April, 1973

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

15

ren

Create a problem, but neither would a DDT residue
for which so many search so actively.

__And so we go on with our double standards. Ar-
tificial fertilizers have had their critics since the day
they were invented, but it was a good natural sewage
sludge which produced the following statement from
Professor‘Derek Bryce Smith, Professor of Organic
Chemistry at Reading University: ‘“‘There is con-
siderable evidence that food grown in-this way could
lead to poisoning.” :

And so to that admirable and readable booklet
Pest Control without Poisons. This tells the con-
servation-minded gardener how to make his own
sprays. First of all, how to.make nicotine by boiling
cigarette ends for half an hour. As you know, there
are laws about the sale of nicotine, but not its
manufacture. Warming to its task, the book then tells
us how to make an oxalic acid solution from rhubarb
leave with which to kill greenfly. I would remind you
that it takes between 2 and 5 grams of oxalic acid to
kill a man. The final recipe I must read to you word
for word: “The same recipe has been used with the
leaves of the elder (Sambucus niger) in the same
quantities. In this case the active principle is
probably hydrogen cyanide...” ;

Hydrogen cyanide! The oral lethal dose is about 1
part per million. So we have a prime example of
double standards with the man who follows the
recipe and puts cyanide into his garden shed and yet
screams bloody murder about cyanide in waste tips! -

And what about your double standards, my
legislators? When J sell a small bottle of insecticide
for the gardener if must have strict precautions on
the label. Even for dear old derris I must insist that
the bottle is kept in a safe place away from children,

wash after use, etc. Good, I agree with this, but why
no official word of condemnation for “natural”
brews of nicotine, oxalic acid and cyanide in
unlabelled jam jars? .

I have run out of time, not examples. For in-
stance, the cyclamates without any evidence of harm
to man...and sugar, with Professor Yudkin’s work
establishing a strong link with heart and artery
disease.

And so I have nearly come to the end. In science if
you copy from one book it is plagiarism. If you copy
out of three it is called research. On this basis I have
researched my subject widely. I have read that once
our big towns were charnel-houses, and death rates
twice their birth rates. Only the constant influx of
outsiders kept them alive. And I have read that the
Thames stank so badly that parliament had to ad-
journ in summer. This country is now cleaner,

healthier and better fed. For this the engineer,

doctor and technologist must take credit. :

For the technologist I do not ask for freedom.
There must be watch-dogs; tough watch-dogs with
teeth. But let these be scientific and not political as in
the United States. This does not mean relaxing our
standards — in some directions I should like to see
stronger laws. And for the conservationist and
ecologist I ask the right for them to carry on with
their valuable studies but without hysteria and
sensationalism. -

But above all I would ask for one standard. Look
more carefully at natural dangers, and let us act

even though it won’t catch votes or readers. And let °

us stop the witch hunt of chemicals, even though it
may lose votes and readers. Man’s future could well
depend upon it.

And finally I want to throw out a challenge to the
ecologists and the conservationists and those Jour-
nalists who have graduated from the pen and ink
school of biology. I have patiently listened to your
description of the joys of the natural world and I have
heard so often of the growing menace of this present
technological one. I know of the plight of the Javan
tiger and the Spanish lynx and the need for man to
live with nature. _

My challenge is this. Just for once forget your
complex charts and extrapolations, your preachings
and your population predictions and answer me this
as a man. If your wife, or worse, your child, was
struck down by one of the age-old dreaded diseases
— such as tuberculosis, pernicious anaemia,
diphtheria or cholera, would you then remember .
your posturing that we must live with nature and not
fight against it? Would you stand by your statement
that in our gross presumption we are seeking to
replace nature’s mechanisms for our own petty
short-term selfish ends? Would you then turn your
back on one of the products of industry which could
stop the death which would be inevitable? In short,
would you use one of those nasty, profit-making,
water-polluting, wild-life threatening products of this
technological age? If you would not, then I respect
you, although I do not agree with you. But if you
would, like any normal human being, clutch at one of ©
these life-giving technological miracles, then try to
remember than_an illiterate African or Indian feels
the same way about his child. Now we have millions
of lives to save and millions of mouths to fill. So
please play quietly so that we can get on with our
work.

BY SURREY MAN .

BURNER DEVELOPED FOR MILLS

A Surrey, B.C. heating
consultant has developed a
system for turning waste into
profits, without polluting the
atmosphere.

Clifford Otway, of Waycott
Industries Ltd., says his
-Turbulator system is designed
to convert hogged fuel into an
alternative heat source for a
variety of sawmill uses, such
as lumber and veneer drying,
and to achieve air emission
standards far in excess of the.
new B.C. regulations at the
same time.

Two of the systems are
already in operation, and
Otway is now preparing for
commercial production.

Heart of the system is a
' burner in which finely pulver-
ized material is suspended in a
spiral of forced air. A jet of
auxiliary fuel ensures im-
mediate combustion at an
efficient level and secondary
tertiary air holds the burning
particles in suspension for as
jong as is necessary to attain
the required temperature for
optimum combustion.

Two Installations

Through a system of valves
and dampers, electronically
monitored and controlled,
provision is made for flue
gases to be conducted to dry
kilns or any other application
desired, This also ensures
efficient combustion at all
times. Excess heat is flued
directly to the atmosphere.

The first installations are at
Imperial Lumber Co. Ltd. and
aneighbouring sawmill. Wesco
. Manufacturing Ltd., both in

panied were initially

installed a ¢ of years ago

Culley, was sold on the idea of
using mill waste for direct
firing of kilns during a trip to
Portland, Oregon.

Combustion Engineering,
Inc., the U.S. company which
installed the burners, failed to
make them work properly and
eventually went out of
business. Otway, who had been
hired by the general con-
tractor, Biden & Son Industrial
Ltd., to put in the stand-by gas
installation, undertook to make
modifications. The result was
the Turbulator burner on
which he.and Barry. Biden hold
patents. Now arrangements
are being made with a New
Westminster manufacturer,
Page & Page (1972) Ltd., for
commercial production of the
units.

Automatic Control

According to Otway, the
Turbulator burner can be
installed in a conventional bee-
hive type burner if required,
but the utilization of otherwise
wasted energy is obviously
desirable. In any event, the
system requires secondary
pulverization of waste
material which is then fed into
a metering bin through a
cyclone. It is then metered into
an automatically controlled
primary forced air fuel con-
duction system and into the
Turbulator burner.

Imperial Lumber produces
four units of waste per eight
hour shift in the production of
ladder and ski stock. The
burner has a capacity of 2%
units per hour and burns 24
hours per day. A 78-unit
storage silo enables the burner
to operate over a _ long
weekend. The average burning

rate is 144 units per hour which
produces 45 million BTUs per
hour.

Significant Fuel Saving

Flue gas to the kiln is in the
650-850 deg. F. range. Mill
owner Culley cites a 30-50 per-
cent decrease in drying time
with a minimum fall-down of
the lumber.

From the stack, readings of
particulate matter are in the
order of .7 parts per million.

Otway estimates current
installation costs will range
between $175,000 and $250,000,
but he points out that the in-
vestment could be quickly
written off by economies
achieved through savings in
waste disposal and drying or
heating applications. —. .

The Western Forest
Products Laboratory, in

Vancouver, after a detailed -

analysis of the system, con-
cluded that the heat from
waste materials burned in a
Waycott burner from a mill
producing 1 million fbm of
lumber per week would be
sufficient to dry all the lumber
and still leave 70 percent to be
discharged into the atmos-

phere. Assuming that this -

would replace gas consump-
tion of 24,000 therms per week
at 4 cents a therm (inter-
ruptible rate), this would
represent a fuel saving for kiln
drying of $960 a week or about
$48,000 per year.

DRINK UP

Loggers’ convention toast:
“Here’s to our wives and
sweethearts — may they never
meet!”

figure co\
| $250,000 or sales of at 1
million was given by

COLIN SEEKS MORE
INTERNATIONAL UNIONS

Replying to a Liberal MLA
who urged that international
unions be checked in order to
strengthen Canadian unions,
Colin Gabelmann (NDP, Van-
couver-Seymour) said it was
not fewer but more _inter-
national unions that were
needed in this country.

FOR PROBLEM CARS

If you think you have a safety-related defect in your car,
CBC Radio suggests you contact, free of charge, the
Ministry of Transport who will look into your complaint.
Write: Director, Road Safety Branch, Ministry of Trans-
port, Tower ‘C’, Place de Ville, Ottawa, Ont. K1A ON5.

Only with a global spread of
genuine international trade

‘unions would affluent North

America be able to play an
effective part in helping to
improve the working and living
conditions of people in other
parts of the world, said the for-
mer B.C. Fed researcher.

“HONEST THIEF

WINDSOR, Colo. — A young
boy assured librarian Bernice
Warner that he did not steal
the identifying tetters from in
front of the Windsor Public
Library. He said his brother
didn’t either. “! know my
brother didn’t because we
show each other everything
we steal,"" he said.

1973

.. He’s a good boy —
everything he steals ‘
he brings right home
to his mother.

. Fred Allen, 1894-1956

~ommmen GY BETHEL sean