I was driving to give blood this morning, and it’s a beautiful clear day here south of I-10. Except for these few stray clouds. Seeing them inspired me to take a picture and do a quick thread on environmental issues.
You see, these clouds are always in the same place in the morning, until the upper air heats up, and unless the weather overtakes them. I happen to know these clouds are over (from left to right) a small refinery, a large refinery, and a medium-size chemical plant.
These facilities generate enormous amounts of heat, and the equipment needs to be cooled to keep running, just like your car. Instead of a closed-loop cooling system like your radiator these facilities use open cooling towers. They used closed systems too for smaller applications
Most people think of cooling towers as the first picture, and of course these exist but they’re actually pretty rare. The second picture is more common, and much less visibly identifiable to the public
Most people think of cooling towers as the first picture, and of course these exist but they’re actually pretty rare. The second picture is more common, and much less visibly identifiable to the public
Most people think of cooling towers as the first picture, and of course these exist but they’re actually pretty rare. The second picture is more common, and much less visibly identifiable to the public
Cooling towers work like a “swamp cooler”. As water evaporates it takes with it a certain amount of heat energy, cleverly named in thermodynamics as the heat of evaporation. Evaporating water molecules pull this heat from the surrounding water, reducing the temperature.
Water is run thru process equipment and comes to the tower hot. It’s sprayed inside of the tower with an induced draft, reducing the water temperature which is then recycled back to the process equipment. These tend to run pretty steady state, depending on the application.
So back to the errant clouds: should you be worried? Ask someone in industry and the usual response will be “that’s just steam”. And of course, they’re mostly correct, it is mostly condensed steam. But is that all there is to them?
Any system involving fluids will develop leaks eventually. So cooling water used to cool process equipment can pick up oil, distillates or chemicals as it cycles through the cooling loop.
Engineers try to limit this in a number of ways, such as having the water side pressure higher than the process side, so that it is the water that leaks and not the process, but this is not safe or feasible in all cases.
Plants are required to test the water for leaks, and there are methods which try to pinpoint the leaking equipment. There is a whole industry around finding equipment leaks and fixing them, known as LDAR (leak detection and repair), thru regs implemented by EPA, and some states.
This technician is surveying for a leak using a TVA, a flame-ionization detector, which simply put determines the presences of organic chemicals by the color of the flame produced. The large facility I’ve worked with has a team of 20 such techs working full time. No small effort.
However these are mitigation measures, some organics will clearly get into the water, and will then get into the air, despite the best efforts at LDAR. In my experience, most facilities take these efforts very seriously, but zero emissions is not realistic.
So, should you be worried? I’ve lived in what has been labeled by environmental groups as “cancer alley” my whole life, is my clock ticking? Instead of throwing numbers at you, I’ll just speak qualitatively about cancer incidence as provided by the Louisiana Tumor Registry.
It’s not clear that Louisiana or the Mississippi River corridor has a much higher rate of cancer than other regions. But there are certainly “hot spots”, like you would find in almost any data set. What is more interesting is when the data is looked at by socioeconomic status.
Poverty seems to come with a higher rate of cancer (it’s truly a cruel world). Some believe this is due to less access to health care. Others say that plants are located in poor areas bc those residents can’t fight back like the affluent, a concept called environmental justice.
And in the south, poverty discussion always come with a racial component because racial lines definitely do exist in the socioeconomic spectrum. So accusations of environmental racism have a long history.
However, I’ve come to believe that, except for a few cases and industries I won’t go into here, it is primarily a result of the sort of diet the poverty-stricken in America consume, especially in the south. It comes down to seed oils and deep-fried foods.
This is a fantastic presentation on the effect of seed oils on human metabolism. It’s pretty wonky on the biochemistry, but fascinating if you can stick to it. The light bulb on cancer will go off for you in the 28th minute.
There are more carcinogenic substances in chronically reheated seed oils, consumed directly, than in many months’ or years’ worth of breathing air from industrial pollution. Acrolien in particular is listed as a Hazardous Air Pollutant by EPA, a known or suspected carcinogen.
Fried chicken, fried fish, French fries, chitlins, fried okra...they’re all toxic when done in cheap seed oils, especially when the oil is reused repeatedly, as is common practice in many restaurants and family kitchens.
Interestingly, stable animal fats such as lard and tallow do not oxidize and react into hazardous compounds the same way as seed oils. So fried food is probably ok and even good for you if done in these fats.
So the long shot is you should be far more scared of the KFC on the corner than the refinery down by the rivier. if you made it this far, thanks for spending some of your Saturday with me. I’m happy to answer questions as best I can.
I don’t have much of a following, I haven’t really wanted or tried to get one, so adding a few fellow health nuts:
@FatEmperor @TuckerGoodrich @Mangan150 @CarnivoresCreed @jerryteixeira @Brooker1982 @RebelRancher
Forgot the LDAR tech picture. These guys and girls have a tough job sometimes. In most pants every valve and flange has to be inspected 4 times a year for process equipment.

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