Eek!
Gina McCarthy, who faces a hearing Thursday morning on her fitness to serve as EPA administrator, was primarily responsible for EPA’s promotion of an automotive air conditioning refrigerant that caused engine fires in Mercedes Benz testing, MailOnline can report.
McCarthy, EPA’s current air regulation chief, ‘provided the real forward motion’ for a plan to reward US automakers who used the new climate-change-friendly refrigerant known as ‘HFO-1234yf,’ according to an EPA staffer with knowledge of the agency’s internal processes who spoke on condition of anonymity.
When her EPA subagency, the Office of Air and Radiation, approved HOF-1234yf, McCarthy said that the chemical ‘helps fight climate change and ozone depletion.’
Fire Hazard
In February 2011, McCarthy’s Air and Radiation office at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved HFO-1234yf for use in American cars.
It also offers incentives to automakers using the product — such as General Motors, which currently uses HFO-1234yf in its Cadillac XTS vehicles (and European Chevy Malibus) and plans to feature it fleetwide over the next five years.
In Europe, HFO-1234yf is the only product meeting new European Union “greenhouse gas” guidelines — meaning it could be standard in more than 14 million vehicles a year beginning in 2017 (which would be worth an estimated $1 billion annually to Honeywell).
“This new chemical helps fight climate change and ozone depletion,” McCarthy said of HFO-1234yf in 2011 while serving as administrator of the EPA’s Air and Radiation office. “It is homegrown innovative solutions like this that save lives and strengthen our economy.”
Is any of that true, though? Last August at Mercedes-Benz’ test track in Sindelfingen, Germany, engineers simulated a crash in which the refrigerant was sprayed onto the car’s hot engine.
The result?
The substance burst into flames as soon as it made contact.
Not only that, as it burned it emitted hydrogen fluoride, “a chemical far more deadly to humans than hydrogen cyanide, emitted in such amounts that it turned the windshield white as it began to eat into the glass.”
“We were frozen in shock, I am not going to deny it,” one of the engineers said afterward. “We needed a day to comprehend what we had just seen.”
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Why don’t we just nuke the entire planet from orbit.
FWIW, I see on the Du Pont site they say that this was not a fair test. Conditions were created that would not happen in an actual crash and the HFO was sprayed in a fine mist on the engine, whereas in reality it would be diluted in air. Also, that they were not given a chance to respond to the Daimler test. I don’t know. All I do know is that flourine is nasty stuff.
[…] The UK Daily Mail reports on this in terms of Obama’s EPA nominee (via Tom Nelson thru Tallbloke’s Talkshop) […]
“FWIW, I see on the Du Pont site they say that this was not a fair test.”
Thank goodness, I feel so much better about it now!
“Ozone Friendly Coolant May Eat Your Face Off Eek”
That reminds me of the environmentally friendly laundry detergent that ate my foot off (practically). While staying at a guest house in Indiana, the washing machine used so little water that apparently it required a special detergent, which unfortunately got on my foot and caused me considerable pain. I also had to throw away a very good pair of shoes.
And that reminds me of the CFL bulbs I had to ask them to remove from my room, including 3 lamps and several recessed fixtures, because I have children and did not want to risk exposing them to volatilized mercury leaks in a closed room, or the risk of knocking a lamp over and causing a mercury spill that could be more than the state safe limit for mercury by a factor of 60. Besides in most cases those lights are not for use in those fixtures.
It’s just axiomatic: whenever there is a mandate, there is a large ugly nasty rat nearby.
Seems more like an engineering problem than a chemical one. If you take the contents of the petrol tank and spray it onto a hot crashed engine, you will get some very unpleasant results.
There are some pretty hazardous materials used in electrical-fire extinguishers. You can get explosions from ignition of fine dust of many, otherwise harmless, compounds if you set the conditions right.
It sounds like it produced Hydroflouric acid which is what you would expect from the heat and the chemical. HF is deadly as you have noted. It also has to be kept in plastic bottles because it is the only acid ? that eats glass. It also attacks the body through inhalation and skin penetration.
If your basic premises is wrong, i.e. that trace green house gases can cause catastrophic global warming, then any engineering solution is likely to be wrong.
Having an inflammable refrigerant in an automotive application is plain stupid and should never have been considered. Its as stupid as trying to cool your engine with 100% glycol. Suddenly the stuff leaks from everywhere and is inflammable. Or perhaps using the wrong batteries in your sparkling new plastic airliner.
This is the crony capitalist world in action. Ignorant politian’s in conjunction with bean counting corporates dictating engineering all to please the bankers
Tallbloke I thought I read a little while back that studies done using a satellite over the south pole have shown that we may have completely misunderstood the whole cfc thing and that the chemical reaction that occurs to enlarge or decrease the ozone whole in all likelihood has nothing to do with cfc’s Is this another case of lets bury that story and get back to “business as usual” If I have understood things properly that is.
Sounds like the car version of this…
The makers say it was not a fair test! unrealistic conditions during an accident.
Perhaps these people have found a way of predicting EVERYTHING that may happen during an accident!
These people are so clever they should work in the climate research industry…..
German car makers are now making a push for CO2 as the refrigerant. So far the EU is refusing to budge on their stance that 1234yf has to be used. CO2 has been discussed previously to the adoption of the dangerous 1234yf but ironically back then the fact that existing AC compressors can deal with 1234yf seamlessly while CO2 requires stronger built and more expensive ones tipped the scales of favor.
I am so blown away by the high quality comments that always appear on this site!
The comment about the clever people who “predict everything” made me think of this: When I am writing a computer program and am really flowing, if a human comes in and wants to interact with me, I have to “change gears” mentally. It takes a real effort.
Maybe our basic problem with the widespread stupidity (climate-oriented and otherwise) these days comes from our immersion in all things computerized. We have all but lost touch with the real world. It seems to have turned most people into virtual bean-counters. On the other hand, my own 16yo kid has no desire to drive and even less desire to learn how to cook. How’s that for avoiding having to deal with the real world?
IIRC, the early and mid-1990’s was the timeframe when lots more common people became computer owners/users. Is that when the AGW nonsense became really entrenched?
It’s as if otherwise talented and intelligent people are willingly restricting their attention span to one or two small screens (or their wall-sized television!), at the expense of interaction with the real world. Sometimes I think it would be a good thing if we occasionally had brownouts, just to make people go outside, or read real books, or talk to real people in person again!
I always thought the EPA were a bit over the top,but they have proven that the only requirement for employment with them is you have to be STUPID.They don’t have any idea what they are doing.
The people that run the EPA are not stupid! They know exactly what they are doing, They are protecting the environment from the effects caused by people. When you realize this everything makes sense. The elimination of industrial society is just the start. This has been their goal from the start pg