News of the Week vironmental Affairs is spearheading a nascent interagency effort to assess the longer-term implications of Bhopal-like accidents. The effort, prodded by White House and Congressional interest, is still at staff level, and is evolving in scope. State Department and Environmental Protection Agency officials say an informal interagency working group was to meet two weeks ago to discuss, among other things, how a Bhopal-like accident can be prevented in the U.S. That meeting never took place. And it is possible that the working group, which also would include the Occupational Safety & Health Administration and the Department of Health & Human Services, may never have official standing. But if it becomes official, it also will address the "longterm implications of such an accident in terms of health, safety, trade, and investments," a State Department official says. Of particular concern is whether U.S.-based multinational companies should be compelled to meet U.S. environmental, health, and safety standards in host countries. Also at issue is whether such compliance would harm their competitive position in world markets. Several international organizations have developed or are developing codes of conduct, notification schemes, or information exchanges on hazardous chemicals, especially pesticides. The U.S. has no unified policy for addressing these issues as they come up in international forums or after accidents like that at Bhopal. The working group could formulate such a policy to respond to schemes adopted by international agencies. It also could develop policies that provide for better links among U.S. agencies responding to such problems in the U.S., a State Department official says. Besides this working group, other government activities are under way. So many, in fact, that the lack of coordination among agencies and even within an agency has led to confusion, an agency official says. The State Department, at the invitation of the Indian Ministry of Labor's National Safety Council, is now selecting four individuals to attend a conference on the envi6
January 21, 1985 C&EN
ronment and industrial safety. The meeting is to be held in Bombay Feb. 2-5. The U.S. will send representatives from the Centers for Disease Control, EPA, AFL-CIO, and industry. EPA has been asked by the Indian Department of Environment for help in developing regulations covering the handling, manufacture,
and importation of hazardous chemicals. The agency is expected to respond favorably to this request. EPA also would like to send a team to India to inspect the Bhopal plant. The agency would like to understand why the accident happened to assess U.S. capability for dealing with a similar situation and to prevent a similar event in the U.S. •
Caltech's Marcus to receive Wolf Prize Rudolph A. Marcus, who is Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology, will receive the 1984-85 Wolf Prize in chemistry. In announcing the $100,000 award, the Israel-based Wolf Foundation cited Marcus' lifelong research in chemical kinetics. Marcus' contributions to chemical theory have influenced experimental chemists in a wide variety of fields. He is probably best known for development of RRKM theory— named after its developers O. K. Rice, H. C. Ramsperger, Louis Kassel, and Marcus—and other theories of unimolecular and electron transfer reactions. Marcus also pioneered the use of natural reaction coordinates for following the course of reactions. In more recent work, Marcus has extended the concepts used in electron transfer theory to atomic and other transfer processes, advanced semiclassical treatments of reaction
Marcus: research in chemical kinetics
dynamics, investigated chaos, and probed electron transfer in biological molecules. He is working on a model to describe the effects of the orientation of an electron donor and acceptor relative to each other on the kinetics of the electron transfer reaction. As it was developed originally, RRKM theory was almost "prequantum," Marcus says, and he finds it remarkable that the theory has proved flexible enough to remain relevant through three decades of advances in quantum mechanical calculations. Marcus continues to develop RRKM theory for application to new systems. For chemists, RRKM is a frustrating theory because in its treatment of energy redistribution in a molecule it essentially rules out the possibility of laser specific chemistry. As such, a goal of many chemists is to "beat" RRKM theory by designing molecules in which energy can be trapped in a specific bond long enough for a reaction involving that bond to occur before the energy redistributes throughout the molecule. Marcus currently is collaborating with experimental chemists at Caltech in just such an effort. Born in Montreal in 1923, Marcus received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from McGill University. He taught at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and the University of Illinois before joining the Caltech faculty in 1978. The Wolf Foundation was established in 1978 by the late Ricardo Wolf, a diplomat, chemist, and philanthropist. Each year it awards $100,000 for contributions in each of six categories—agriculture, chemistry, medicine, physics, mathematics, and the arts. •
