10/29/2003: Nasal Rangers

[Undertoad]

Courtesy axlrosen and apparently covered on Slashdot as well.

Nasal rangers! They always get their booger nuggets!

This is a nasal ranger, and that thing he's using is an "olfactometer", a portable device that helps you smell. But not how you'd think. It actually dilutes the surrounding air by seven times, and if you can still smell whatever's making the air stinky, that's considered "excessive".

Iowa has trained 34 of these guys to test the air quality around farms and such.

[Leah]

WOW, this is the first time I've been first to comment.

All I can say is "why"?

[tjennings]

Stand downwind of an Iowa pig farm and ask why. I live in Iowa and would be happy to wear that most days.

[Leah]

Oh I see. Can't say that I've ever been to a pig farm or smelt one 4 that case, but I believe you.

[SteveDallas]

I must be missing something. Some kind of industrial waste, I can understand. What are farmers who are in violation supposed to do? make their livestock shit less?

[breakingnews]

I wonder if that thing could be converted into some sort of vaporizer for smoking pot ... that'd be super duper dank.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by SteveDallas
I must be missing something. Some kind of industrial waste, I can understand. What are farmers who are in violation supposed to do? make their livestock shit less?

Naw, but they can dispose of/neutralize it quicker. Most of the pig farm stench is from accumulation. Keeping the smell down is very time consuming and labor intensive or if you choose high tech solutions, expensive.

[Mojo The Monkey]

Originally posted by SteveDallas
I must be missing something. Some kind of industrial waste, I can understand. What are farmers who are in violation supposed to do? make their livestock shit less?

You're imagining Farmer Brown with a wooden barn and maybe a dozen or so hogs.

Modern feedlots aren't anything like you're imagining. Imagine over 10 thousand hogs or up to two million chickens in a single location.

Here's a photo of the inside of a feedlot. Notice how densely packed the animals are?



Here's an aerial photo of a feedlot.



Each and every one of those buildings are filled just as densely as in the previous photo with hogs. And the brown "lake" across the road? Well, let's just say it's not water in that lake. Pig manure is liquid. And it stinks. A lot. People living downwind from some of these giant factory farms are concerned about the health effects. The air and soil in these areas are contaminated with excess ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and high levels of e. coli bacteria.

Maybe these factory farmers can't make their livestock shit less, but they can choose not to pack them in so densely. Or they could choose to treat the manure, using the same techniques used to treat human sewage. But they don't because that will cut in to their profits, and we all know that profitability is more important than human health or environmental safety.

(edit. Sorry if I sound too pissy. Factory Farms make Mojo unhappy.)

[SteveDallas]

Thanks for the enlightenment.

[bjlhct]

What do you think about DeltaPark then Mojo?

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societ...540194,00.html

[xoxoxoBruce]

There might be another solution, Mojo. These guys in Philly that came up with the process to make oil from any carbon based crap (pun) might be the solution. They're building a unit right next to the Tyson processing plant to turn the feathers, bones and crap into oil for heat and hot water for the plant. Warren Buffet has put up a couple million to make this happen.
When I first read about this (here in the Cellar) I thought the oil companies would jump on it but now I think waste disposal will drive the industry and the oil will just make it economically viable.
The bad news is to make this an option they would probably have to combine feed lots into even bigger facilities.

[bjlhct]

It's called thermal depolymerization, and the Deltapark people are probably all over it too. Waste disposal, sure. Feedlots are already big enough though.

However, if you think about it, it starts seeming silly. I mean, should we collect the methane from cow farts and burn it for fuel? On the other hand, lots of things that work today seem silly.

[Elspode]

I gotta ask...they dilute the surrounding air seven times...with *what*?

I did not note an air tank or anything on this device, so how is the ambient air diluted?

[Elspode]

I love the Internet. Here's a link to the operating manual for the device...

http://www.nasalranger.com/Operations/NR_Operations.pdf

It filters one stream of air, making it odor-particle free, and then mixes the ambient air in a configurable ratio before passing it to the detector device (i.e., the human nose).

[xoxoxoBruce]

My buddy lives in southern Lancaster county near the Buck. Giving directions to his house from here it's "Cross the Octararo and make a left at the pig farm." "How will I know which is the pig farm?" "Oh, you'll know!!"