Greenhouse TV

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Watching television may be bad for the kids; making televisions, it seems, may be bad for the climate. To produce flatpanel displays, manufacturers rely on nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃), a potent greenhouse gas that was not covered by the emissions-regulating Kyoto Protocol when it was drafted in 1997, because so little of it was used then. Now exploding sales of flat-panel TVs and other digital devices, coupled with incomplete recapture of the chemical during manufacture, could spell trouble, warn Michael J. Prather and Juno Hsu, both at the University of California, Irvine. They advocate further study to document the pre sence of atmospheric NF₃.

Atmospheric lifetime of NF₃: 550 years

Greenhouse potency factor (global warming potential), as compared with carbon dioxide, of:

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Methane: 25

NF₃: 17,200

Estimated number of tons of NF3 to be produced in 2008: 4,000

Equivalent amount of CO₂, in tons: 67 million

Percent of NF₃ not recaptured during manufacturing: 2 to 3

CO₂ emissions in 2005, in tons: 15,128 million

SOURCE: Geophysical Research Letters, June 26, 2008

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