has been in operation, as it did several years ago. And because of its wideranging safety program the university has come through five state OSHA inspections relatively unscathed. This is not always the case. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the very few universities that has had a federal OSHA inspection. In late 1973, OSHA inspectors spent three weeks going over about 25% of MIT's 139 buildings, concentrating on labs. In that time, according to John M. Fresina, director of MIT's safety office, the inspectors found about 1600 instances of 63 specific violations. The only serious violation involved a 10,000-volt laser operating without a protective covering. Other violations included such things as unmounted fire extinguishers and lack of guards on vacuum pump belts. MIT was fined only $1775 for its violations. But Fresina says that, in an effort to both comply with the OSHA inspection and take care of other things on the campus that the inspectors didn't look at but MIT figured it had to do anywav, the university spent about $400,000. And, he adds, MIT has had a safety program for more than 25 years. He figures that starting from scratch a school that had never had a safety program would have to spend on the order of 10 cents a square foot to bring operations into compliance with OSHA standards. Much of the cost, according to Fresina, is due to OSHA's concern with physical layout—exits, flow of materials, guardrails, fire protection equipment, emergency lighting, and the like. For example, buildings at many older colleges simply don't comply with modern building codes adopted by OSHA. Many older buildings have only one exit whereas OSHA requires two means of egress from buildings. It's expensive to put in another set of stairs, Fresina points out. OSHA soon will be having a more direct impact on academic lab operations. It is planning to issue specific lab standards for handling chemical carcinogens. At one time OSHA did have such standards on the books. When it issued its final exposure regulations on 14 chemical carcinogens, including 4,4 , -methylenebis(2-chloraniline) (MOCA), benzidine, and 4-dimethyl aminoazobenzene, it included a specific section dealing with use in labs. The standards specified, among other things, type of ventilation to be used for all labs in which carcinogens are used. They also called for high-efficiency scrubbers or absolute filters on all vacuum lines, logging people in and out of the labs, extensive medical examinations and record keeping, frequent changes of clothing, and showering after each exit from the regulated area. These laboratory provisions of the standard were sent back to OSHA by the court of appeals because of lack of notice of intent to promulgate them. 22
C&EN July 14, 1975
But OSHA recently reproposed exactly the same provisions when it reinitiated the rulemaking procedure on MOCA. If these lab standards again go into effect for MOCA and if such standards are extended to cover the other chemical carcinogens on OSHA's toxic substances list, they promise to be very difficult to comply with. As soon as the original lab standards on the 14 chemical carcinogens came out, Scheffler says, the University of Minnesota got rid of all the materials on the list because it couldn't possibly comply with the regulations. He explains that the OSHA ventilation requirements meant individual ventilation for every lab, adding that, although the university ventilates its hoods separately, it doesn't have a separate air supply for each of them. And the university would have difficulty both controlling who walked into and out of a lab and keeping a log of these movements. MIT has taken a different approach to dealing with the problem. It decided to build one centralized carcinogen facility in its new chemistry building. Now anyone who wants to work with a carcinogen goes to that facility, which has showers and the required ventilation. Also, a log is kept on who enters and leaves. Fresina estimates it cost about $18,000 for MIT to modify an existing lab for use as a central carcinogen lab, whereas a new one would have cost about $50,000. Getting rid of all chemical carcinogens or going to the expense of modifying or building a facility to handle them may not be necessary. There are some indications that OSHA is not set on the laboratory standards it originally proposed for the 14 carcinogens. It may propose new ones based on standards recently approved by the Department of Health, Education & Welfare for use in its own research labs, including those at the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health. The HEW standards are based on a philosophy of restricting exposure potential to a particular carcinogen, rather than placing major reliance on equipment to control inevitable exposure as the OSHA standards do. The HEW standards do provide for medical surveillance of all persons working with carcinogens and set such things as minimum flow rates for hoods. Mainly the standards set forth general safety principles to be employed in the handling, storage, decontamination, and disposal of chemical carcinogens. It is then up to each lab supervisor, working in conjunction with a safety officer, to come up with a detailed safety plan for each carcinogen handled in his laboratory. In this he is to be assisted by carcinogen safety monographs that will contain specific technical and safety information for each chemical carcinogen. Monographs have not yet been issued for the first 13 chemical carcino-
gens regulated under the HEW standards. But NCI decided to implement the standards anyway, as of June 30. This will give OSHA a chance to look at the HEW standards in action and should help in making a decision on whether to go with the original OSHA standards or switch to HEW's standards. In any case, specific laboratory standards for handling chemical carcinogens should be on the books in the near future. The addition of these standards to the safety regulations already in effect may move academic research labs up on the list of OSHA inspection priorities. And if even large, relatively wealthy schools such as the University of Minnesota and MIT have trouble complying with OSHA regulations, things could get rough for small colleges and universities. Janice R. Long, C&EN Washington
Baker voices views on federal science The notion that a small group of eminent scientists can provide the federal government with the scientific advice it needs is passe. The idea seemed feasible 15 or 20 years ago, when the government's interests in science and technology were focused on a few specific projects. But now the government is involved actively in a host of fields, such as health, transportation, housing, environmental management, and energy development. And in all these areas progress depends on solving scientific and technological problems. Hence, today's effective science advisory program must draw upon the best minds from the scientific community. It also must be coordinated much more closely with other forces that influence governmental action such as economics, politics, and sociology. So advocates Dr. William O. Baker, president of Bell Telephone Laboratories, winner of this year's American Institute of Chemists' Gold Medal Award for his contributions to chemistry, and a scientific adviser to the past five Presidents. Baker sees the reorganization that is taking place in White House science advice now (in which President Ford has asked Congress to statutorily create an Office of Science & Technology Policy advised by ad hoc panels) as likely to provide a better source for the scientific information needed today than the former President's Science Advisory Committee would have. That committee was an important part of the White House science advisory mechanism abolished two and a half years ago. Baker agrees with the assessment and recommendations of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's committee on science advice to the executive branch, whose details were made pub-
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lie last month (C&EN, June 16, page 5). "The Rockefeller report emphasizes strongly that the real scheme [of the proposed science advice mechanism] is to be able to get the best people from the national technical and scientific community to come in on a short-term basis, to get their first-hand expertise in to advise the government; not to sit around as some sort of statutory body and look for things to say, but to be invited in on the most pressing and urgent matters," he explains. "I think that there is just no doubt that that is the effective way" to make use of the nation's scientific and technological expertise. "Now this President, of course, got all kinds of pressures, as his predecessor had . . . from some people who wanted the old way because science did seem to have a rather good spot there. It was a good address. And you could expect attention. But it is really a different world that [Ford] is trying to operate in now," Baker explains. There is still a role to be played by the Presidential science adviser. Baker sees it as one of coordinating the selection of people for ad hoc advisory committees, of persuading these groups to come together, and of supervising the staff work necessary for the committees to function. In addition, the science adviser, as a person of high authority within the executive branch, would be able to secure information from various governmental agencies that the committees would need to evaluate federal action. Scientific societies, such as the American Chemical Society, also can play an important role in selecting the people to serve on these advisory committees, according to Baker. The National Academy of Sciences, too, could be very valuable in serving as a go-between for the government and industrial and academic scientists., "I think that the academy is such a natural and effective channel between the President, or the executive branch generally, and this whole national [scientific] community, that we are just lucky to have it. . . . They are independent, and yet they are very alert to the government's problems. They have the people to assemble, and they have had good practice at putting the right people together. ACS has had some practice here as well. The academies and scientific societies are really the best machinery" for assembling advisory committees for the government. Baker has been quite pleased with the federal science advisory apparatus for the past several years. "What we've had for many years has really been exceedingly ingenius and adaptive to the needs of the country," he explains. "Now what we are seeing is only a logical, careful evolution of what we've had . . . . [Dr. H. Guyford] Stever and the National Science Foundation and the Science & Technology Policy Office . . . have all functioned extremely well 24
C&EN July 14, 1975
. . . [and] both the National Security Council and the Domestic Council, the two major groups of experts to advise the President, have good scientific and technological connections throughout the country. Their growing links with basic research and university people are particularly essential." But scientific progress is so closely tied with economic and social achievements that a knowledge of how science and technology are fostered is essential throughout government, not just within the formal science advisory office for the President. One of Baker's major concerns is that despite basically good functioning of the science advisory mechanism within the executive branch, there is still a fundamental lack of understanding in the government of the conditions that foster technological innovations. One of the chief requirements for scientific innovation frequently missing in the U.S. today, according to Baker, is integrated scientific communities
Baker: a logical, careful evolution that are large enough to tackle the major technological problems facing the country. "There's considerable evidence building up that innovation in the latter part of the 20th century involves a very large community of effort, such as we have seen in the Bell system," Baker says. "This trend seems to be intensifying, namely that we just see major innovation in chemistry, materials, communications, electronics, and fuels coming from large integrated communities. Now if you've got the government standing out there kicking you in the shins every time you try to get an integrated community, you're just sunk. . . . Here we are in the energy crunch, we're in industrial competition generally around the world, and we're finding the government acting in a way to prevent scientific and technological communities that are big enough to do the job." What Baker would like to see is gov-
ernment support of integrated research programs much like the project to develop synthetic rubber in the 1940's. Key reasons for the success of that project, he says, were the size of the community that was assembled to tackle the problem and the technological diversity of the various groups that were brought together. "That group is still being pointed to [by hose who participated in it] as by far the most effective application of science and technology for the benefit of the people that they've had anything to do with." However, in most cases major research programs nowadays should not be run by the government as the wartime synthetic rubber program was, Baker says. But they do need support and encouragement from Washington that is lacking today. Current government policies in antitrust, patents, contracts, and regulatory agencies all work to discourage or break up integrated research efforts. Defense contract policy is one example. "The American people are getting a ripoff through the fragmentation of the contracts in the Defense Department because they won't give these people a contract big enough so they can do anything," Baker says. And government regulation is a key contributor to the slowdown in the development of new drugs in the past 10 years. Regulations force wasteful dislocation of effort and resources in new drug testing and help to fragment the drug industry, he adds There are signs that a few people in the government are becoming aware of the conditions that foster technological progress and of the relationship between such progress and the economy as a whole, Baker says. The Vice President, through his work with the Commission on Critical Choices for America, is aware of these requirements. So are James Cannon, executive director of the Domestic Council, Treasury Secretary William Simon, and others. "The Domestic Council has some interest in this question," Baker believes. "If this science-industry-economy concept can be developed further, I think the Domestic Council might start to get the point." The office of science adviser itself is not likely to play much of a role in increasing government understanding in this area, according to Baker. "[Former science adviser Edward] David went much further than anybody else ever did in this direction, and he tried very hard to do this. But we've just never found the office of science adviser listened to," Baker explains. "[George P.] Shultz, [when he was] Secretary of the Treasury and super Cabinet man, could be listened to. A coalition of Cabinet people, such as the Domestic Council, could be listened to. But I don't think you are going to get this sort of attention for the office of science adviser." Rebecca L. Rawls, C&EN New York
