put it bluntly, humans have been subsidizing the cost of gas by accepting - without direct charge - the air pollution gas-burning vehicles generate.

A tentative ruling by a Texas environmental commission would force Crown Central Petroleum Corp. to install a $300,000 device to help stop sulfur emissions at one of its refineries in Texas -- an order readily accepted by the company but deemed insufficient by environmental groups and health officials who say Crown should install a more effective unit that would cost more than $20 million.The move comes nearly a year after the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission fined Crown just over $1 million -- the largest air pollution fine ever issued by Texas -- for continued violations between 1993 and 1998 that included excessive hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide emissions at its Pasadena refinery.

Just before midnight Wednesday, three words brought a stream of emergency crews and hazardous materials units to a wooded corner of Cecil County just north of Interstate 95: liquid sulfuric acid. A train operated by CSX Corp. derailed about 11:45 p.m., and initial reports said two cars contained the highly corrosive and environmentally dangerous substance. Luckily, officials said, the acid didn't leak, even though the cars containing it were off-kilter. "They were either sideways or just off the rail, but none are on their side," said CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan of the nine cars determined to have slipped off the tracks.

Chemical-maker W. R. Grace & Co. said yesterday that it has purchased a Chicago hydroprocessing enterprise that will put the Columbia-based company in the business of aiding in the removal of sulfur from gasoline. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency said it will require gasoline to have a significantly smaller amount of sulfur by 2005. "It expands our product offering in hydroprocessing and positions us to compete in the light-oil area, including removing sulfur from gasoline, and strategically that is why it's valuable," Paul J. Norris, Grace's chairman, president and chief executive officer said yesterday.

Over the last two decades, countries in northern Europe and North America have been enacting regulations to reduce smokestack emissions of sulfur in an effort to curb acid rain and its harmful effect on the environment.In what researchers say is the first comprehensive look at the effect of those reductions on rivers and lakes, an international team of scientists reports finding a nearly universal decrease on both continents in the levels of sulfates -- the major acidifying pollutant deposited by acid rain in surface water.

An accident that sent six Lehigh Portland Cement employees to Carroll County General Hospital on Nov. 5 was caused by trace amounts of sulfur compounds in a waste oil truck that was left open at the Union Bridge plant, company officials said yesterday.The company released that finding after conducting what officials described as a preliminary investigation into the accident.The report said the substances -- hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans -- are known to cause dizziness, breathing and eye problems and nausea, the symptoms shown by the employees that morning.

CLEANER gasoline means cleaner-running cars. That's the environmental message major oil companies have advertised for years. So why do refiners object to low-sulfur fuel that would cut air pollution the equivalent of removing 50 million cars from the road?Primarily, the cost. Billions of dollars would be needed to convert refineries to remove the natural sulfur from petroleum. The cost of a gallon of gasoline could rise by 10 cents to 20 cents, the industry warns.The auto industry wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require a nationwide gasoline with 90 percent less sulfur than the current 340 parts per million average.

A $100,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency will help buy ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel for 165 transit buses in East Baltimore, officials said yesterday. Wedged between several disassembled MTA buses in a Highlandtown bus barn, representatives from several state, national and local agencies said the one-year project is intended to reduce diesel exhaust emissions, which exacerbate the city's smog and can cause respiratory and health problems. The EPA money given to the Maryland Department of the Environment will subsidize the difference in cost between regular diesel and the ultra-low-sulfur fuel, which is 8 cents to 12 cents more a gallon, said Robert L. Smith, administrator for the Maryland Transit Administration.

Most of the diesel fuel being produced nationwide is now a low-sulfur variety that will sharply cut pollution by trucks and buses - a change that federal officials are calling the biggest clean-fuel advance since unleaded gasoline. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said in a teleconference yesterday that ultra-low sulfur diesel now makes up about 90 percent of the output of U.S. refiners - exceeding the 80 percent standard the industry was required to meet by Sunday. The rule, proposed by the Clinton administration and implemented by the Bush administration, is the culmination of an environmental "Dump Dirty Diesel" campaign that began in New York more than a decade ago with ads on transit buses.

In a sweeping move aimed at curbing long-distance air pollution that afflicts the health of 240 million Americans — including Marylanders — the Environmental Protection Agency is ordering power plants across much of the eastern United States to sharply curtail emissions. The rule, announced Thursday, gives coal-fired plants in Maryland and 26 other states until 2014 to make steep reductions in emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, pollutants that contribute to serious health problems such as asthma, bronchitis and heart attacks.

On December 30, 2008, JACOB PETER (Jack) MEYER, beloved husband of Eleanor B. Meyer (nee Carter); loving father of Patrick Horine-Meyer Relatives and friends may call at the family-owned Ambrose Funeral Home, Inc 1328 Sulfur Spring Road ( Arbutus) on Friday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. where a funeral service will be held Saturday at 9:30 A.M. Interment following at Loudon Park Cemetery. www.ambrosefuneralhomes.com

WASHINGTON -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's stunning loss in a constitutional referendum Sunday has dealt a severe and possibly fatal blow to his ambitions to spread his political ideology and succeed Fidel Castro as the leader of Latin America's anti-American left, analysts and U.S. officials said yesterday. Few analysts were willing to bet that Chavez won't recover and try again to strengthen his grip on power in Venezuela. But the rejection of his proposed constitutional changes hurt Chavez because it came on top of a string of international gaffes and missteps that have made him look erratic and even buffoonish.

Most of the diesel fuel being produced nationwide is now a low-sulfur variety that will sharply cut pollution by trucks and buses - a change that federal officials are calling the biggest clean-fuel advance since unleaded gasoline. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said in a teleconference yesterday that ultra-low sulfur diesel now makes up about 90 percent of the output of U.S. refiners - exceeding the 80 percent standard the industry was required to meet by Sunday. The rule, proposed by the Clinton administration and implemented by the Bush administration, is the culmination of an environmental "Dump Dirty Diesel" campaign that began in New York more than a decade ago with ads on transit buses.

WASHINGTON -- The devil, you say? His ears must be burning more than usual these days. Ol' Beelzebub's name is getting called into political service, from the loonier corners of the left to the most self-righteous regions of the right. "Yesterday, the devil came here," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in a speech delivered in Spanish before the United Nations. El diablo of whom he spoke was President Bush. "Right here," he said, drawing laughter by blessing himself with the sign of the cross, folding his hands as if in prayer and glancing heavenward.

At the suggestion of the power industry, the Ehrlich administration is proposing to exempt about half of Maryland's coal-fired power plants from some of the governor's new rules on air-pollution control, according to a draft of the regulations released yesterday. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. held a news conference in November to announce that he would soon be issuing the Maryland Clean Power Rule, which he said would be "the most sweeping, far-reaching clean air rule ever promulgated in Maryland."

Q. How do you get rid of fire blight in sweet cherry trees? At least that's what I think is wrong. Last summer, some of my young shoots wilted and died and one branch died back. I want to prevent the problem this coming season. A. Cherry trees don't get fire blight. You may have a couple of different problems. Oriental fruit moth larvae may have entered the young shoots, causing wilting and death. Or the shoots may have been damaged by very cold temperatures. The branch dieback was probably caused by a canker disease.

WASHINGTON -- It may not be immediately apparent to anyone who has not recently taken a close look at the pumps at filling stations, but since Jan. 1, the government has required that diesel fuel be sold in three colors.The colors are part of a new effort by two federal agencies and Congress to clean the air and collect fuel taxes.For the government, it is simpler. For everyone else, it is far more confusing.Consider: Highway vehicles must burn expensive clear diesel, except for government cars and trucks, local buses and vehicles owned by disparate groups like aircraft museums, nonprofit schools and the American Red Cross.

WASHINGTON -- Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality has ordered the Mirant Corp. to clean up or close its aging power plant on the banks of the Potomac River in Alexandria. Mirant's three Maryland plants in Charles, Montgomery and Prince George's counties are much larger, and won't be shutting down any time soon. But given Virginia's aggressive enforcement, it's time to ask whether our state is doing enough about the enormous amount of air pollution caused by Maryland's coal-fired electricity generators.

Maryland is home to the fourth-worst power plant in the nation for nitrogen air pollution, which is washed into the Chesapeake Bay and causes low-oxygen "dead zones" that suffocate marine life, according to a new report. The state is also the site of two of the 20 worst power plants for sulfur dioxide pollution, which causes acid rain and soot, according to the study by a Washington-based nonprofit group called the Environmental Integrity Project. Subsidiaries of the Mirant Co. of Atlanta own all three of the plants: Chalk Point in Prince George's County, which made the nitrogen list; the Morgantown generator in Charles County, 19th on the sulfur pollution list; and the Dickerson plant in Montgomery County, 20th on the list.