June 1999  

New Chemical Formulas

Alken® Surface Cleaner 874, petroleum spill, hard-surface cleaner. Rapid action, biodegradable formula, cleans up petroleum spills on hard surfaces (like concrete) fast.

Alken® Treatment F-627, F-628 & F-629 are filming amines for chemical water treatment. Additional information is posted on the "Chemicals page".

Alken-Murray Website Received 4,230 Visitors in its First 4 Months On-Line

Thank you for your support of our products and your requests for information. We intend to make our website into a launching point to the most environmental information on the web. (Nobody ever accused this company of lacking ambition). If you have not visited the Hot Links, please do so. They will take you to in-depth knowledge on a variety of topics touching the environment, bacteria, and chemicals. We also have links to other, more general websites that may interest you.

Glass Sample Bottles Supply Nears End

Are you among the clients complaining about broken glass sample bottles? Well, we just ordered a supply of cute plastic sample bottles, so that we can send you bench test kit samples that will arrive in one piece. The samples of fuel treatments and polymers will still be sent in tiny glass bottles, but we promise to pack them extra carefully.

Case Studies and Competitor Samples Wanted

Do you want to earn a 5% discount on your next order? Give us a good case study on your last project, complete with data. If pictures are relevant, please consider including them too. We will be glad to post the study to our website and link to your e-mail for additional information. This offer is open to our independent clients, as well as distributors. All product, including drains and odor control are of interest.

Speaking of Discounts ...

Nobody has found our out-of-place pink elephant for a 10% discount. Previous hints: a character in a famous movie, recited "There is No Place Like Home". Next hint: Our character used to hang out with a tin man, but her new friends are a little fishy. Can't anyone find the link to this picture for a 10% discount?

No, You Are Not A Klutz! Preparing Grease Syringes According to QC-9 is a Black Art!

Your editor tried to mix the grease syringes according to Ken's recipe and ended up with pink flecked grease instead of a thoroughly mixed RED. It seems there is a black art to mashing the dye THOROUGHLY into the flour and then slooooowly adding the grease, in order to obtain an even and bright color. Trial and error, I am told! Practice I am told! Patience, I am told. Yeah, sure, when I have 2 hours to meet the Federal Express guy's deadline to rush a sample to a distributor who is meeting with a BIG client tomorrow! Anyway, if you need colored grease syringes and cannot manage to get the color in them, we will send them to you prepared by Ken, the Khemist-Magician, as soon as we use up the 4 pink speckled ones your editor made.

New Petroleum Cleanup Formula, with Microbes, for Hard Surfaces

Alken-Murray now offers a petroleum cleanup formula that includes microbes. A slightly reduced pH allows us to combine our Enz-Odor® 2 microbes with the surface cleaning capabilities of Alken® Surface Cleaner 874, for an all-in-one treatment product. This new LIQUID formula is named Alken Clear-Flo® 5100.

SUPER SALE!! Alken Clear-Flo® 7004 & 7002

We have a single 25 lb. pail of each formula left that were made before we reformulated these two products. These pails are available at a 60% DISCOUNT!! The count is good, the performance is good (not as good as the new formula, obviously) and it still has one year of full-count shelf-life remaining, then another year after that with reduced count. If you need detergents or phenol degraded, this is your lucky day!

New Land Farming Schematics

Some of our distant clients have asked for a schematic that shows how a land farm is set up, so that they can better visualize the treatment process. Ken initially created a design that would decrease the cost of watering a land farm plot, but the design created problems for harrowing with a tractor, so he is redesigning the diagram and we will post it as a link from the oil spill cleanup article, as soon as it is finished.

Bacterial Pictures Posted From Our Collection

We have recently posted a few photographs of Alken-Murray bacteria, (Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas fluorescens and Alken Clear-Flo 1200) photographed by Kenneth J. Edwards, Jr. with our 100x oil-immersion objective lens microscope and 10x ocular piece.

Consensus Hated Horizontal Frame For Hydrogen Sulfide Treatise

Ok, so some experiments flop. The frame is now vertical, like the others on our website. Thank you for your opinions. We do listen!

Updated Article "Cleanup Oil Spills and Drilling Muds"

We have revised our bioremediation survey form to include drilling mud/cuttings remediation questions. We have also revised our posted article, adding diagrams and graphs to illustrate the Oil spill article.

Evaluating Comparative Bioremediation Studies

Since studies and their veracity are as varied as their authors, we would like to offer some clues to evaluating the studies.

1. Read the abstract carefully. Then read the study and see if the data supports their conclusion.
2. Were all competing companies given the same information about initial conditions (BOD, organic matter, contaminants present and their mg/l, ratios of nutrients present in the water or soil to be remediated, etc.)?
3. Was the initial information of untreated substrate accurate? If the level of contamination reported was higher than in fact was present, the companies may have overdosed. On the other hand, if the level of contamination was under-reported, the companies may have prescribed insufficient product to perform adequately.*
4. Were all competing products applied according to the manufacturer's prescription, or were they applied using an arbitrary protocol?
5. If the manufacturer prescribed biocatalysts (diluted hydrogen peroxide, sodium nitrate, surfactants, etc.), were these supplements applied according to the manufacturer's instructions?
6. Many products are designed to work synergistically with their own nutrient blends. If these are not present, performance may be seriously inhibited. Selecting the nutrients that come from one manufacturer and using them for all products can therefore skew the results toward the manufacturer whose nutrients are used.

*Alken-Murray participated in a study in which the OM, nutrient levels, etc. were greatly exaggerated so that we, and our competitors, prescribed a massive overdose, thereby adding to the already low OM, instead of reducing it, further! The proportion of nutrients was never disclosed in this test. Under those circumstances, it appeared that when nutrient reduction was the goal of treatment, all of the competing products were equal to no treatment at all,. This test did show that the added strains of bacteria displaced the undesirable strains of Vibrio and eliminated hydrogen sulfide.

Nonylphenol Detergents Can Cause Hidden Fish Toxicity

Science News May 8, 1999, page 293 reports that nonylphenol reportedly is an estrogen-mimic which blocks the ability of salmon and steelhead smolts to adapt to salt water. This mechanism of toxicity is unlikely to be detected by an effluent bioassay. Alken Clear-Flo® 7004 at can be used to degrade surfactants, thereby protecting aquatic life from these deleterious effects.

The US Court of Appeals Is Questioning All Environmental Statutes Delegating Legislative Authority

Octane Week, May 24, 1999 issue, reports that "The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the revised ozone and PM NAAQS saying that the agency failed to articulate the principle behind its decision to set the standards where it did." This action could have wide reaching effects, including the possibility that the entire Clean Air Act could be invalidated. The American Trucking Associations, Inc. was responsible for petitioning the court on this issue.

New Revisions to USEPA Rules for Continuous Emissions Monitoring

TDS Central News, Environmental Management Online, June 2 issue, states that "U.S. EPA issued several revisions to the continuous emissions monitoring (CEM) rules under CAA's Acid Rain Program (64 FR 28563, May 26, 1999). The rules, which generally apply to stack emissions and may affect parties that become subject to 40 CFR 75 requirements, are part of a larger group of regulations proposed on May 21, 1998 (63 FR 28031), some of which have since been promulgated. EPA said the current revisions are intended to provide more flexibility and cost-effectiveness to regulated entities' monitoring and reporting options. For details, see the Federal Register notice, available in two parts on the World Wide Web at <http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-AIR/1999/May/Day-26/a8939a.htm> and <http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-AIR/1999/May/Day-26/a8939b.htm>" You can subscribe to TSD Central News at TSDX Corporation, 1667 Cole Boulevard, Suite 400, Golden, Colorado 80401-3313 or phone 800-508-9961 for $95 per year. 

Exxon and Shell Demonstrate that Environmental Concern Can Be Compatible with Profit

Octane Week, May 24, 1999 issue, reports that Exxon and Shell, which have both been designated at the top of the EcoValue 21 rating system for "below average industry risk exposure, an above average management capacity to control risk and a leading-edge capacity to capitalize on environmentally-driven business opportunities." Innovest stated that companies that rated highly on this scale outperformed below average companies by 300 to 1800 basis points, as measured by total stock market return. Subscriptions to Octane Week are available from Hart Publications, 1201 Seven Locks Road, Potomac, MD 20854 or phone 301/340-1520 for $1495 per year.

The USEPA Issued Emission Standards for 14 more Industries

TSD Central News, Environmental Management Online, May 26th newsletter, reported that the following industries now have specific requirements to use maximum achievable control technologies for hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) and reduction of ground-level ozone (smog) and particulate matter: oil and natural gas-production facilities, steel pickling, polyether polyol production, natural gas transmission and storage, pesticide active-ingredient production, mineral-wool production, Portland-cement manufacturing, wool-fiberglass manufacturing, ferroalloy production, primary lead smelters, acetal-resin production, acrylic and modacrylic fiber production, hydrogen fluoride production, and polycarbonate production. Obtain more information at: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/ramain.html Tighter regulations should improve the incentive to use Alken Even-Flo® and Clear-Flo® products, to reduce emissions. You can subscribe to TSD Central News at TSDX Corporation, 1667 Cole Boulevard, Suite 400, Golden, Colorado 80401-3313 or phone 800-508-9961 for $95 per year. 

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