October 1948 WALTER J. MURPHY, EDITOR
A
Story of
Good Public
Elkton Sun (Virginia) on July 22 carried a T n e nr s report of a t a l k before the Rockingham Game and Fish Association by Harold E. Mahoney, plant manager of the Merck plant at Stonewall, t h a t is a splendid example of good public relations. The following t w o paragraphs highlight the Merck intention, n o t only of compliance with t h e law on waste disposal, but of a desire t o go beyond t h a t and t o demonstrate a real longing to be a good neighbor t o t h e communities HE
near t h e plant a n d good citizens of Virginia:
It is not my purpose to bore you with a lot of statistics and particularly amounts of money Merck & Company has spent in water studies and process improvements; rather I should like to outline our program and point to the results which have been obtained which, after all, are the goal rather than how much money we have spent. I n order to know something of our problem we shall classify our discharge to the Shenandoah River in several kinds of water: first, surface water; second, cooling water; third, sanitary sewage; fourth, process wastes. Obviously the first two, surface water and cooling water, do not have t o be treated inasmuch as they enter the river in the same state as they are received. Sanitary sewage requires treatment. However, the means of treatment are well known and I am glad to report that Merck & Company has engaged a firm who is now designing such a sewage plant. The real problem is in our process wastes wherein we have waste products of varied chemical constituents, the treatment of which for the most part is known. This being the case, it has become company policy that new processes installed in the Stonewall plant must have no process wastes to be discharged to the river. This summer we are preparing to make penicillin and an intermediate of a new sulfa drug. Both processes will include special equipment for handling wastes so that nothing is added to the Shenandoah. Our program has been under way for several years and primarily we have segregated since the early days of the plant those substances which are known or suspected of being harmful to aquatic life and these have been either burned or buried to prevent their discharge into the river. The measure of pollution is a rather difficult matter in that no single test can be used as such a measure. The one which nearly accomplishes this is that called biological oxygen demand or B.O.D. This is merely a test which determines how much aeration is required for the stream to purify itself. The‘B.0.D. test leaves much to be desired but a t present is the only yardstick for measurement of stream contamination and is universally used for that purpose. During the psst two years we have been successful in reducing the B.O.D. of our discharge to the river by about 75 per cent. The means for doing this was by change in processes, equipment, and vigilance as to what wastes went into the river. Just re-
Relations
cently we have undertaken a study of the toxicity of all of our process wastes by means of small water animals called the daphnia which are sometimes called water fleas. The tests consist of placing these daphnia in particular concentrations of our wastes and noting whether they live or die within a definite period of time. The daphnia test gives us a means of quickly narrowing down our problem, the final evaluation to be done actually with fish. We have engaged Dr. B. G. Anderson of the University of West Virginia, who is an authority on this organism and who is guiding us in our program of toxicity studies. One rather major point that should not be overlooked in waste treatment is that wherever possible our solvents or liquid chemicals are not discharged to the river but are recovered in our solvent plant and re-used in each respective process. Upwards of one-half million gallons of such solvent per month are processed through the solvent recovery plant. I n order that we have an indicator of our results and current river situations it is necessary that a great deal of laboratory work be done. We have devoted one entire laboratory to this purpose and approximately 1500 analyses are run per month by four men. Within the last month we have embarked upon a biological survey of animal life in the river above and below the plant. This work is a measure of whether our present discharge to the river has affected the fish food which consists of all sorts of small animal life which we all have great difficulty getting about this time of year when we wish to catch bass. For this work we have engaged Dr. Charles Renn, a recognized authority on aquatic life, now teaching a t Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, who oversees our sampling and classifies these species of animals taken from the river. As touched upon above we continually review and study the wastes from each individual process from a chemical standpoint as well as B.O.D.
Most of o u r chemical companies are making an intelligent effort t o end the nuisances a n d hazards of industrial wastes. T h e Manufacturing Chemists’ hssociation’s committee on waste disposal is active a n d is registering real progress. Many individual companies, however, have neglected so far to tell t h e communities in which plants a r e located w h a t t h e y are doing to eliminate o r neutralize the effect of industrial wastes. H e r e is a field for public relations that should be cultivated. The place t o initiate good public relations is at the grass root level. I n other words, a determined effort should be m a d e by chemical companies t o educate close neighbors on t h e constructive actions t a k e n on all matters t h a t directly or indirectly affect the community in which a plant is located.
