Minerals supply called major crisis of 1980s Problems the U.S. is having with its materials and minerals policy were aired last week at hearings held jointly by two House subcommittees. Among those testifying was the Federation of Materials Societies, a collection of 14 technical societies, including the American Chemical Society. The federation (FMS) is trying to coordinate programs and educate policy makers about materials issues. FMS says it is trying to make legislators and the public understand that the solutions to materials problems are much more complicated than just opening more land for mining or having large stockpiles of strategic materials. Speaking for FMS as its immediate past president, Stanley V. Margolin warned the Congressmen t h a t "international trade agreements, the Law of the Sea treaty, import and export policies, technical specifications, technology—these and many other considerations are vital, interacting factors that affect the availability of our needed materials and minerals. Many of the factors must be more fully recognized by government officials who exercise control over them." In all, FMS presented 14 points it said need to be considered. These include, in part, defense dependency on foreign supplies of sophisticated materials, advantages held by foreign industrial competitors, sensitive foreign policy issues, adequacy and quality of stockpiled materials, energy, and problems of adequate education and manpower. Margolin likens the situation to earlier national problems. "In the 1960s it was the environment, in the 1970s it was energy, in the 1980s the major crisis is going to be materials," he says. And the problem is not just going to be simple physical availability. Margolin says that the heavy industry necessary to process raw materials to usable materials is disappearing in the U.S. He cites the steel, copper, and aluminum industries as just the most obvious examples of this problem. He also lays some of the problem on government regulations that have led to 42-month periods to build a major new plant of any sort, and a run of 10 years necessary to open any kind of large mining operation. The two subcommittees holding the hearings, both from the House
Science Committee, are examining information relative to a bill introduced by committee chairman Don Fuqua (D.-Fla.) that would establish a coordinating council in the White House to oversee various materials and minerals programs. FMS maintains that one of the nation's biggest problems is that no one administrator exists to take charge of a U.S. minerals policy. D
Chemical engineering needs, supply balanced Demand for chemical engineers over the next five years likely will grow at about the same rate as the supply of new chemical engineers entering the marketplace, according to a survey by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. The survey was a project of the supply and demand committee of AIChE. Essentially, it asked 26 leading chemical and petroleum processing companies to project their fu-
ture manpower needs for the next five years. The committee also expects the survey to provide a historical record as well as prediction and was based on hiring data from 1975 to 1980 that was gathered from 25 of the 26 companies. Selection of the companies to be polled was made on the bajsis of statistics showing that 40% of the demand for new chemical engineers from 1978 and 1979 came from just 23 companies, including Dow Chemical, Eastman Kodak, Du Pont, Shell Oil, International Business Machines, and Union Carbide. To these 23 were added Bechtel Power Corp., Rohm & Haas, and Standard Oil (Ind.). During 1975 to 1980, there was a close ratio between positions available and the number of chemical engineers graduating with bachelor's degrees. For example, in 1980, demand from the 25 companies was some 2500. Supply, figured at 40% of B.S. graduates, was about 2600. Both are projected to grow more or less in parallel over the next few
Bell Labs achieves shortest laser pulse yet The shortest pulse of laser light ever created—30 femtoseconds, or 30 X 10~ 1 5 second—is expected to enable scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories to study fundamental changes occurring in semiconductor materials with greater precision than before. Charles V. Shank and his coworkers at their Holmdel, N.J., lab plan to use a series of precisely spaced pulses as "stopwatches" to time the early stages of physical changes as electrons move through tiny integrated circuit chips. Here, Shank adjusts the laser, which, he says, also could help chart energy movements from one part of a molecule to another. Moreover, the technique, a refinement over Bell Labs' 70-femtosecond laser, could be applied to the measurement of a whole range of unexplored and subtle phenomena—physical, chemical, and biological—that "begin to occur within the first 30 to 50 femtoseconds of a reaction," he says. In that time span, light would travel across barely half the thickness of a human hair.
April 26, 1982 C&EN
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News of the Week years, with the 25-company demand reaching about 2900 in 1986. Participating companies also were asked which chemical engineering sectors would require the most "future talent." Topping the list at 44% was the chemicals and allied products sector, known for employing most chemical engineers. Next was oil and gas extraction service at 17%, and petroleum refining and related industries with 15%. D
Towns unprepared for chemical emergencies Most U.S. communities are almost totally unprepared to respond to a chemical disaster, according to a four-year study on chemical hazards conducted by sociologist Enrico L. Quarantelli and associates at the Disaster Research Center at Ohio State University. The study, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, finds that although chemical companies themselves are fairly well able to cope with chemical emergencies on their own property, these companies and the communities in which they are located do not cooperate with one another very well to prepare for potential chemical emergencies that start away from the company's property or that spread beyond it. And communities that do not have chemical plants in them but that might still face a chemical hazard—those through which chemicals are transported, for example—are even less well prepared to deal with an accident involving hazardous chemicals.
Many potential resources are available to help communities prepare for chemical emergencies, Quarantelli says, including the Chemical Transportation Emergency Center ( C H E M T R E C ) , operated by the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and the U.S. Coast Guard's National Response Center for oil and chemical accidents and emergencies. However, these resources are unknown to community leaders or not recognized as resources. With about 250,000 shipments of hazardous materials occurring in the U.S. every day, the possibility of a disaster involving chemicals is very real, the report says. A major chemical disaster on the magnitude of the train derailment that occurred in Canada at Mississauga, Ont., in 1979 has never occurred in the U.S., the report says, but "each day probably brings the possibility closer." It is transportation accidents for which communities are the least well prepared, the study finds. "In transportation accidents involving chemicals. . .much effort is spent on trying to define the chemical threat in the situation. This is not always easy to do correctly and there is often delay in realizing that a transportation accident may have the potential for becoming a chemical disaster," according to the report. Although it would cost very little for most communities to begin effective chemical hazards preparedness programs, the report is not optimistic that such planning will occur. "The social climate in most American communities" is not right, the report says. For one thing, "there is a tendency to believe that com-
Hazardous spill specialists clean up spillage from 1979 Indiana train derailment 6
C&EN April 26, 1982
munities could respond to emergencies better than they probably could." Communities do not want to do anything that might "disturb local economic benefits from chemical plants." Also, the report finds "a public unwillingness to spend governmental funds for most anything, including disaster p r e p a r e d n e s s planning." D
Jobless rate rises for chemists Unemployment is up perceptibly among U.S. chemists this year. Preliminary figures from the most recent annual ACS survey of the employment status of its members show that 1.7% of them were not working but seeking employment as of last March 1. That's the highest rate of unemployment among ACS members since 1976, when the rate (again as of March 1) was 1.9%. During the past three years, the jobless rate among ACS members has hovered very close to just 1%. The highest rate ever, since ACS began its survey in 1971, was in 1972, when 3.2% of members were jobless but looking for work. As in the past, joblessness is appreciably higher among women members of ACS than for men. This year's survey, conducted by the ACS Office of Manpower Studies, finds that 3.0% of the women responding were unemployed, double the rate for men. Unemployment for ACS members, nevertheless, remains as in the past far below that for the labor force as a whole. In March, 9% of the U.S. work force was unemployed, a rate matching the post-World War II peak set in May 1975 and up from 7.3% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment for all professional and technical workers in March was 3.2%, compared to a rate of 2.7% in March 1981. Another sign of the weakening job market for U.S. chemists can be found in declining employment advertising. Although the volume of classified ads for job- openings carried by C&EN tends to fluctuate sharply from week to week, the trend during the past couple of months clearly is downward. In recent weeks, in fact, the volume of such ads has been lower, on average, than at any time in about five years, except for several weeks during the summer of 1980. D
