PMA's Stetler No pharmacology textbook
questions it now raises are those raised in 1963 when the present drug ad rules were first proposed. PMA later withdrew its legal objections on the strength of letters of interpretation from the then Commissioner of Food and Drugs, George P. Larrick. PMA feels that FDA has changed its basic philosophy in recent years, adopting limitations not foreseen in 1963. "Accordingly, we are now raising a number of legal objections to the regulations which we had determined not to pursue in 1963."
Labor problems hurting Louisiana's industrial expansion State officials in Louisiana show a growing concern over the outlook for more industrial expansion in the state as conflicts between labor and management continue. A major development is the agreement by Enjay and Fluor to end a construction contract worth $34 million. Fluor was building a polyethylene plant for Enjay at a site six miles north of Baton Rouge. Other than to confirm termination of the contract, Enjay officials decline comment on the situation. A likely cause for calling off the project could be Fluor's inability to get construction work in high gear again because of difficulties with unions, particularly the Teamsters, in the Baton Rouge area. This work was shut down when other major construction projects were closed down by management last June. The shutdown followed directly from a jurisdictional dispute between electricians and teamsters at a job for Dow near Plaquemine, but spiraling labor costs were the underlying cause.
Early in August construction workers began to return to their jobs in the Baton Rouge area. The resumption of work followed several attempts at agreements to end jurisdictional and other disputes. The attempts have proved only partly successful. State officials estimate that about half of the construction workers employed in early June are now working. The lockout by construction companies with the approval of their customer companies halted work on about $250 million of new and expanded plants in the immediate Baton Rouge area. About 15,000 men were laid off. Other strikes have occurred in various parts of Louisiana this summer, such as around Lake Charles, but these were minor compared to the Baton Rouge situation and were not connected with it. In July, Gov. John J. McKeithen called a special session of the Louisiana legislature, which passed laws setting u p a commission to study possible crime connected to labor. The commission has just begun to work. Effects of the commission's work and of other efforts to bring more peace to labor-management relations in Louisiana may be a long time coming. Meanwhile, Enjay will likely finish the polyethylene plant using one of several alternatives open to it, such as acting as its own contractor and hiring construction labor directly. Enjay officials have not disclosed their next move. State officials expect other companies with construction in the area to complete new plants and expansions previously announced. But what worries these officials, particularly William T. Hackett, executive director of Louisiana's Department of Commerce and Industry, are reports that a given plant can be built in less time and for less money in other states. Such information moves rapidly to all management and is Disagreements between construction labor and management in the Baton Rouge, La., area could reduce future gains of Louisiana's growing investment in new plants and expansions. Year
Total investment (Millions of dollars)
1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967* 1967**
$157.2 246.2 311.3 485.2 496.6 397.4 500+
* Through July. * * Estimated. Source: Louisiana Department of Commerce and Industry
checked carefully by those concerned with site selection. If it proves accurate, then a drought of new plants might start in Louisiana. The state has added more than $2 billion in new construction in less than six years. Much of this, particularly chemical plants and oil refineries, has been located along the Mississippi River from slightly north of Baton Rouge to below New Orleans. A third or more is in the area under Baton Rouge labor jurisdiction.
Demand for chemists, chemical engineers remains high Disappointing earnings and a soft economy have apparently not led to any major decrease in efforts by chemical companies to hire chemists and chemical engineers. A C&EN spot check reveals that many companies in the industry—including Monsanto, Du Pont, Dow, American Cyanamid, Celanese, and Union Carbide—are still hiring at about the rate they had planned earlier. Also, it seems that any decrease in demand for such manpower next year will be minor. Many chemical companies are just beginning to compile figures from which they will set next year's hiring quotas. Any slowdown in hiring that may develop will amount to a return to normalcy after a period of record growth for the chemical industry, which generated an unprecedented demand for technical talent. "It's not so much that next year may be low, as it is that the past few years have been high," one company says. A C&EN survey last spring (C&EN, April 3, page 35) indicated that many companies had been unable to hire enough chemists and chemical engineers to fill their needs. This generally good outlook for job-seeking chemists and engineers carries over from the chemical industry to the construction industry—at least that segment of it oriented to chemical processing. Because of big backlogs of unfilled orders and because of the time required for process studies and for actual construction, the construction industry shouldn't feel an economic downturn until chemical companies themselves reflect a slowdown by ordering fewer plants. M. W. Kellogg says it is hiring as fast as it can, with hiring quotas as high as they have ever been. The company received orders for several very large plants during the first half of this year. But the company concurs with the popular opinion that this accelerating pace can't last forever. An example of the faith chemical companies have in long-range growth SEPT. 11, 1967 C&EN
21
vs. temporary economic setback comes from Monsanto. Early this year, Monsanto said it wanted to hire 300 new engineers last year but got only 200. This year, it went after 500. Since then, the company has seen its firsthalf profits fall about 13% below last year's mark. In spite of this Monsanto has not backed down from the hiring goal it set late last year. Hiring goals vary from year to year with much depending upon the relative successes of such things as campus recruiting. For example, Carbide had a very successful recruiting year last year. "This is probably the major factor determining our slightly lower needs for technical people this year," the company says. Comments by Celanese, Du Pont, and others indicate that hiring plans do not change rapidly with sudden fluctuations in earnings.
Chemical production data give insight into business slide Analysis of data on production of largevolume chemicals gives more understanding of the slowdown in business which began about a year ago and may be about over. The data, some just now available as preliminary numbers from the Tariff Commission, help confirm what some chemical marketers have known and said—chemicals for fibers have been both good and bad news, and other chemicals, particularly monomers, turned in some unexpected performances. The situation is generally quite clear for fiber materials, but less so for some other products, such as ethylene oxide and benzene. Different sales and market research people offer differing analyses for performances of some of the chemicals while ageeing on others. They agree that permanent-press, no-iron, and easy-care fabrics containing polyesters are the temporary darlings of the textile business. They also agree that the growth of these fabrics pushes the growth of p-xylene, roughly doubling it in the past year. p-Xylene production ran under 30 million pounds a month in June and July 1966, following a slight stumble. Production quickly recovered and grew to exceed 60 million«pounds in both May and June 1967. It may come close to 80 million pounds per month in December. This growth should have helped ethylene oxide, used to make the glycol, which, in turn, is made into an ester with terephthalic acid made from p-xylene. But ethylene oxide production reached a peak last fall and has slipped during the first half of 1967 to 2% below the total for the first half of 1966. 22 C&EN SEPT. 11, 1967
Benzene is another chemical whose production apparently moved counter to production of some derivatives. Benzene production showed continued growth since early 1966. First-half 1967 production was up 11% over the first half of 1966. But the soft-fiber market adversely affected cyclohexane, used to make nylon. The comparable six-month figures show a 6% decline for 1967 production vs. 1966. How important the rubber industry strike was to the nylon business seems difficult to assess, but it could have had an impact on cyclohexane. It certainly affected butadiene, with production in the first half of this year down 14.5% from the first half" of 1966. Styrene, less important (in terms of volume) to synthetic rubber and with major uses as a polymer, posted nearly a 7% gain for the first half of 1967. Styrene production reached a new monthly high of nearly 300 million pounds in May. Other monomers, and monomer ingredients, also had good production gains during the first half of 1967 except for acrylonitrile, off more than 17%. o-Xylene gained almost 20%, and propylene oxide more than 10%. o-Xylene production has moved up from 27 million pounds per month to above 33 million pounds; C&EN's trend calculations show it should top 36.5 million pounds per month by the end of the year. Propylene oxide production has also moved up and should exceed 68.5 million pounds* per month in December. The booming urethanes production accounts for much of the gain in propylene oxide production. Other chemicals posting some gains include methanol and formaldehyde. Methanol production has moved up steadily during the past 18 months; first-half total for 1967 is more than 15% higher than in 1966. Formaldehyde had a 6% gain during the first half of 1967.
Up, down, and in betweenGainers p-Xylene o-Xylene Methanol Losers Acrylonitrile Butadiene Cyclohexane Little change Ethylene oxide Phenol Toluene
75.0% 19.7 15.7
-17.6% -14.5 - 6.0
-
2.1% 1.5 4.3
* First six months of 1966 vs. first six months of 1967.
Amino acids existed more than 3 billion years ago Proof comes from NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., that amino acids existed more than 3 billion years ago. Harvard's Dr. J. William Schopf, who has just completed a summer research project at Ames, has indentured 22 amino acids in a sample of pre-Cambrian sedimentary rock that's at least 3.1 billion years old. The finding is significant on two counts. It points to the fact that amino acids were essential ingredients of life processes in early times, and that they had structures identical to those in existence today. The study is an outgrowth of findings that paleobotanists Schopf and Elso Barghoorn made recently at Harvard. They identified fossilized microorganisms in carbonaceous chert from the Fig Tree formation in Swaziland, South Africa. This formation, which gets its name from that of a town nearby, is pegged at 3.1 billion years or more by rubidium-strontium isotopic dating techniques. It is the oldest rock formation in which fossilized microorganisms have been found. In addition to Fig Tree chert, Dr. Schopf analyzed chert of more recent origin from two other locations. These also contain fossilized microorganisms. One, which comes from the Gunflint formation of Ontario, is about 2 billion years old. The other, from central Australia's Bitter Springs formation, dates from 1 billion years ago. In all three cases he has identified the same 22 amino acids: glycine, a-alanine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, leucine, valine, serine, threonine, isoleucine, proline, /^-alanine, /?-aminobutyric acid, phenylalanine, lysine, tyrosine, alloisoleucine, histidine, cysteic acid, arginine, methionine, y-aminobutyric acid, and a-aminobutyric acid. Chert is a cryptocrystalline quartz consisting of 99% or more silicon dioxide. Its extreme hardness and impermeability make contamination very unlikely, believes Ames' Dr. Keith Kvenvolden, who cooperated with Dr. Schopf on the NASA-sponsored rock analysis program. The check the identity of the amino acids extracted from the rock, Dr. Schopf converted them to their Ntrifluoroacetyl-N-butyl esters and ran a gas chromatographic analysis of the mixture. Dr. Kvenvolden believes that this is the first case in organic geochemistry where amino acids that have been elucidated by an amino acid analyzer have been confirmed by gas chromatography of their N-TFA derivatives.
