THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK
Some companies, on the other hand, faced the week wary of protests. Members of HOPE (Health Organization to Preserve the Environment) scheduled a demonstration at Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago. The organization, comprised of medical, dental, and nursing students from University of Illinois medical school, selected Abbott as its target because the Illinois attorney general is suing the company for pollution violations. Abbott says it isn't guilty of the charges. Kaiser Industries in Oakland, Calif., also expected picketing. In other developments, ACS in Washington, D.C., held two days of teach-ins. Richard A. Carpenter, chief of the environmental policy division of the Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, spoke about Congressional response to antipollution legislation. Local sections of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers supplied many speakers to teach-ins across the country. Several companies as well as other groups seized Earth Day as a convenient time to introduce new programs, in moves that Denis Hayes characterizes as tokenism. Eli Lilly announced that it will open its Clinton, Ind., laboratories using a new pollution control system (page 12). American Cyanamid president Clifford D. Siverd said Cyanamid will spend an additional $2.5 million on pollution control for its plants within the next few weeks. Chicago's Commonwealth Edison formed an environmental advisory council comprised of doctors, educators, and scientists. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller officially established a New York environment department. The National Science Foundation said it plans to start a program to support research initiated, planned, and directed by students and aimed at solving problems in the general area of environment. Called the Student Originated Studies, the program's funding is still uncertain. The next several months will show whether Earth Day was the high-water mark of another short-lived protest movement or the manifestation of a new political coalition that must be reckoned with for years to come. Denis Hayes says that his group and other local groups will continue after Earth Week is over. Environmental Action relinquished its tax-exempt status last week, so that it can be politically active. Says Mr. Hayes, "We intend to become far more aggressive." As illustrations of the tactics his group will employ, he mentions stock proxy fights, lawsuits, demonstrations, research, and partisan political activity. 12 C&EN APRIL 27, 1970
DRUG ABUSE:
Mandate for Industry There is no evidence that drug abuse is currently a problem in industry, but it almost certainly will be if prevailing patterns of increasing drug use continue, Dr. Donald B. Louria told a symposium on drug abuse at the American industrial health conference in Chicago. In a rare move to lock the bam door before the horse is stolen—or in this case before the use of horse ( heroin ), LSD, marijuana, and other drugs become a problem in industry—Dr. Louria told the assembled industrial physicians and nurses that industry is sure to be affected as drug use spreads and stressed that companies should develop strategies to minimize it. The chronology of drug abuse is moving into both the older and younger age groups, Dr. Louria says, from its starting point among 18- to 25-year-olds. Now, drug abuse among people in their late twenties, thirties, and forties is increasingly common. As more older people turn on, Dr. Louria notes, industry is sure to be increasingly affected. Citing hedonism, social unrest, and disrespect for law as important contributing factors, Dr. Louria estimates that there are 8 million drug users in the U.S. today. The problem is far more serious than advocates of legalizing marijuana use would have the public believe, Dr. Louria adds. For example, most LSD users began with marijuana, he says, with one study indicating that 82r/c of daily marijuana smokers move up to LSD. When marijuana was used once a week or once a month, the incidence of LSD use was 49% and 22%, respectively. In dealing with drug users on the job, companies may need a variety of approaches depending on the background of the employee in question and frequency of use. All drugs impair reactions and can lead to accidents, Dr. Louria says, and every industry has the right to dismiss drug users. As with alcoholism, however, special consideration for those undergoing rehabilitation may be desirable. Treatment with methadone—the addictive but relatively harmless heroin substitute that FDA is about to clear for prescription by physicians—will fail, Dr. Louria says, unless incorporated in a closely controlled program and administered to highly motivated volunteers. The British have tried methadone and are dropping it, he notes, just as the U.S. seems intent on repeating the unsuccessful experiment. Industry has a moral mandate to get young people committed to the problems that face society, Dr. Louria says.
Protest is not commitment, he notes, but unless the "stupid polemics" of the drug debate are dropped and viable alternatives to drug use offered, hedonism may soon triumph over value> that stress productivity and goals.
ENVIRONMENT:
Maximum Treatment In perhaps the most far-reaching commitment to a clean environment yet made by a U.S. industrial concern Eli Lilly and Co. has pledged itself to provide "maximum—not just acceptablecontrol of wastes/' In the first step in its corporate wide goal, Lilly will open its Clinton, Ind., laboratories in July equipped with a pollution control system that will render effluent 99.4' pure before it is discharged to the nearby Wabash River. At low flow on the Wabash, Lilly will be adding only 0.3 p.p.m. biological oxygen demand (BOD) to the river, and at average flow this will drop to 0.5 p.p.m. To produce these results while avoiding air and thermal pollution as well, the Clinton plant will feature six pollution control subsystems that will be constantly monitored at a central control facility. In addition seven automatic tests will be run on liquid effluents with read-out from these tests to be made available to Indiana pollution authorities. By installing multiple pollution control facilities, Lilly will isolate wastes as concentrates at their sources, thereby avoiding the complex problem of treating diluted mixed wastes at the end of the line. The subsystems at the Clinton plant, which will produce fermentation products including antibiotics, industrial chemicals, and possibly agricultural chemicals, will include: • Two incinerator systems for burning mixed concentrated organic and
Lilly's cooling towers No thermal pollution for Wabash
inorganic wastes. Combustion gases will be scrubbed to remove fly ash and then exhausted via a 75-foot stack. • A dehydration process for concentrating and incinerating waste solids from high-BOD stream. This process will generate steam to power the waste treatment complex. • An enclosed rotary-kiln incinerator for burning trash and rubbish. • Special evaporation and stripping columns in the solvent-recovery areas of the plant. • A sanitary treatment plant capable of handling wastes for a population of 1000. (The plant will initially employ 300.) Lilly president Burton E. Beck estimates that the total system will cost $8 million to $10 million to install and will add another $1.5 million to annual operating cost. "In our opinion/' Mr. Beck adds, "industry must accept a greater . . . responsibility for disposing of [its] wastes." Although no plans to make Lilly's technology available to other companies have been disclosed, Mr. Beck says that the Clinton plant may help point the way for other industries to a new approach—that of the "closed-loop"—for fighting pollution.
MANGANESE:
Green Bay Source Pellets containing up to 25% manganese found under Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, may open the door to a major domestic supply of the metal as well as other commercially important metals. A deposit of the pellets has been found by Dr. J. Robert Moore and associates at the University of Wisconsin with aid from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mesquite. U.S. dependence on foreign sources of manganese, which now account
for about 80% of our supply, could be reduced by the Green Bay and other deposits that may exist in the Great Lakes, Dr. Moore predicts. Some 600 grab samples and cores collected in Green Bay have been analyzed by neutron activation in Dr. Moore's work. The manganese occurs combined with iron and other ele ments in pellets whose diameters range between 0.1 and 0.6 inch. Manga nese content in the pellets is between V/( and 25% with the average of the samples just over 107i. Similar com positions are found in some relatively small quantities of fine-grain material. In a few parts of Green Bay, about 25 square miles of 200 square miles which Dr. Moore's group explored, high concentrations of copper, 0.5 to 2%, also have been found. Unex pectedly high concentrations of ar6 senic-4.7 Χ 10" to 9.5 X 10-*% have been found, Dr. Moore disclosed at last week's offshore technology con ference in Houston, Tex. The sample pellets obtained so far have large surface areas, Dr. Moore found. A promising use for them could be as oxidation catalysts. However, Dr. Moore emphasized that some method would have to be devised for mining the pellets from the Green Bay floor without increasing the pollution that is now there. Problems of a legal and political nature, such as obtaining permits to prospect the area in the lakes from states that border them, will be far greater than the sci entific and technical problems, he said. The potential quantity of pellets available could be large. The Wiscon sin group's research indicates that the pellets are forming as an in situ chem ical precipitate. Where similar envi ronmental conditions are available elsewhere in the Great Lakes, other deposits might be found.
ACS PUBS:
New Ad Company Pellets and other samples found in Green Bay contain these metals Range by weight Metal
nonpartitioned
Manganese
0.08-25.5%
Copper
0.0-0.90%
of
samp
6
Arsenic
4.7X10" -9.5X10-
Zirconium
0.0-0.09%
Iron
0.25-41.9%
Silver
0.0-0.012%
Tin
0.0-0.04%
Nickel
0.0-0.02%
mmËtmmmmm mmmÊmeÊËmmirwh,*** Φ nu m
Century Communications Corp. will become the advertising sales represent ative for the publications of ACS on June 1, 1970, according to Dr. Fred erick T. Wall, ACS Executive Direc tor. The action follows a mutual agreement between ACS and Reinhold Publishing Corp., which currently handles advertising sales for ACS, to terminate their association. "Wre elected to make this change," says Dr. Wall, "because of changing Society needs and an altered compet itive situation." Philip H. Hubbard, Jr., president of Rein hold, a subsidiary of Litton Pub lications, comments that "while we re gret the necessity to end our long standing relationship with the Society,
Blanchard (left) and Koerwer
New sales effort
we feel that this move will enable Reinhold to concentrate its efforts and resources on publishing operations over which it has full editorial and ad vertising sales control." Century Communications, located in Norwalk, Conn., is a new corporation recently formed with Edward P. Blan chard as president and chief executive officer, and Thomas N. J. Koerwer as executive vice president. Mr. Blan chard previously had been sales man ager for Aviation Week and for Forbes Magazine, and most recently was pres ident of Blanchard-Short Associates. Mr. Koerwer previously had been vice president of Reinhold Publishing Corp. and recently president of Ken yon Hoag Associates. The publications of ACS, number ing 21, include Cù-EN, Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Science à* Technology, Accounts of Chemical Research, Biochemistry, Chemical Reviews, Chemistry, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, IùEC Process Design and Development, lirEC Fundamentals, I&EC Product Research and Development, Inorganic Chemistry, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Chemical Documentation, Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Laboratory Guide to Instruments, Equipment, and Chemicals, Macromolecides, The Journal of Organic Chemistry, and The Journal of Physical Chemistry. A new publication, Chemical Technology, will be added January 1971.
PRICE FIXING:
Reversed Decision "We are engaged in no settlement discussions beyond those announced, and we have no plans to engage in other such discussions." So said Pfizer president John J. Powers, turning jubilantly bullish alter a U.S. Court of Appeals 11 days ago overturned Pfizer's 1967 conviction on charges of price fixing of antibiotics and sent the A P R I L 27, 1970 C & E N
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