An elegant paper on the release of gaseous alkyl amines into Chinese homes.
The paper is this one: Discovery of a Potent Source of Gaseous Amines in Urban China (Yunhua Chang, Yaqin Gao, Yiqun Lu, Liping Qiao, Yaqiong Kuang, Kai Cheng, Yuhang Wu, Shengrong Lou, Shengao Jing, Hongli Wang, and Cheng Huang Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2021 8 (9), 725-731.
One of the interesting environmental problems that is often not discussed in the public sphere, although it has been broadly discussed in the scientific literature, is the problem of nitrosamines, which are potent carcinogens because they degrade to alkylating agents physiologically, whereupon they alkylate nucleic acids, particularly DNA, leading to cancer.
The authors of the paper cited note that atmospheric amines are widely found in the atmosphere, and that they interact with acid gases - China's reliance on coal generates lots of NOx species as well as sulfur oxides - to form particulates. They don't refer to nitrosamines specifically because their main interest is identifying the amines and their source.
I admire any paper that introduces me to an analytical instrument of which I am unaware; I'm aware of QTOF high resolution mass specs although my company is an Orbitrap kind of company - people often try to convince me to buy QTOFs though - but I was not at all aware of PTR-QiTOFs, (Proton Transfer Reaction - Quadrupole Ion Guide Time of Flight) - which are used for the analysis of trace atmospheric gases. The authors also utilize an infrared laser device called a Picarro ammonia analyzer, which utilizes a detection system based on cavity ring down spectrometer, a technique of which I have only passing familiarity, from general reading. (I'm not in the environmental analytical field.)
Anyway, amines are found to enter Chinese homes through ceiling vents. The source? Apparently many large Chinese cities do not have centralized sewage lines for domestic use but rely on septic tanks located at individual homes. The amines and ammonia are formed by microbiological degradation in these.
When my septic tank failed some years back - a very expensive issue - given the low permeability of soils in my area, I chose to replace the tank with a somewhat eccentric aerating system, the possibility of which I'd often mused only to find out they were commercially available. My system blows air through the waste to encourage bio-oxidative breakdown, but, given this paper, generates amines to be sure.
The treatment of human waste is an issue of huge importance.
I am often taken to task by people complaining about so called "nuclear waste," - a topic about complainants generally clearly know nothing at all - although what they call "nuclear waste" has a demonstrated record of over half a century of killing very few, if any, people in normal operations. (I deny the existence of nuclear waste, since I think used nuclear fuel is a valuable resource, but that's another matter.) These people are literally killing the planet using the same mechanism that anti-vaxxers use to kill people, selective attention, fetishes, and general ignorance.
Anyway.
About 2 billion people on this planet lack any kind of sanitary treatment, septic tanks or otherwise, many being required by poverty to defecate in the open air on the ground. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people, approaching 1 million, dominated by children, die each year. Fecal waste is thus a more serious risk than so called "nuclear waste." (Fecal waste is, in turn, dwarfed by deaths from dangerous fossil fuel waste, including but not limited to air pollution, but also including heavy metals -and gases including radon - and climate change.)
I enjoyed this paper very much. It make me think.
Happy New Year.
