EDITOR'S PAGE
Comfort in the dark A. M. MacKinnon is president of Ciba-Geigy. He recently spoke at the New England Chemical Club. Following are excerpts from his text. The public's reaction to [the chemical] industry is c\ little like that [of a child frightened by a bad dream and afraid of the dark]. The dream of progress has become for many a nightmare of concern. As chemistry has advanced, we've left a lot of people behind in the dark—alone with their fear, afraid of what they don't understand. Man-made chemicals are frequently perceived to be life-threatening, not life-saving. The public fears chemicals and the people who make them. Our own blemishes—old waste disposal sites, groundwater contamination, sloppy testing by outside labs, chemical spills, and transportation accidents—haven't helped. Neither has our tendency to be sometimes less than candid and more than complex when confronted with these problems. Nor has the media helped. A media thc.v is frequently too ready to write and spread the alarm—even before it has all the facts. The result: more fear. More intense fear of man-made chemicals and the companies who develop, produce, and distribute them than ever before. Fear that is expressed in stronger support for environmental legislation and regulation; more powerful and better equipped environmental organizations; a poorer perception and lower credibility of the chemical industry. In short, the environment we have to do business in is polluted by fear. What can we do? First, respond. Like the parent who runs to the frightened child in the middle of the night, we have to come when called. The response that would probably mean the most today is to do something about the buried wastes, the abandoned dumps. I'm not sure that individual companies should take complete responsibility of a dump—or totally adopt a dump—as has sometimes been suggested. However, I am sure that all of us need to get involved in the cleanup. In the first place, the chemical industry is still the major source of expertise in dealing with chemicals. Whether in manufacturing, transporting, or disposing of chemicals, we've got the knowledge and we've got to volunteer this expertise. Going back to that child in the dark. After we respond and try to calm and soothe, it helps to turn on the light and show the child that the room is the same. There is nothing to fear. To cure its chemophobia, the public could also use someone to turn the light on and shine it into industry's corners to assure them there is nothing hiding there— nothing to fear unnecessarily. The type of reassurance the public needs isn't found in advertising slogans or press releases. Instead, it's found in public meetings and private conversations. It's found in a willingness to sit down—to listen and then to talk. To engage in dialogue. And some of the most important people to talk to are the leaders of the major environmental groups. With the firings and scandals, conflicts of interest, and dereliction of duties in the Administration's environmental agencies, the activist groups who warned about such things three years ago have been proven correct. They've got a track record and a cause; many more members and much bigger budgets—and a leadership that has learned that lobbying inside the halls of Congress or a state legislature can sometimes be even more effective than demonstrating outside the walls. They've learned that grassroots aren't just something to protect, but also to tap. The environmental activists groups are powerful groups wielding an influence we can't overlook. They are saying things we should listen to and perhaps respond to. And in turn they just might listen. •
Views expressed on this page are those of the author only and not necessarily those of ACS
December 19, 1983 C&EN
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