Tales from the trenches, stories forged in the fires of experience.
This episode brought to you by Yellowknife Safety, keeping workers safe for over 25 years.
Learn more at yellowknifesafety.com.
Alright everyone, thank you once again for joining us on Did You Know?
This time we're hanging out with Terry Dussault of Yellowknife Consulting Services.
Terry, how are you today?
Doing well, thank you.
So we're here to talk about changes in regulations, changes in EPA expectations, and to help people
understand that a lot of what we do in the industry actually falls under things like
the Clean Air Act.
So we always talk about here in the air conditioning and refrigeration industry, the Section 608
certification.
Well, what is Section 608?
Well, it's actually a piece of the Clean Air Act, right?
And we've had a lot of changes to the Clean Air Act over time.
We've had a variety of amendments.
We've had a lot of things that we've had to focus in on what's changing in the industry
based on our 608 certification.
But it really comes down to the environment.
All right, we have Section 608 that covers our residential commercial air conditioning
refrigeration.
We have Section 609 that covers automotive.
But there are many industries that have sections of the Clean Air Act that we still focus on.
And we'll come back to Section 608 here in a little bit.
But Terry's got a great analogy of how an industry has to look at the environment and
to look at the Clean Air Act.
So one really cool one comes from Section 517, where we talk about the use of MTBE.
And there's been a lot of regulations that change with that.
And it's a fascinating topic, Terry.
So let's talk a little bit about your experiences with the Clean Air Act and evolution of the
Clean Air Act.
Yeah.
So for me, it kind of goes way back to when I was a child, because I remember living here
in Southern California, waking up going outside to play.
And you know, you play for a couple hours and the smog was so impactful that after just
like two hours of playing, it was hard to breathe.
That's hard.
And so there was always this little brown layer of smog in Southern California.
And as California grew and there was more vehicles on the road, the oversight agencies
started to kind of like expand and they realized we have to do more.
Right.
That's a big change.
Yeah, there had to be some kind of changes.
And so with vehicles, they obviously tried to reduce emissions.
And I remember way back when they were trying to get the hydrocarbon countdown on, you know,
so they could just, you know, improve the efficiency of the gasoline engine.
Right.
There was other ways that they were trying to improve air quality in this basin here,
not just SoCal, but LA and other areas.
And so one of the things that they came up with, which was kind of genius in a way, but
it was probably not fully researched.
And so, you know, here they decide we need to make a change in a change that's going
to make a significant improvement with the air quality.
Okay.
But they didn't, they didn't really think it all the way through.
Not enough research, not enough research.
And they just didn't have enough knowledge, I think, at the time.
Okay.
So one of the things they came up with was, well, everybody used to use these octane boosts
in the car, right?
So they add that to their fuel.
And the main ingredient in that was a product called methyl tertiary butyl alcohol, or butyl
ether.
MTBE is the acronym.
Okay.
And so what they did is they started testing it.
And they realized that they could possibly start adding this into the fuel supply.
And they figured out that for every 10 gallons of fuel, if you add one gallon of MTBE, it
would be optimum for making fuel burn cleaner.
And the testing was a huge success.
And so they ended up implementing it.
And of course, you know, they always have deadlines by when you have to have these formulations,
you know, and when they have to be implemented.
And Chevron might have their version of what they call it, like they they're using MTBE,
but they might call it, you know, give their own proprietary label.
Or Tet clean, or you know, they have, they all have their different name for it.
So they start using it.
And one of the problems that they had that they didn't really think about is a lot of
the fuel ends up in underground fuel storage tanks.
Sure.
And underground fuel storage tanks in in the past were made of metal.
Yeah, all steel.
So now they're, they're double wall fiberglass.
Okay, so the metal part of it was the problem, you think metal strong, but when you put it
in the ground, and you could have groundwater at seven feet or 12 feet, sure, it starts
to corrode the bottom of the tank.
And then a lot of their retail operators were starting to realize that their fuel supply
was leeching.
They were losing fuel, right?
And it's going into the soil.
And it might just be a little bit, but it ends up going in to the sandy soil, and it
goes deeper and deeper.
And the problem with the MTBE additive is that it's highly toxic.
And it's lighter than water.
So it's very mobile in soil and groundwater.
It finds its way into the shallow aquifers.
And the problem with it is if it ever ends up getting into the deep aquifers, that's
where a lot of the counties get the water supplies.
Yeah, and they, and they sell that water to the residents.
Right.
And so it's, it's valuable, but they realized that all of a sudden, when they were sampling
or checking the water, they were, they were getting high levels of MTBE in it.
So it became super concerning, like, how did this chemical get into the groundwater?
And you know, how toxic is it?
And anyway, they started to realize when they studied it, that it only takes one small cup
full to contaminate a million gallons of water, drinking water.
So it's highly toxic.
It causes cancer.
And the county started to pay attention to this because who wants to have free water
that you can sell and make a ton of money on?
Right.
And now all of a sudden, you don't have that water.
You have to get it somewhere else.
And that's where they have to purchase it.
Yeah.
And so it became a big problem and I could go on and on about that.
But you know, I want to just emphasize that, you know, there was a, there was a huge positive
in the, in the clean air.
The downside was the damage to our drinking water supplies.
And it wasn't just in California.
This went all across the U S.
Sure.
So it created, it created a big problem, but you know, so the idea here is, you know, when
these regulations come about, sometimes they're not always, you know, you can't think through
every scenario.
And then, you know, sometimes you have these kinds of things come up and it was kind of
like a crisis, you know, and then there was an, another regulation that came out that
said we got to fix this problem.
And all the people that were, had franchises to sell, you know, fuel from, from the oil
companies at their retail filling stations, they were given deadlines.
I think it was the year 2000 was the deadline.
I could be up, I could be wrong, but around 2000, the law said your underground fuel storage
tanks have to be removed and replaced with double wall fiberglass.
Yeah.
I remember that for good, for good reason.
So if you ever, you know, think back to that time, you know, he probably drove by gas station,
a lot of gas stations getting the parking lots to be straight.
Yeah.
So, uh, yeah, it's, it's interesting because, you know, a lot of the different industries
have these, these, uh, mandates or updated, uh, regulations and things like that.
And you know, we're at the front end of it and like for HVAC, you know, uh, what does
it mean?
Right?
Yeah.
That's the main thing.
That's the question we get is, you know, why are we making these changes?
Did someone's patent run out on a refrigerator?
Do we have to make changes because it's a, it's a monopoly of the manufacturers and no,
none of that actually, because it all comes back to this clean air act, right?
We're trying to better our environment.
So like with refrigerants, when we first started studying our refrigerants, we recognize that
when we introduced the synthetic chlorine into refrigerants that it depleted the ozone.
Right?
So we had to come up with solutions.
So we did.
So we removed chlorine from the refrigerants, which left us with our HFCs.
And then later research found that, wow, we really have some problems with flooring in
the refrigerants contributing to greenhouse gases and global warming.
So now we're going to have to reduce the consumption of HFC refrigerants and go to alternatives
like HCs and HFOs.
And so we've made all these transitions based on acts like the clean air act.
And a lot of people don't recognize that there were many pieces to the clean air act.
We were just section 608 in the HFAC and refrigeration industry.
So many different industries are governed by this clean air act that was established
to help reduce emissions, to help reduce greenhouse gases and global warming.
We don't always think about the other industries like the automotive and a lot of the smog
because here in the Midwest, we don't even really know much about smog except for what
people tell us and what we've seen on older videos.
So it's very interesting to see that we have made changes to the emissions off from vehicles
that weren't always the best choices long term.
Yeah, for sure.
It's interesting and kind of going back to what I said about the smog and being a kid
and going out trying to play.
And after a couple of hours, it was so hard to take a deep breath.
And there wasn't that many people in Southern California back then.
And so just to know that the smog factor, it was so high even back then.
And now we have almost 50 million people in California, maybe a little more.
And the freeways are jam packed.
But if I go outside and do some kind of rigorous activity, I can breathe.
So it did work.
It's effective.
And a lot of times when these changes are occurring, there's some kind of other fallout
that may occur.
But it's all for the greater good.
And as you know, my job is health and safety.
So I always try and say, look, it's OK.
Shoot for flawless execution.
Whether you agree with global warming or you don't agree and all these different changes
that they're making with refrigerants or like I think it was back in 2000 in California,
they had this thing where they changed the VOC standards, what was allowable in California.
And a lot of contractors weren't allowed to use certain coatings and paints anymore.
The ones that were really good, that had high VOCs, they weren't allowed to use them.
And it was like overnight, they had to look for alternative products.
And so it creates a huge challenge.
And you kind of like hate it when you're going through it.
But it's for the greater good of everybody.
And it's maybe not something we may not even see the full effect of it in our lifetime.
But these are the subtle changes that we need to make to make major improvements overall.
So I think it's important.
And so like I said, whether you agree with the global warming thing or you don't, any
way you can improve your industry, it's important, I think, to just keep that in mind.
It makes it better for everybody.
And that's what we encounter a lot.
We do hear a lot of resistance for changes in refrigerants, for changes in chemicals
and products that we use.
But it really does come down to the better good of the environment and for the future
generations that will be coming along after us.
Now, there are a lot of things that we have created to make life easier or more comfortable,
but may not have been the correct long term solutions.
And we're going to see a lot of that going forward.
This is just one step in our transformation of an HVAC and refrigeration industry.
We are going to see all of our HFC refrigerants going away in this next decade.
Well, it's 2036.
We'll have a by 2036, we'll have an 85% reduction of all HFC refrigerants, which means we'll
have to use things like HFOs, hydrofluorolyphans, hydrocarbons, HCs, but we'll also be looking
at different refrigerants like our natural fridges of CO2, H2O, ammonia.
There are a lot of refrigerants out there that we can use.
They may just not be as convenient as our CFC and HCFC and HFC predecessors.
So change is not easy, but we have to embrace it.
We have to look at the alternatives.
We have to understand why we are changing products.
A lot of people don't know that the EPA is currently looking at polyvinyl chlorides and
the phase out of polyvinyl chlorides.
And we go, wait a minute, what is that?
And we go, well, that's PVC.
And we go, whoa, what are we going to do if we phase down or phase out PVC?
Well, we will find better solutions for the environment and for the generations that come
after us.
And what it comes down to is trying to provide a clean environment for our future inhabitants.
Yeah, that's a good point.
One of the other things I'll share is that I spent a lot of my career cleaning up contaminated
waste sites, so doing environmental work.
And I am at the forefront of these former sites where either manufacturing occurred
or sites where they dumped chemicals from the oil drilling industry.
And there's different types of sludge.
And there's a lot of byproducts to the different things.
I call it like those are sins of the past.
Okay.
And when this country was growing and developing, they did a lot of different types of processes,
plating for aerospace.
A lot of the plating products and stuff are super toxic like cadmium, chromium.
And I've been at projects where we had to clean that stuff out of the soil.
And in some cases, the sites were former aerospace places like let's say Lockheed or some of
these old places.
And they had a lot of buildings on these sites.
The sites were big.
And a lot of the processes that they used were, back then, they weren't doing anything
illegal.
But let's just say their processes weren't sound.
Okay.
And then they end up leaking a lot of these chemicals into the soil.
It gets into the groundwater.
And now you have a huge problem.
Now fast forward to, let's say, today, we send a construction crew out to a job site.
They start using an excavator to dig soil.
And they call me and say, Terry, we just dug up some soil.
And now the soil's turning green.
And that's one of the things that happens a lot.
If you can get into Chrome 6, they'd start digging it.
And the air hits the chemical that's been buried for 30 years.
And it actually starts to change color.
And this is like a multimillion dollar project for IKEA.
They're going to build the world's biggest IKEA out here in California.
And so they've got hundreds of workers out there, different trades, and people are driving
through it, cross contaminating one part of the site with the other.
And they have no idea how toxic it is.
So we have to go to the, you know, like the main superintendent, we got to shut this whole
job down because people are being exposed.
And just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
And, you know, it could people, some people were complaining of respiratory problems and
things like that.
And some of these contaminants in the industrial hygiene world, we'll say, when you have people
working on projects and things like that, they measure some of these contaminants in
parts per billion.
Wow.
In air.
Right.
So it doesn't have to be like a lot like a high number because it's so toxic and potent,
you know, so these are all the things like from an environmental standpoint that a lot
of people may not be aware of.
But you know, when you're making changes in these industries, it's important to remember,
you know, that the greater good of what you're doing and, you know, complying is important.
And just understanding like what it takes to get there.
The regulatory agencies are here to help us not really hinder us.
But sometimes we look at it and, ah, man, what do we got to do now?
You know, what are they asking us to do?
But, you know, they're like, you know, you got to have that.
Look at look at countries like China.
A friend of mine owns a winter sport, you know, type company where they make winter
clothes and whatnot.
Sure.
About 10 years ago, he tells me, man, the craziest thing happened.
I went to China and I had an interpreter and I went to one of the factories where they
make the clothes, you know, my winter clothes.
And they were they had some workers and they were they were standing in this giant pond
and they have these large sticks.
They look like paddles or oars like for a little boat.
Right.
And he says there's fumes.
There's literal fumes like coming off this product that they're using to dye a lot of
the clothing.
And they have like two workers in there and they're stirring all this and they're standing
in it up to their knees with their with their pants rolled up.
And he asks the interpreter he was concerned about their safety because they're basically
breathing some kind of toxic fumes.
Sure.
And he says to his interpreter to ask the the other guy, what about the workers?
Like he didn't like seeing them in that position, you know, in there working like that.
And the guy's response was, oh, we have more workers.
Wow.
And that's so it's like there's little to no concern for human safety.
There's little to no concern for the environment.
And the thing that people need to understand also is when we go to a place like Target
or we go do our products and stuff off of the shelves, you don't really know even though
it's it looks packaged nice and everything.
You don't know like the backstory on it.
Where did it come from?
And what did it take to get that product from China to the US?
But you know, the environmental standards don't exist over there like they do here.
Exactly.
So, you know, it is important.
There's there's a bigger picture.
Absolutely.
And so we will see we'll continue to see changes to our industry based on things like the Clean
Air Act and amendments that we have to the Clean Air Act and even international treaties.
So as we continue in this HFC phase down, it's important to know that we are doing this
for the right reasons.
And yes, it can be uncomfortable at times, but inevitably it's for the good of our own
society.
All right, Terry, thank you so much for joining us.
And we appreciate you being here.
We'll talk to you soon.
Yeah, thank you so much.
I appreciate it.