A Bit Rusty

A Bit Rusty

   It comes up now and then; you're called to play an instrument at a friend's house, or asked to be part of a sport team or perhaps going out on a date after a long dry spell.  You start, you sort of get into it, and before long, you're laughing and having a good time, your mind catapulting you into believing that you still have it, that you're physically almost as good as you were when you were young...just a bit rusty.  But this isn't about any of that.

   Here's the opening:  Rust has knocked down bridges, killing dozens.  It's killed at least a handful of people at nuclear power plants, nearly caused reactor meltdowns, and challenged those storing nuclear waste.  At the height of the Cold War, it turned our most powerful nukes into duds.  Dealing with it has shut down the nation's largest oil pipeline, bringing about negotiations with OPEC.  It's rendered military jets and ships unfit for service, caused the crash of an F-16 and a Huey, and torn apart the fuselage of a commercial plane midflight.  In the 1970s, it was implicated in a number of house fires, when, as copper prices shot up, electricians resorted to aluminum wires.  More recently, in the "typhoid Mary of corrosion," furnaces in Virginia houses failed as a result of Chinese drywall that contained strontium sulfide.  They rusted out in two years.  One hundred fifty years after massive ten-inch cast iron guns attacked Fort Sumter, rust is counterattacking.  Union forces have mobilized with marine-grade epoxy and humidity sensors.  Rust slows down container ships before stopping them entirely by aiding in  the untimely removal of their propellers.  It causes hundreds of explosions in manholes, blows up washing machines, and launches water heaters through the roof, sky high.  It clogs the nozzles of fire sprinkler heads: a double whammy for oxidation.  It damages fuel tanks and then engines.  It seizes up weapons, manhandles mufflers, destroys highway guardrails, and spreads like cancer in concrete.  It's opened up crypts.

   Sounds awful, doesn't it, like some sort of unstoppable alien force.  And indeed, to many that deal with corrosion (a broader term for rusting away at something, even if it's not entirely due to oxidation), the battle does seem futile.  So begins the book by Jonathan Waldman, simply titled, Rust, the Longest War.  Now you might be asking yourself, a book...really?  Is there enough of an interest in rust, at least enough to fill an entire book?  And surprisingly, you can answer yes with about 80% certainty.  He begins with the Statue of Liberty, then onto how rust happens and its history and eventually, the Alaska Pipeline.  Hmmm, still haven't got you convinced?  Let's jump to just one section he has in his book on cans and canning.

   Think of it, we all pick up a can without even thinking.  That pop-top is a no-brainer (even though a wrong cut millionths of an inch thick can cause a can to explode or just not open at all); and thank heavens we no longer use lead as a sealer.  But the dark secret to cans of all sorts, from those holding fruits & vegetables to those holding soft drinks, is that without a protective lining sprayed onto the inside of the can, most of the items would corrode the metal (a can of Coke will do this in about three days).  And while the coating is highly secretive, it pretty much suspected to be bisphenol-A, or BPA.  Recognize those initials?...plastic baby bottles, drink containers, sunscreen holders all seemed to apparently advertise with pride that they were now BPA-free; no such endocrine disruptors in our products, was the insinuation.  Adds author Waldman:  Hunt, Colborn, vom Saal, and many other researchers around the world have found that BPA can cause early puberty, obesity, and miscarriages, lower sperm counts, and increase rates of cancers of the breast, prostate, ovaries, and testicles...Other studies have confirmed that BPA activates estrogen receptors on breast cells, and can cause cancer cells to replicate in a dish.  BPA has been shown to be just as powerful as diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a very strong synthetic estrogen discourages since 1971 in pregnant women because of its association with rare, awful reproductive cancers.  And who makes many of these epoxy coatings?...Exxon-Mobil, Dow Chemical, Cytec Industries and others, each refining and adding chemicals to create the "perfect" coating waiting to be sprayed on nearly every can conceivable...as an added note, both the federal Health & Human Services and the National Toxicology Program suggest severely limiting BPA exposure to children and infants (one researcher feels that BPA may react with the human body in parts per trillion).

   Yikes!  And although parts of Waldman's book become technical or (somewhat) uninteresting tales of famous names in the industry, the book certainly exposes one to an inescapable fact of life on earth, that we are all decaying and corroding and rusting away.  But the balance of the book is just that, that despite it all, it is a world of balance.  Do we trade our urge for soft drinks and tuna and mandarin oranges for a quick and small exposure to what is likely an endocrine disrupting chemical coating?  Do we willingly continue to pay for oil and getting it to our homes and vehicles at the expense of constantly fighting a corroding delivery system (his section on just maintaining the Alaska pipeline is fascinating)?  And perhaps even more so, are we willing to do the same for our bodies?  It's a choice we all make each and every day...but once again, knowing a bit of background before we make those decisions can only help.