News of the Week ly work" has given the field "a bad name," and has led most people to write it off as "a dead horse." He hopes the latest results, which he feels are much more convincing, will receive "the publicity they deserve." Ron Dagani
High Court allows local regulation of pesticides The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that local governments can regulate the use of pesticides, despite the fact that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), pesticides are regulated on a national basis by the Environmental Protection Agency, and by each of the 50 states. The federal EPA, Wisconsin's and other states' officials, and environmentalists all are pleased by the decision, which they had urged the court to adopt. The National Agricultural Chemicals Association is not pleased, however. As NACA president Jay J. Vroom puts it, "Adding approximately 80,000 new regulatory jurisdictions—the number of local governmental entities that exist nationwide—will not . . . reinforce pesticide safety." Just the opposite. He predicts the decision will result in widespread dilution of scientific and regulatory decision-making, disrupt U.S. agriculture, and hit consumers in the pocketbook at the supermarket. The case arose in 1985 out of adoption by the rural community of Casey, Wis., of an ordinance requiring a permit for, among other things, aerial application of any pesticide to private lands. When a local citizen was denied a permit for aerial spraying of a portion of his land, he sued on grounds the local ordinance was preempted by state and federal law. He won at every level but the Supreme Court. Justice Byron R. White, writing for the court, said FIFRA, while a comprehensive regulatory statute, "nowhere seeks to establish an affirmative permit scheme for the actual use of pesticides. It certainly does not equate registration and labeling 6
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requirements with a general approval to apply pesticides throughout the nation without regard to regional and local factors like climate, population, geography, and water supply. Whatever else FIFRA may supplant, it does not occupy the field of pesticide regulation in general or the area of local use permitting in particular." Steven K. Russell, an attorney who worked with NACA on the case, stresses the decision applies only to local regulation of use and sale of pesticides. It does not mean localities can regulate labeling or packaging, or require additional health studies. Further, he notes, the decision has very little, if any, application to other environmental regulations. Janice Long
Kuwaiti oil fires don't threaten global climate Although the hundreds of fires raging in Kuwait's oil fields are devastating the local area, the pollutants they are spewing forth are unlikely to spread far beyond the Persian Gulf region or to affect global climate. This finding was reported last week at a press conference in Washington, D.C., by scientists who have just returned from a month-long study of the smoke plumes. The scientists stress, however, that their results are preliminary and much data remain to be analyzed. Between May 16 and June 12, two research aircraft—one owned by the National Science Foundation and the other by the University of Washington—carried 27 scientists and their instruments into the roiling smoke for a total of 35 flights. The expedition was coordinated and funded by NSF, with additional funding from the Defense Nuclear Agency, the Department of Energy, and the National Geographic Society. "The oil wells have made a mess of Kuwait," says Alan R. Bandy, professor of chemistry at Drexel University in Philadelphia, who took part in the expedition. "The desert is black: It looks like asphalt." "The smoke is very bad," he tells
C&EN. "On one flight we were diverted right over the burning southern oil fields. The plane was so coated, we were concerned about seeing through the windshield. It was so absolutely black inside the aircraft we couldn't see to find the light switch. There was always an evil smell. We always had our gas masks on." Bandy used gas chromatography to measure volatile gases within the vast plumes. He and his coworkers found only very small amounts of poisonous hydrogen sulfide and carbonyl sulfide, an indication the gases rising from the wells are undergoing fairly complete combustion. Higher molecular weight oil components are not burning efficiently, however, and are being carried aloft bound in soot and oil droplets. Air samples from the plume have yet to be analyzed to identify and quantify the hydrocarbons present—including potentially carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons. In any case, the smoke is unlikely to reach the stratosphere, where it could affect global climate or the ozone layer, says project coleader Lawrence Radke of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The team did not observe smoke above 22,000 feet: The stratosphere begins at about 60,000 feet. Radke also points out that the smoke particles are hydrophilic, not hydrophobic as some scientists expected. That means they should easily be rained out, once the plumes encounter moist air over the ocean. Another environmental concern is sulfur dioxide spewing out of the burning wells, because it can oxidize to sulfuric acid, an acid rain component. Bandy found high concentrations—5 ppm—of sulfur dioxide close to the burning wells. Some 300 km downwind, however, the level drops to about 10 ppb, roughly the same as in Philadelphia. The team found little evidence sulfur dioxide was being converted to sulfuric acid in the region's extremely dry air. From their airborne measurements, the scientists calculate the fires are producing 1 million to 2 million tons of carbon dioxide per day—about 1% of total worldwide emissions. Pamela Zurer
