| Dear
EarthTalk: In renovating a vacation cabin,
I discovered carpenter ants working their way through the
walls. Is there any way to responsibly get rid of the pests
without using noxious chemicals that could potentially harm
my family?
-- Curran Clark, Lummi Island, WA
| |
In
dealing with carpenter ants, which can do serious
damage to anything wooden in your home, avoid pesticides
that are toxic to people by looking for those with
boric acid or borax as the active ingredient.
© Dalantech, courtesy Flickr |
Carpenter
ants may seem small and look harmless, but they can do serious
damage to anything wooden in your home, including not only
furniture but also the very framing and walls that hold
up the house. If you are seeing a lot of ants or small piles
of sawdust-like material in random spots in or around your
home, you are most likely suffering from a carpenter ant
infestation.
Ants
are very social beings and form large colonies before spreading
out to find additional nest sites. They thrive by hollowing
out wood, especially in moist or rotten spots, to build
their nests and then use their new home in your walls and
chairs as a base camp from which to forage for food and
water in their nearby surroundings. Indeed, their very presence
is a good indication of moisture or rot problems in the
wood, so homeowners may have more work on their hands than
simply exterminating carpenter ants.
In
the northern latitudes of the continental U.S. and in much
of Canada, carpenter ants are the most common insect wood
destroyer, surpassing even the mighty termite. But while
many commercially available chemical pesticides will rid
a structure of carpenter ants, homeowners are increasingly
steering away from such toxins proven to impact the human
nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems.
Perhaps
the most economical and effective way to get rid of carpenter
ants is by applying boric acid (also known as borax) to
their nest sites and surroundings. This natural non-toxic
element, mined from below the Mojave Desert in southern
California, has a long history of use in exterminating brazen
populations of cockroaches, palmetto bugs, waterbugs, silverfish,
termites, and, you guessed it, carpenter ants.
Al
Abruzzese, owner of the website Al’s Home Improvement
Center, swears by boric acid to get rid of wood-boring pests.
“This simple inexpensive, household chemical is deadly
to all insects,” he says. “It has been shown
to attack their nervous systems, as well as being a drying
agent to their bodies.”
Beyond
just being effective as an all-natural insecticide, boric
acid is non-toxic to humans. Abruzzese says it is safe enough
to use around children—it has been used in ointments
and salves for diaper rash on babies in the past—and
can be an important part of eyewash solutions as well, albeit
in very diluted form (don’t try it at home). One common
brand name to look for is Nisus Bora-Care, but any pesticide
with boric acid or borax listed as an active ingredient
will do just fine.
For
those not into do-it-yourself pest control, calling in an
exterminator that uses all natural products is a good option.
Oregon’s All Natural Pest Elimination, for instance,
services the entire four state region of the Pacific Northwest
with products from Natureline—crafted from safe botanical
extracts and essential oils, not synthetic chemicals—on
all of its extermination jobs. Look in the yellow pages
for exterminators in your area, and call each one you are
considering to make sure they stay away from noxious chemicals.
CONTACTS:
Al’s
Home Improvement Center; Nisus
Bora-Care; All
Natural Pest Elimination.
Dear
EarthTalk: What
is “cogeneration” as a means of providing heat
and power?
-- Jerry Schleup, Andover, MA
| |
A
look inside the workings of a cogeneration power plant
at Yale University.
© Sweet lil' Bunny, courtesy Flickr |
Cogeneration—also
known as combined heat and power, distributed generation,
or recycled energy—is the simultaneous production
of two or more forms of energy from a single fuel source.
Cogeneration power plants often operate at 50 to 70 percent
higher efficiency rates than single-generation facilities.
In practical
terms, what cogeneration usually entails is the use of what
would otherwise be wasted heat (such as a manufacturing
plant’s exhaust) to produce additional energy benefit,
such as to provide heat or electricity for the building
in which it is operating. Cogeneration is great for the
bottom line and also for the environment, as recycling the
waste heat saves other pollutant-spewing fossil fuels from
being burned.
Most of the thousands
of cogeneration plants operating across the United States
and Canada are small facilities operated by non-utility
companies and by institutions like universities and the
military. For small cogeneration plants—those that
generate anywhere from one to 20 megawatts of power—biomass
or even methane from garbage dumps can be used as a front-end
fuel source, but natural gas is far more common as the primary
input.
For instance,
Sunnyvale, California-based Network Appliance Inc., a computer
networking company, relies on a one megawatt natural gas-powered
cogeneration system to power the building’s extensive
air conditioning needs, and for back-up power for use during
peak demand times. The company estimates it saves around
$300,000 a year in energy costs thanks to the cogeneration
system.
In another example,
Illinois-based Epcor USA Ventures operates three mid-sized
(25 megawatts and up) cogeneration power plants in San Diego
to power U.S. Marine Corps and Navy bases there. All three
plants work in the same way: Natural gas turbines drive
electrical generators that in turn exhaust hot gases. These
are then captured to drive a steam generator hooked into
the bases centralized heating and cooling systems. Since
the systems generate power to spare, Epcor is talking with
area companies about kicking in for a share of the steam
to keep their energy bills and carbon footprints in check.
Cogeneration
is not limited to stationary power plants. Honda is exploring
the use of a specialized automotive cogeneration generator
designed to improve the overall efficiency of hybrid vehicles
by recapturing waste exhaust heat from the internal combustion
engine and converting it to electricity to recharge the
battery pack. The idea is still in the research and development
phase, it could make its way into new cars within a few
years, further improving on the already impressive efficiency
of hybrid cars.
CONTACTS:
Network
Appliance Inc.; Epcor
USA Ventures; Honda
Motor Company. |
