They “say the cleanser might actually harm passengers and flight attendants and do little to protect against the virus, which is mainly transmitted through the air in closed spaces,” my colleagues Steven Mufson and Meryl Kornfield report.
“It would be great if this was a miracle solution, but it’s not,” Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told my colleagues. “There’s plenty of risk here and too much we don’t know about how this chemical could actually harm people.”
The announcement, coming the week of the Republican National Convention, illustrates how the Trump administration especially as the election nears is eager to fast-track possible solutions to reopening and tout them as major breakthroughs.
Andrew Wheeler, the EPA’s administrator, called the disinfectant — SurfaceWise2, made by Dallas-based Allied BioScience and reportedly applied electrostatically to surfaces — “a major game-changing announcement.”
And on Sunday, on the eve of the convention, President Trump announced the Food and Drug Administration is granting emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for covid-19. Yet the details of this announcement from the FDA were also disputed by scientists, and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn later corrected his dubious statement that 35 out of 100 people suffering from covid-19 were saved by the injection of antibody-rich plasma.
Experts questioned the significance of the disinfectant announcement since the chance of catching the virus of a surface is relatively small compared to the risk of catching it through the air via small droplets emitted by an infected person.
Maha El-Sayed, chief science officer at Allied BioScience, told my colleagues the product “binds to surfaces and kills viruses that land on it, including covid-19” and its protection could last up to seven days. But it could bring other potential hazards, per my colleagues: “Sass said the company’s ‘Material Safety Data Sheet,’ which lists the common hazards of a product, acknowledged concern about prolonged skin and eye contact, both possible in environments such as the cabins of aircraft. The data sheet also does not list tests for chronic or long-term effects, she added.”
“Although acute toxicity seems to be very low, many people will be exposed to it on a daily basis,” including airline workers, Sass told my colleagues. It could also adversely affect some passengers. Per my colleagues: “People most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus — those with asthma, chemical intolerances or certain allergies — may have greater irritation from exposure to the disinfectant, according to Claudia S. Miller, an immunologist, allergist and professor emeritus at the University of Texas.”
There are some concerns about the environmental impact as well: “The data sheet for SurfaceWise2 also says that it is toxic to aquatic organisms. Sass noted that was because it kills microbes — including beneficial ones,” my colleagues write. “Allied BioScience cautions that care should be taken to ensure its disinfectant doesn’t end up in drains and waterways but noted that SurfaceWise2 has the highest safety categorization available from the EPA.”
The focus on air travel is perhaps not surprising given American Airlines’s warning on Tuesday that it planned to cut up to 19,000 workers by October. “The airline is looking to cut thousands of flight attendants, pilots, technicians, gate agents and other staff, it said. Including buyouts, retirements and leaves of absence, the company expects to have about 40,000 fewer employees on Oct. 1 than it did before the pandemic, a 30 percent decline in its workforce,” the New York Times’s Niraj Chokshi and Ben Casselman reported.
“American is just the latest airline to predict bad news. Earlier this summer, United Airlines said that it could furlough as many as 36,000 employees in the fall. And, on Monday, Delta Air Lines warned that it might have to furlough as many as 1,941 pilots in October, even after nearly as many had accepted buyouts,” they wrote.
Hurricane Laura
Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwestern coastal Louisiana around 1 a.m. on Thursday.
The storm slammed ashore “with a ferocity that this region has never previously endured,” packing 150 mph peak winds, my colleagues Andrew Freedman, Jason Samenow, and Derek Hawkins report.
“Laura struck near high tide and is predicted to inundate coastal areas of western Louisiana to the Texas border in up to 15 to 20 feet of water, perhaps the largest storm surge in the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Katrina in 2005,” Freedman, Samenow, and Hawkins write.
In the lead up to the storm, National Hurricane Center warned that Laura would be “catastrophic” and could cause an “unsurvivable” storm surge with “large and destructive waves.” At least half a million people had evacuated by late Tuesday.
Hurricane Laura intensified at record speeds as it crossed through the Gulf of Mexico. This is part of a broader trend of storms increasingly going from relatively weak to incredibly powerful in a short time, often leaving people with less time to prepare.
“Laura’s intensification was made possible by the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which are tied in part to human-caused global warming, since the vast majority of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse-gas emissions ends up in the oceans,” Freedman, Samenow, and Hawkins write.
In the lead-up to Laura’s landfall, astronauts at the International Space Station captured images of the massive storm:
You might not know that a massive hurricane was bearing down on the Gulf Coast from listening to night 3 of the Republican convention.
Vice President Mike Pence opened his speech by calling it “a serious storm” and vowing that “FEMA has mobilized resources and supplies for those in harm’s way.” Beyond that brief mention, however, there was little additional comment on the hurricane during the two-and-half hours of prime time.
Vox editor and columnist Matthew Yglesias pointed out one potential reason why:
But others noted that the unusually severe hurricane season, record-breaking heat, and wildfires that have been ongoing for weeks and have received little attention on any night of the convention so far. Severe storms in Iowa received more attention with the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, and junior senator, Joni Ernst, both speaking at the event about the derecho that hit the state earlier this month.
On the occasions that natural disasters have come up, speakers did not link them to human activity or broader environmental concerns.
“Experts are broadly convinced that a steady uptick in extreme weather events of recent years is at least in part the result of man-made climate change,” my colleague Ishaan Tharoor writes. “Yet if you listen to the Republican National Convention this week, talk of the threat posed by climate change will be wholly, if predictably, absent.”
Climate change was not included in the list of bullet-pointed priorities released by the Republican Party in lieu of a platform over the weekend. Trump himself has adopted an inconsistent stance on whether he even believes in the science, sometimes referring to climate change as a “serious subject” while other times portraying it as a “hoax.”
It’s a stance that could alienate younger conservatives. The Pew Research Center found that Republican adults under the age of 39 were far more likely than older conservatives to say the party should be doing more to combat climate change.
Power plays
Joni Ernst looked to link Joe Biden to the Green New Deal during her Republican convention address.
On the third night of the GOP convention, the senator from Iowa claimed the climate plan popular with liberals would destroy farmers. “The Democratic Party of Joe Biden is pushing this so-called Green New Deal,” she said. “If given power, they would essentially ban animal agriculture and eliminate gas-powered cars.”
However, the non-binding Green New Deal resolution introduced last year does not ban cows and other farm animals, which are a significant source of the greenhouse gas methane. Rather, it vaguely calls for “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers” to cut pollution “as much as is technologically feasible.”
Ernst also praised Trump for scrapping a “punishing” Obama-era water rule that would have made it harder for the agricultural sector to drain wetlands and small streams. “It would have been a nightmare for farmers,” she said.
And earlier in the night, Minnesota logger and trucker Scott Dane also credited Trump for better forest management that has reduced wildfires. “Under Obama-Biden, radical environmentalists were allowed to kill the forests. Wildfire after wildfire shows the consequences.”
Lawmakers urged the Trump administration to reverse course on methane regulation rollback.
“A coalition of 87 House lawmakers is asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw its latest rules rescinding standards for methane emissions in the oil and gas industry,” the Hill reports.
Earlier this month the EPA finalized two rules that would eliminate requirements that oil and gas companies monitor and take steps to prevent methane leaks. The agency’s own analysis estimated that the rollback of both rules would increase methane emissions by a combined 850,000 tons.
“Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change — 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after its release,” the members — 85 Democrats and two Republicans — wrote in the letter. The letter also accused the agency of having an “anti-science” approach to rulemaking.
The administration has said that the changes protect small and medium-size oil and gas companies that might otherwise struggle with red tape.
A coalition of U.S. labor organizations and environmental groups endorsed Biden.
“It was the first time the group has backed a candidate for public office in its 14-year history,” Reuters reports.
Jason Walsh, the head of the alliance, told Reuters that Trump was the “the most anti-worker and anti-environment president of our lifetime.”
Among the members represented in the coalition are the United Steelworkers, the Utility Workers Union of America, and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters on the labor side, and the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and the National Wildlife Federation on the environmental side.
Some unions have been wary of Biden’s environmental platform. North America’s Building Trades Unions, for instance, commissioned studies last month that found oil and gas projects created high-paying jobs. And the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters disagrees with Biden about the Keystone XL pipeline even though it endorsed him based on his support for labor and his plans to replace environmentally hazardous lead piping.
Oil check
At least nine oil-processing plants in Louisiana and Texas shut down or slowed production in advance of Hurricane Laura.
“The storm track spans Port Arthur, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana, an area with a half-dozen large oil refineries and natural-gas processing plants,” Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The plants that had closed or changed production convert 2.9 million barrels per day of oil into fuel, accounting for 15 percent of U.S. processing, Reuters writes.
