Author documents natural origins of toxic gases

     To the editor:
      Several letters in your paper have disputed the pollution statistics in my new book "Makers and Takers," cited in your Feb. 24 editorial. Most controversial was the carbon monoxide item. My book states that 93 percent of atmospheric CO is produced by nature and that this poisonous gas is produced by trees and other foliage. My source was Dr. John J. McKetta's writings.
      Dr. McKetta was appointed by three U.S. presidents to prominent environmental positions, including Chairman of the National Air Quality Management Commission and Chairman of the National Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Commission.
      He has published over 400 technical articles, was co-editor of the world famous 10-volume reference work on petrochemicals and refining, and is preparing a 45-volume chemical encyclopedia. He has several honorary degrees and is a former National President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. I wrote Dr. McKetta about the CO item.
      He replied that he had "finished your excellent book with great admiration. Thanks for the job you have done. It's been a long favorite trick of many of the extreme groups to deny every single bit of information and to have the 'quoters' reveal detailed sources of their statements.
      "I have written hundreds of replies concerning many of the statements that I have made and I quit, long ago, defending statements that I have made after carefully certifying them before I put them in print over my name. However, I will do it one more time since it is your excellent book that is under question.
      "The trees and plants do not directly produce carbon monoxide. They exude other various chemicals including the terpene hydrocarbons. ... The Smoky Mountains received their names because of the cloud that was exuded from the trees in that area. As these terpenes get into the air, they decompose into methane and other lighter hydrocarbons. These later oxidize to carbon monoxide while some are completely oxidized to carbon dioxide. This is well know to botanists and appears in all of the late botany books.
      "Many years ago Dr. F. W. Went, a prominent botanist ... prepared a paper .. {which} appeared in the Naval Research Laboratories Proceedings NAS Vol. 46, 1960, Pages 221-222. Later Dr. Charles M. Stevens, Chief Research Scientist of the Argonne National Laboratory ... confirmed and expanded on other work on atmospheric carbon monoxide. The Argonne workers reported that natural processes produce over 3.5 billion tons of carbon monoxide a year.
      "At least three billion tons, they said, comes from the oxidation of methane emitted by decaying organic matter. Growth and decay of chlorophyll account for another 100 million tons per year. Over 400 million tons comes from the oceans and from a variety of other, as yet undetermined, natural sources ... Both of the above sources are heavily supported by their references which they list."
      Another disputed statistic concerned a 1976 volcanic eruption producing 570 times world industrial production of chlorine. One letter writer claimed this was perpetuation of an error originated by Dr. D.L. Ray in her book Trashing the Planet.
      He fails to explain how this book -- published in 1990 -- could retroactively be responsible for this statement in the 1989 edition of Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia: "Researchers have observed, for example, that the Augustine Volcano, which erupted in 1976, may have injected 289 billion kilograms of HCL (hydrochloric acid) into the stratosphere. That is about 570 times the 1975 world industrial production of chlorine and fluorocarbons."
      Nor would an error (if any) concerning Mt. Augustine affect the numbers for other volcanoes. Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 blew 2 million tons of chlorine into the stratosphere in a single day. At that rate it put the chlorine equivalent of all the CFCs produced in the entire world in 24 hours into the stratosphere every minute. Yet, as your letters indicate, many people believe that CFCs are the main source of stratospheric chlorine and dismiss the natural sources.
      The late Dr. Petr Beckman put things in perspective: "Where the chlorine really comes from, if you want to talk business, is primarily volcanoes and sea spray ... Maduro and Schauerhammer ... give the amounts of chlorine emitted into the atmosphere in million tons/year as seawater, 600; volcanoes, 36; other natural sources, 13.4 resulting in a total of 649.4 million tons of chlorine per year ... Compare this with CFCs with 0.75 megatons per year ... The alleged man-made increase amounts to 0.75/650 = 0.0000115 percent."
      What's wrong isn't my book's statistics, but the heavily-publicized Rowland-Molina theory about CFCs endangering the ozone layer. This theory has become increasingly discredited because of "incompatibility between the theory and what we know about the ozone layer" as the eminent climatologist Dr. R. W. Pease put it.
      Scientist Linwood Callis of NASA's Atmospheric Sciences Division studied a variety of factors causing ozone destruction, including the sunspot cycle, volcanoes, tropical winds, and highly-energetic electrons. He concluded: "CFCs come in a very poor last as the cause for lower levels of global ozone." These and other facts are documented by more than 500 footnotes in my book (which can be phone-ordered at 800-205-8254 if not available at your bookstore.)
      Finally, the editorial said I am an "economic researcher," which is correct. But it neglected to say that I have also been director of planning for a multi-national environmental consulting firm doing business in more than 40 countries.
     EDMUND CONTOSKI
     Minneapolis