Already, a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical.
HONDA Some Honda Elements may have been shipped from the factory with contaminated coolant.
DuPont exports gas to Mexico — the top foreign destination for American-made HCFC-22 — because it makes more of the coolant at its Louisville, Ky., factory than it is allowed to sell in the United States.
Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about a village in India that deals with pollution from a local factory that makes a coolant gas (related to a front-page article on carbon credits), referred incorrectly to a resident who compared the situation to a "small, slow-motion edition of Bhopal".
Under the auspices of the Montreal Protocol--a 1989 treaty that phased out pollution that was eating a hole in Earth's ozone layer--negotiators will consider phasing-down a class of factory-made coolants, referred to as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
Especially the latter is often influenced by the temperature changes caused by nearby factories who use seawater as a coolant or by the changes in salinity within the tanks resulting from salty substances carried from the seaside, leading to mass mortality of fishes and shells.
Although it is difficult to link the litany of complaints to the factory, it is true that making the coolant can release noxious fumes and dangerous fluoride-containing wastes, as well as potent acids, that — without proper disposal — escape into the air, soil and groundwater and could cause such symptoms.
For three decades, the corporation dumped at least 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls -- used as a coolant in electrical capacitors -- in the river at the two factories in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls.
Their companies have relied on old refrigeration and coolant technologies, and they will now have to invest heavily in R&D and upgrade or replace their factories and equipment.
As an example, Ford said that a local committee at its Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., figured how to keep 350-pound fabric coolant filters out of landfills, which enabled the plant to become Ford's first North American zero-waste transmission factory, diverting 15 tons of material a month.
