also says that increased emphasis will be put into developing and enforcing occupational health standards, and more attention given to integrated pest management techniques to reduce the use of chemical pesticides. The plan calls for stepped-up implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act. In his Congressional message the President pointed out that his fiscal year 1978 budget provides the Environmental Protection Agency with $29 million for TSCA activities, compared with the fiscal 1977 allowance of $7.4 million. Environmentalists have urged previously, however, that much more should be allotted to TSCA—in excess of $100 million—to get the job done. Although CEQ chairman Warren describes the Administration plan as "the sharpest shift in policy on environmental matters since Teddy Roosevelt," environmentalists generally fail to see any blinding flashes of insight in the package. Says Robert Rauch, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund, "I spent a year and a half at EPA. It will take a good bit more [money] than EPA currently has. Unless EPA gets some additional resources there will be little chance that [it will] attain those lofty goals [spelled out by the Administration]." • The message has obtained at best a lukewarm reception from industry. Some industrialists believe that the program is simply environmentally doctrinaire. But the fact that Carter did not call for new laws was some relief. The Manufacturing Chemists Association, for example, says it's "pleased to see that the message recognizes that goals can be achieved with existing laws." D
Politics curbs U.S.Soviet science links How are science exchanges going between the U.S. and the Soviet bloc? What are the benefits and costs to the U.S.? And what effects do Soviet bloc political. controls over science and mistreatment of some scientists have? Last week in Washington, D.C., hearings were held on these and other issues by the Commission on Security & Cooperation in Europe. The commission, composed of six Congressmen, six Senators, and three Administration officials, is probing compliance with the 1975 Helsinki accords, in which 33 European nations, the U.S., and Canada agreed on freer flow of people and ideas. Witnesses testified that scientific cooperation has widened in recent years. However, access by U.S. re-
searchers to essential research resources remains a fundamental problem in the Soviet bloc. There also are "frequent refusals" to allow bloc scientists to visit and attend conferences abroad. Indeed, notes Dr. Loren R. Graham, a specialist on Soviet science at Harvard and Columbia, "Soviet authorities attempt to use the exchange programs as a reward system for orthodox Soviet scientists," and bar nonconformists. Soviet repression of dissident scientists is increasingly a "serious obstacle," he adds. "Discrimination against Jewish scientists is a particularly sensitive issue" in the U.S. Moreover, political controls interfering with scientific work have increased in the U.S.S.R. in the past five or 10 years. U.S. scientists are growing impatient with all the restrictions, Graham stresses, and by some estimates 10% of U.S. scientists will neither go to the U.S.S.R. nor receive Soviet scientists in their labs. Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences has made two studies in this area. One, for Presidential science adviser Frank Press, will aid in considering renewal of the five-year U.S.-Soviet science exchange agreement, expiring this month. The second analyzes the NAS-Soviet Academy of Sciences program. a
Chemical union devises energy policy A chemical union's viewpoint has been add^d to the national energy debate. An energy policy has been worked out by the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers after a year of research and study and was approved this month by the union's international executive board. OCAW president Alvin F. Grospiron notes that the 200,000-member union represents 70,000 energy workers in the oil, gas, and nuclear industry in the U.S. and another 100,000 workers in the energy-consuming chemicals and allied products industries. "The energy positions that we have taken," he says, "are a reflection of what we have learned in dealing firsthand with the energy industries." In brief, OCAW, in its energy policy: • Reiterates the union's "steadfast" opposition to deregulation of crude oil and natural gas prices. • Calls for an indefinite extension of Title IV of the Energy Policy & Conservation Act of 1975, rather than replacement of existing oil entitle-
Grospiron: reflection of experience
ments by any new program at this time that would produce uncertainty and economic disorder in the oil industry. • Urges extension of federal regulation to intrastate natural gas. • Advocates an end to energy waste but opposes higher prices as a means of energy conservation. • Recommends appointment of an undersecretary of conservation within the proposed Department of Energy to pursue improvements in energy use. • Does not support the proposed legislation for vertical divestiture of the major oil companies. • Wants full disclosure of energy information. • Opposes foreign tax credits for multinational oil companies, suggesting per-barrel payments are royalties and therefore should be reported as business deductions. D
Spending for pollution control eases in 1977 This year is turning out to be a pause in the U.S. chemical industry's capital spending buildup to control pollution. Budgets for new installations in pollution control are showing the same flat trend evident this year in the industry's overall capital spending plans (C&EN, Feb. 28, page 11). Last week, the Commerce Department put out its annual pollutioncontrol budget survey of major industries. The results show a 2% drop in 1977 from 1976 planned by companies in Commerce's chemicals and allied products category. The slight decline in chemicals contrasts with an 8% gain in the all-manufacturing category. Even so, chemical companies will devote an above-average part of their May 30, 1977 C&EN
5
capital spending this year to pollution control. The chemical industry's pollution control budget of $749 million will be about 10% of the industry's total capital spending of $7.34 billion. For all manufacturing, pollution abatement funding of $4.74 billion this year will be 8% of total capital spending of $59.58 billion. Companies in both the chemical and all-manufacturing categories spent less on pollution control in 1976 than they were planning a year ago. The shortfall was 3% for chemicals and 2% for all manufacturing. Still, pollution control spending rose a notch from 1975,12% in chemicals. In all manufacturing, the figure was - 2 % . In 1974 and 1975, pollution control spending rose 14% and 46% in the chemical industry, and 16% and 22% in all manufacturing. The channels for pollution control funds differ considerably in the chemical industry from spending trends in all manufacturing. In all manufacturing, pollution control money is split about evenly between air and water areas, with a small additional amount for solid wastes. By contrast, the chemical industry strongly favors water pollution abatement in allocating its funds. The chemical industry's planned 1977 budget of $403 million for water pollution control is more than one third higher than the industry's air pollution control budget of $298 million and more than eight times the industry's $48 million effort in the solid waste area. •
Daddario resigns as Congress' OTA chief The father of the fledgling field of technology assessment, Emilio Q. Daddario, says he has reared a healthy child and as of July 1 is stepping down as head of Congress' Office of Technology Assessment. The agency came into being Nov. 1,1973, out of the groundwork dug by Daddario while he was chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research & Technology. There was little doubt at the time that he would be its director, even though the concept suffered considerable mutilation during Congressional debate. OTA, in effect, became little more than a joint committee, as opposed to the detached, apolitical entity it was meant to be. In a letter to OTA board chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.), Daddario said the first phase of OTA's evolution was now over and that he "always planned to leave OTA when that period of evolution had 6
C&ENMay30, 1977
Daddario: reared a healthy child
been reached." Rumors of Daddario's departure had been circulating for at least a year amid rumbles of morale problems and that OTA had not developed into a true assessment capability for Congress. Most studies, the criticism went, were simply that, rather than the early warning system on technology's consequences OTA supporters had envisaged. Still Daddario is given credit for taking a cautious tack with OTA in Congress, where jealousies are as rampant as in a czarist court, and in the process ensuring OTA's survival. He will leave behind a staff of 130, plus 21 consultants, and a budget currently of $10 million. OTA's fiscal 1978 request is for $9 million. The agency currently has 36 projects under way, including studies involving the Administration energy plan, nuclear proliferation, food processing technology, rice-blended foods, carcinogenic testing technology, future availability of materials imported by the U.S., ocean energy technologies, health of the scientific and technical enterprise, technology and world trade, and alternatives in U.S. food policy. •
Acrylonitrile linked to cancer in workers There is "serious suspicion" that acrylonitrile may be a human carcinogen, Du Pont said last week. According to Dr. Bruce W. Karrh, the company's medical director, preliminary epidemiological data indicate excess cancer incidence and mortality among workers exposed to acrylonitrile at the company's textile fibers plant in Camden, S.C. Du Pont has notified the Occupational Safety & Health Administration of its findings,
but at press time the agency had not yet commented on the Du Pont data or indicated what, if any, action it will take. Acrylonitrile's structural similarity to vinyl chloride prompted Du Pont's study of workers at the Camden plant, where workers had the longest history of exposure to the chemical. The study covered 470 males who began working in the plant's polymerization area between 1950 and 1955 and who are either still actively working for Du Pont or have retired. Through 1975,16 cases of cancer had developed among the workers, eight of whom had died. Based on national rates, only 6.9 cases of cancer would be expected among that many workers. Unlike vinyl chloride, which causes bladder cancers, acrylonitrile does not appear to be site-specific. Karrh says that among the 16 cancer cases were six lung cancers (1.5 expected), three colon cancers (0.5 expected), and one cancer each of seven other primary sites. He notes that all cases of cancer occurred in a group of workers having initial exposure during the startup of the plant in 1950-52. No cases of cancer were found in employees, accounting for about 25% of the total study group, first exposed in the 1953-55 period. But the minimum latency period for chemically induced cancers appears to be 20 years. Du Pont's data are the first evidence linking acrylonitrile to human cancers. Karrh cautions, however, that the study does not provide definitive evidence of the carcinogenicity of acrylonitrile in man, since the findings are preliminary. Nevertheless, Du Pont is taking steps to reduce exposure among its workers from the 20-ppm threshold exposure limit set by OSHA to 2 ppm. It is initiating a followup study of 484 workers exposed at Camden who have since left Du Pont's employment, and it is in the process of identifying and investigating workers exposed at its other plants. Acrylonitrile is an intermediate used primarily in producing acrylic fibers and synthetic plastics and rubbers. Consumption in the U.S. last year was 1.5 billion lb. There are three U.S. producers other than Du Pont— American Cyanamid, Monsanto, and Vistron. Monsanto is in the early stages of an epidemiological study of its own acrylonitrile workers. As yet, there is no overt evidence of cancer but there are not enough data to either confirm or contradict Du Pont's findings. Monsanto also is in the process of reducing exposure to acrylonitrile among its workers to the lowest practicable level. •
