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Brochure on eye care supplement annoys reader
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'ilMÎRM with Jeffrey C. Gee, Ph.D.
Q
During the Super Bowl, my buddy • CJ and I were discussing the sulfonation of Chevron alpha olefins to make alpha olefin sulfonates (AOS). CJ said that sulfonation only works for 1-tetradecene and 1-hexadecene, but I countered that alkyl chain length did not significantly affect the rate of alpha olefin reaction with S 0 3 . Who's right?
A
m
CJ has missed the mark on this one. • While much of the alpha olefin sulfonate produced today is made from blends of 1-tetradecene and 1-hexadecene, alpha olefins having other alkyl chain lengths will react rapidly with S 0 3 . m
In fact, Chevron has worked with Chemithon, a leading producer of sulfonation equipment, to demonstrate the commercial viability of producing AOS from a blend of alpha olefins having chain lengths from C 1 2 all the way up to C24This olefin blend sulfonated as easily as the traditional C , 4 / i 6 NAO blend, and free samples of the dried sodium salt are available from Chevron upon request. The carbon number distribution of this new blend is given below.
c#
12
wt% 27
14 21
16 17
18 13
20 10
22 7
24 5
If we can settle other disputes you and your friends are having about alpha olefin chemistry, please contact us.
Orville Lowe reports from Ventura, Calif., that last fall, at the end of a visit with his ophthalmologist, he was given a sample of a nonprescription dietary supplement and picked up the accompanying brochure on his way out. The product, called MaxiVision, is billed as a "Whole Body Supplement Targeting the Eye." As he read the brochure, Lowe says, he "became annoyed." It explains, for example, that "plant-derived minerals are microscopically small and therefore more easily absorbed and readily incorporated into cells compared to other minerals." Lowe recollected that absorption "occurs from solution, and mineral size has no bearing, although ease of solubility might." The brochure says MaxiVision "contains 20 mg of the following trace minerals." The list names 73 of them, including polonium, which led Lowe to exclaim, "I had been given a radioactive sample!" The polonium drove Lowe to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which opined that "little radioactivity was likely to be present, which I had anticipated anyway. Where would the manufacturer get polonium? From plant-derived minerals?" The FDA man asked for more data on MaxiVision and allowed that the agency would deal with the matter. The MaxiVision brochure strives mightily to say that the product will stave off age-related macular degeneration (AMD) without stepping over the legal limit on health claims for products not tested by FDA Lowe says two ophthalmologists told him a year ago that the value of vitamin/mineral supplements in slowing the progression of AMD was controversial; one of them was one who gave Lowe the MaxiVision in the first place. Lowe says he takes "such an ocular supplement, but not with enthusiasm. My sample of MaxiVision remains unopened. I have been wondering if the antioxidant vitamins wouldn't clash with the vitamin 0 that you reported on" (C&EN, Dec. 14, 1998, page 80).
Chevron
OS Chevron Chemical P.O. Box 3766, Houston, Texas 77253 TEL (713) 754-5107 • FAX (713) 754-2722 E-mail:
[email protected] ©1999 Chevron Chemical Company
CIRCLE 11 ON READER SERVICE CARD
9 6 APRIL 19,1999 C&EN
Ingenious mouse thwarts experimental apparatus During the American Physical Society meeting last month in Atlanta, an intrepid reporter from this magazine learned from Sherwood Rowland of the
by K. M. Reese University of California, Irvine, that he and Mario Molina of MIT had just been photographed for the June issue of Vanity Fair. (Rowland, Molina, and Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany, you will recall, shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995.) The encounter recalled a story that Rowland told another C&EN reporter more than 20 years ago about scientists he'd heard of who were studying the biochemistry of learning and memory in mice (C&EN, Nov. 11, 1974, page 40). These fellows planned to run the animals through an apparatus composed of two water-filled channels, or minicanals, joined at one end to form a V. At the point of the V was a platform that could be lowered into water, thus compelling the resident mouse to start swimming. At the far end of one channel was a second platform where the mouse could drag itself to safety; the other channel was water all the way. A mouse who swam up the channel with the platform at the other end would reach it and haul itself out. A mouse that picked the all-water channel would have to swim to the end, reverse course, and swim all the way back and up the other channel to safety. A mouse being tested would be dunked repeatedly until it started up the safety channel in, say, 90% of a given set of trials—that is, until it had learned the task. The scientists could then begin to test retention and so forth and various means of affecting it. The apparatus was instrumented so that it could be operated remotely. Signals would go off when the mouse was lowered into the water, when it reached the end of the all-water channel, and when it went ashore at the far end of the safety channel. The point here was to eliminate whatever biases the scientists might acquire by watching the performance in person. On one of the early runs, the group lowered a mouse into the water remotely and sat back to await developments. Nothing happened. They waited more than long enough for the mouse to swim up the wrong channel, reverse course, and swim to safety, but still were rewarded by dead silence. Finally, they went to have a look and found that the channels were too narrow. There was the mouse, still at the starting point and neck-deep in water, supporting itself by its elbows on the sides of the channel.
