to young researchers that they are not wanted and are driving them from fields where their innovation, their skill, and their imagination are all crucially needed/' Wilson pointed out that many of those young researchers being dis couraged are women and underrepresented minorities. "Men still vastly outnumber women at the fac ulty level, but the situation is im proving year by year as people such as myself come through the pipeline and set up our own labs/' she said. "We are in an excellent position to affirm the position of women and minorities in science. We are com ing through the pipeline. Don't cut us off now." Pamela Zurer
Union launches plant safety campaign The Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers I n t e r n a t i o n a l U n i o n has launched a national program to es tablish a new set of reforms for chemical plant and refinery safety. The campaign was announced June 21 when the union introduced a videotape of last October's massive explosion at Phillips 66's polyethyl
ACS gets extension for response to Dialog suit The American Chemical Society last week obtained a 45-day extension, to Aug. 13, for submitting its initial re sponse to an antitrust suit by Dialog In formation Services (C&EN, June 25, page 4). In what ACS lawyers call a routine step for a complex, lengthy suit, the two sides agreed to add to the orig inal 20 days given for response in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Dia log—which has provided on-line ac cess since 1974 to several Chemical Abstracts Service databases as a lic ensee—alleges ACS has used its "mo nopoly power" over CAS databases to promote its own on-line services and "destroy competition" from Dialog and other vendors. ACS officers retort that "there is absolutely no truth" to the charges, and they are "confident that the court will rule in our favor."
ene plant in Pasadena, Tex., near Houston. In that accident, 23 work ers were killed, another 130 were in jured, and damage was estimated at about $750 million. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration fined Phillips $57 million for the accident, which in volved the escape of a process gas from a reaction vessel. OSHA is completing its own set of rules and guidelines for the industry as a re sult of that accident. The video consists of a series of scenes from last fall's explosion and commentaries by union members and persons in communities near the plant. It ends with a list of seven "demands" the union says are nec essary to ensure safety in the indus try. The seven demands are public disclosure of hazard and risk assess ments by industry and its insurers; worker inspection plus power to halt operations; worker right to refuse certain jobs believed to be needlessly dangerous; criminal ac tion against companies that punish w h i s t l e b l o w e r s ; laws r e q u i r i n g "stringent training, maintenance and operating procedures, honest record keeping, and state-of-the-art engineering design and process con trols"; insuring workers against loss of wages after destruction or closing of a facility; and requirements that contract w o r k e r s , w h o were in charge of maintaining the unit that exploded, be better trained. OCAW's package is comprehen sive a n d , as R i c h a r d L e o n a r d , OCAW's special projects director concedes, will take a lot of effort at union halls, in state houses, and in Washington. "The videotape," he says, "was basically a vehicle for de veloping a national lobby for the agenda. We found that the problems addressed in the video exist in plants all around the c o u n t r y . " OCAW has issued discussion guides and action plans to the locals and has distributed copies of the video to c o m m u n i t i e s in the vicinity of chemical plants. C h a r l e s C u l v e r , d i r e c t o r of OSHA's office of construction and engineering, says OSHA is moving ahead with various changes in en forcement procedures as a result of the accident. Its proposed new safe
ty rules, embracing all chemical pro cess plants, will be issued in the Federal Register within two months. A national conference will be called for in late August on the problems of chemical plant safety. The agency is also awaiting the final report pre pared by safety consultants on prob lems posed by contract employees. Early results published by OSHA say contract employees receive less safety training, sustain more inju ries, have higher turnover rates, work u n d e r less comprehensive safety and health protections or pol icies, and are routinely segregated from overall plant operations. Phillips, meanwhile, is contesting the OSHA citations and has said the accident was due to "an isolated de parture from a clearly established procedure, and not to any safety management failures." Several suits have been brought against the com pany as a result of the explosion. Wil Lepkowski
FDA approves Soviet drag for U.S. market The first Soviet drug to be licensed to and clinically developed by a U.S. firm has been given a green light by the U.S. Food & Drug Administra tion. FDA has approved the drug moricizine for marketing by Du Pont Pharmaceuticals to treat abnor mal rhythms in heart ventricles. The condition kills 300,000 Americans a year. Moricizine was discovered at the Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow. In the Soviet Union it has become the most widely used medi cation for serious arrhythmias. Du Pont will begin distributing it in September under the tradename Ethmozine. Du Pont first licensed moricizine
MHC0 2 CH 2 CH 3
O*
N
CH 2 CH 2 -N
Ο -HCI
Moricizine hydrochloride July 2, 1990 C&EN 5
News of the Week and began clinical trials in 1974. But cardiologists' a t t e n t i o n focused sharply on the compound in April 1989, when investigators studying prevention of cardiac death by suppressing ventricular arrhythmia reported a seeming excess of deaths among patients taking two other antiarrhythmia compounds, encainide and flecainide. Moricizine, included as a dark horse in this National Institutes of Health multicenter Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Test, has not shown this effect to date. Encainide, from Bristol Laboratories, and flecainide, from 3M Riker, continue to be marketed with printed warnings based on the CAST study, since they may still be lifesaving in severe cases of arrhythmia resistant to control by other agents. Du Pont spokesmen expect moricizine, meanwhile, to achieve significant penetration of the market for such so-called class I drugs, which now total 10. Only 7% of patients
have discontinued moricizine owing to side effects such as dizziness or stomach upset, compared with 30 to 50% with other class I agents. Moricizine, encainide, and flecainide all act by modulating electrical firing of cells in Purkinje fibers, which cause ventricles to contract and p u m p blood to the body. Moricizine is a IB agent, which slows the initial burst of electrical conduction and speeds up the resetting of cells to fire again. Encainide and flecainide are IC agents, which only slow the initial burst. But because they affect cell firing, all three drugs, including moricizine, have the potential not only to suppress but also to provoke arrhythmias. Du Pont will market moricizine worldwide except in the U.S.S.R. and its economic partner countries. The Soviet government will receive royalties of 4% of sales. Stephen Stinson
Siebe, a British-based manufacturer of industrial controls, has offered to acquire for $656 million Foxboro Co., the ailing Massachusetts-based manufacturer of process control e q u i p m e n t w i d e l y used in t h e chemical, pharmaceutical, and petroleum industries. Foxboro would operate as an independent subsidiary of Siebe and continue to be headquartered in Foxboro, Mass. Foxboro put itself up for sale at the beginning of this year. The financial performance of the company has lagged since 1982 when sales peaked at $603 million with a net p r o f i t of $34.8 m i l l i o n . Sales dropped as low as $504 million in 1987 when the company recorded a net loss of $31 million, excluding an extraordinary charge against earnings. Last year the company lost $4.6 million, against sales of $598 million. Last year's poor performance was attributed to cost overruns in develhowever, that "the successful con- oping a new series of process conclusion of the [Imhausen] case un- trol systems. Warranty costs associatderscores the importance of interna- ed with repairing already installed tional commitment to ending the systems further hurt the company. flow of dangerous materials to coun- Over 1989, total dept increased to tries like Libya that are engaged in $98.9 million from $90.5 million in chemical weapons manufacturing." 1988. The cost of sales—including R. Garrity Baker, director of inter- production, delivery, and installanational affairs for the Chemical tion expenses—last year rose 19% M a n u f a c t u r e r s Association, ap- from 1988 to $401 million, while plauds West Germany "for taking sales rose only 11%. However, Willis seriously the need to regulate trade says Foxboro is now in a position to in chemicals and for p u n i s h i n g benefit from its investments in dethose who are supplying chemicals veloping and servicing its latest proto countries that use them to make cess control series. weapons." Libya continues to deny Siebe, a producer of industrial and charges that the Rabta plant produc- environmental controls, compressed es chemical weapons. air products, specialized engineerThe West German government is ing products, and life-support prodstill investigating other firms sus- ucts, had sales of $2.35 billion for pected of aiding Libya in the con- the year ended March 31, up 11% struction of the Rabta plant. The from the previous year, and profits government has since tightened its before taxes of $310 million during laws regulating the export to Third the same period, up 19%. According World countries of chemicals and to Barrie Stephens, vice chairman other materials needed to build and chief executive officer, "We will chemical arms. And last month it benefit from combined technolopassed legislation raising the penal- gies, products, and distribution caties for illegal arms exports and ban- pabilities allowing us to increase our ning West Germans from work on activities in various segments of the chemical and biological weapons. controls business/' Marc Reisch Lois Ember
West German sentenced for Libyan plant role A West German businessman has been sentenced to five years in prison for helping Libya build a plant that the U.S. and West Germany allege is a chemical weapons production facility. Juergen HippenstielImhausen, 49, former manager of Imhausen-Chemie, was found guilty of tax evasion and violating West German export control laws by the Mannheim regional court. D u r i n g the trial H i p p e n s t i e l Imhausen assumed responsibility for the $150 million secret sale of a multipurpose chemical plant to Libya, and for not paying about $9.5 million in taxes on his profits. Previously, he had denied any involvement in the Libyan deal. He has never admitted that he knew the plant at Rabta would produce chemical weapons. He did say during the trial that he and an unnamed Libyan confidant had used a Hong Kong firm as a cover for exporting the plant parts and equipment. Recently the U.S. has claimed Libya is building additional chemical weapons production plants. A State Department spokesman, however, says he can offer "nothing specific" on these additional plants. He notes, 6
July 2, 1990 C&EN
ILK. firm offers $656 million for Foxboro
