ES&T EDITORIAL
Environmental Chemistry Comes of Age
T
he recent action of the American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training to allow baccalaureate-level certification in environmental chemistry will present a new opportunity for chemistry departments in the United States. Until now, few chemistry departments have developed courses that cover environmental chemistry, and even fewer have developed a two- or three-course sequence necessary for ACS certification. Given the importance of environmental chemistry to the nation and the level of student interest in the field, the lack of environmental chemistry tracks in American universities may surprise people unfamiliar with the chemistry profession or the evolution of environmental science. One reason is that environmental chemistry, especially during its emergent period in the 1960s and 1970s, had a significant descriptive component. This journal, for example, published many papers that described studies of contaminant levels in places such as a watershed, an estuary, the work place, or in the atmosphere. Often there was little more than statistical analysis of the data. Many other papers focused on the adaptation of existing measurement methods to the study of an environmental system. Sampling was often an important focus of these papers. On the other hand, during this period research in chemistry departments was becoming extraordinarily sophisticated. New tools were being employed for the study of the structure of matter and the reactivities of molecules, theoretical approaches were becoming increasingly successful in rationalizing these data, and in general, the science was progressing very rapidly. It is no wonder then that some chemists looked with curiosity and some disdain on the works of their colleagues in the environmental sciences. Unfortunately, this attitude has continued to some extent even though environmental chemistry has become increasingly sophisticated. Indeed, all along there was a core of environmental chemists using the very best methods to explore natural and engineered systems. Now, more and more of the works that ES&T reviews are acceptable even to the fundamental science community. Perhaps this is because the work is at a higher plane, perhaps it is because other chemists now 0013-936X/94/0927-169A$04.50/0 © 1994 American Chemical Society
realize that environmental systems are not like their own. They are m u c h "dirtier" (i.e., more complex), and their study and modeling requires different tools and levels of approximations than may be used to study purer systems. Increasingly, environmental chemists are working on structures, processes, and relationships on such a high plane that communication with their colleagues in chemistry departments is now possible on a level playing field. There is another factor bringing these groups together that cannot be ignored: student interest. More and more students from fine chemistry departments are choosing environmental chemistry programs for graduate study, and these programs are usually not in chemistry departments. They do so because they find environmental chemistry interesting and, in some cases, more socially relevant than their undergraduate chemistry study. Undoubtedly there are other reasons, but now environmental chemistry is ready to take its place in chemistry departments as a legitimate field of inquiry. How this will be done will differ from one university to another. Some will adopt it completely and will hire faculty to staff it. In other cases, existing faculty will migrate to this area and assume the teaching obligations. Some departments may develop working relationships with other programs on campuses where environmental chemists have congregated. In any case, the next few years will see the opportunity for new approaches to the presentation of environmental chemistry at the upper undergraduate level and in graduate programs, and n e w collaborative research between environmental and other chemists. It should be an interesting time.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 28, No. 4, 1994
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