first-quarter 1977. Stauffer chairman H. Barclay Morley attributes the fine first-quarter showing to substantial sales and earnings gains in three of the company's array of specialtyoriented businesses—agricultural, specialty chemicals, and food ingredients. For the chemical industry as a whole, weather and the coal strike to the contrary, volume held a vigorous pace through the quarter. U.S. production set a new all-time record except in basic, building block chemicals such as petrochemicals, which traditionally lag downstream progress by a few months. U.S. prices managed a small overall gain despite stiff market resistance and widespread discounting. This basic business strength spread into one especially important area, synthetic fibers, a product group that can have a lot of earnings leverage. Although fiber producers are still not happy with profit margins, their earnings made sharp gains over 1977, enough to make a key contribution to the industry total earnings gains. For example, at the largest fiber producer, Du Pont, worldwide fiber earnings shot up to 76 cents a share in first-quarter 1978 from just 14 cents a year earlier. At Celanese, fiber earnings rebounded to 40 cents a share from a loss of 15 cents. And at Allied Chemical, chairman John T. Connor credited fibers profits as one of the two main influences along with oil and gas profits in the company's more-than-doubled earnings so far this year. Allied's fibers made a handsome 18% pretax earnings on sales compared to 10% a year ago. At the other end of the spectrum, some commodity chemicals and the fertilizer product group had a difficult first quarter. Electrolytically produced chlorine is one important basic chemical drawing complaints from more than one producer. For example, Diamond Shamrock president W. H. Bricker says, "In electrochemicals, volume and price softness were experienced in the first quarter, and significant improvement in this area is not anticipated in the near term." Fertilizer was a disappointment for nearly all producers, who saw shipments held up by bad weather before some improvement in March. A leading producer, W. R. Grace, comments that the entire 1978 fertilizer season, which peaks in the spring, will be compressed. Despite these weak areas, the U.S. chemical industry is off to a healthier start in 1978 than generally foreseen. How long the upswing lasts, in view of rampant forecasts of a business slowdown later in the year, remains a question. D
Second-generation fuel < His being developed Second-generation fuel cells, designed to be more efficient and to use a wider range of fuels, are under development at several companies. General Electric has announced a $1.4 million contract from the Department of Energy to support laboratory-scale development work on the cells, which convert hydrocarbon fuels directly to electricity. GE also has a parallel, $400,000 contract from the Electric Power Research Institute to evaluate the economics of various fuel cell power system designs. The General Electric project is one of several parallel programs developing second-generation fuel cells. DOE also is supporting work on these cells at the Institute of Gas Technology and at Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. The Electric Power Research Institute, with DOE, is supporting research on the cells by United Technologies. Second-generation cells differ from earlier cells in three significant ways, explains Dr. Deb Chatterji, manager of General Electric's electrochemistry branch. They use molten carbonates of lithium and potassium as the electrolyte. Earlier cells used several different types of electrolytes, including phosphoric acid and ion exchange membranes. The new cells use metals
such as nickel for electrodes, rather than the much more expensive and more easily poisoned noble metals, such as platinum, used in first-generation cells. And the newer cells operate at much higher temperatures—about 650° C for the GE cells, compared with less than 200° C for most first-generation cells. Higher temperatures mean that exhaust gases from the fuel cell can be further utilized in power generation. The changes mean, potentially, at least, that the new cells likely will be more efficient than earlier ones. Chatterji estimates overall power plant efficiencies using the carbonate fuel cells of 45 to 50%, 10% higher than those expected from earlier fuel cells. The carbonate cells are expected to be able to run on a wider range of fuels, too, including coal-derived fuels. A carbonate electrolyte requires some carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide in the fuel mixture to operate properly, Chatterji explains, whereas older cells that had noble metal electrodes were poisoned by these gases. The DOE contract will support two years of component R&D for the new fuel cells, investigation of the amount of fuel contamination that can be tolerated, and development of mathematical models. D
Workplace hazards to reproduction assessed "Workers have the right to procreate healthy children," asserts Dr. Eula Bingham, assistant secretary of Labor and director of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. Her remark helped set the tone for a four-day workshop last week in Bethesda, Md., "on methodology for assessing reproductive hazards in the workplace." The workshop was sponsored by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health and by the Society for Occupational & Environmental Health. Experts from various medical disciplines, regulatory agencies, and several academic institutions where the bulk of research on in vitro testing of chemicals is taking place assembled to find a sensible approach to a problem that only recently has reared into public view. "Two years ago the society held a meeting on women and the workplace," said Dr. Peter F. Infante of NIOSH in his opening remarks. Then, the effort was made to get away from the historical emphasis of reproductive hazards being exclusively a problem for women and cancer hazards a problem for men. In the interval, studies that have
focused on cancer hazards for female workers in the asbestos and PVC industries were reported, he notes. Also, the adverse effects of the pesticide DBCP on the reproductive system of male workers came to light. And there are unconfirmed reports that similar problems affect male workers involved in mercury production. Suchfindingsare helping to change the historical emphasis, Infante notes. "The effects on reproduction of chemicals in the environment need to be assessed from the standpoint of both female and male exposure." But if that goal represents a new consensus, none has yet been worked out concerning methodology. For example, there's an apparent split between physicians, who argue that primary care and personal examination are the best means to uncover problems, and others, who would take standard epidemiologic approaches combined with animal model studies. To reconcile some of those differences, workshop participants are reviewing tests and survey questionnaires and are examining case studies of several agents already associated with adverse effects on human reproduction. D April 24, 1978 C&EN
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