Chemical world This week finds—too large a dose and too short a time. Expense and scarcity of naloxone, which is produced by Endo Laboratories, Garden City, N.Y., are difficulties for investigators. Synthesis is from thebaine. Dr. Albert A. Kurland of Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Baltimore, cites difficulties getting enough drug to administer the 3000-mg. daily oral dose needed to provide 24-hour antagonism. Cyclazocine has the advantage of lower doses—4 to 6 mg. per day in Dr. Fink's work. If a more persistent form of naloxone can be developed, eventually "immunization" with precautionary antidote could last six months, he says. GRAPHITE:
Cheaper fiber
pounds per year concentrated in the U.S. aerospace industry (C&EN, Oct. 19, 1970, page 38). Great Lakes' move is designed to open up markets for graphite fibers, although the material has recently lost one market at least temporarily—jet engine rotor blades made of graphite fiber-epoxy composite. Failure of the composite material for the rotor blades in RollsRoyce's RB 211 engine, which the company had contracted to build for Lockheed Aircraft's TriStar airliner, led in large part to the financial collapse of Britain's prestigious aircraft engine and auto producer. Apparently, the graphite-epoxy rotor blades failed to pass tests designed to duplicate the effects of striking birds in flight. Switching to titanium for the blades added to engine weight and stretched out development time, as costs for the engine, originally set at $156 million, skyrocketed to more than $400 million.
Great Lakes Carbon has developed a new process for making continuous graphite tow that makes possible a selling price of $100 a pound in 100-pound lots. Currently, continuous tow and yarns sell for THE ENVIRONMENT: $230 to $250 a pound. The lowpriced product is aimed at creating Tougher posture new markets for graphite fiber, the Tough new federal regulations procompany said at the Society of the posed for chemicals that may be Plastics Industry's 26th annual con- hazardous to the environment stand ference in Washington, D.C. a good chance of being signed into Great Lakes says its new fiber is law. The President called for such truly continuous and is made from action in his wide-ranging 1971 encommercially available polyacrylo- vironmental message last week, nitrile. The company joins three and Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D.other producers of graphite contin- Me.), earlier introduced legislation uous tow—Union Carbide, Whitta- for premarket testing of substances. ker Morgan (60% Whittaker Corp., President Nixon says in outlining 40% Morgan Crucible), and a joint his environhiental program that "it venture of Hercules and Courtaulds. Celanese produces a continuous UPI graphite yarn. (Several other com- ! panies produce discontinuous fiber.) Great Lakes says its tow is a bundle of parallel fibers with 40,000 ends pec tow. Most companies' tow consists of much fewer fibers. Yarns have less than 1000 fibers per ply with the plies twisted one half turn per inch of length. Reaction to Great Lakes' development among other graphite fiber producers was that the tow price is significant and should have quite an impact on the fledgling composites business. Competitors voice some doubt, however, that Great Lakes' extra-thick tow could be processed into thin (5 mil) laminates, but Great Lakes says that flattening the tow makes such laminates possible. At present, about 15 graphite fiber producers worldwide are scrambling for a market of about 20,000 President Nixon 14 C&EN FEB. 15, 1971
I is essential that we take steps to prevent chemical substances from becoming environmental hazards." To do this, he would give the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to restrict the use or distribution of any substance he finds a hazard to human health or the environment. Mr. Nixon would also give the agency authority to prescribe minimum standard tests to be performed on substances. EPA would be authorized to stop the sale or use of any substance that violates the law, and would be able to seek injunctive relief when an imminent hazard to health or the environment is found. Sen. Muskie's proposals went to Congress just five days before Mr. Nixon's message. The Senator's legislation calls for "regulating the use of such dangerous substances at the point of manufacture and . . . seeking information about environmental effects before products are put on the market." The National Industrial Pollution Control Council, however, warned last week in a report to the President against enacting controls that would require chemicals and other potential pollutants to be proved harmless before they could be released into the environment. The Council says such controls, if widely applied, would have, the effect of preventing innovation and severely limiting competition. The President also wants a new registration procedure for pesticides that would designate a pesticide for "general use, restricted use, or use by permit only" (C&EN, Jan. 25, page 24). He would streamline procedures for canceling pesticide registrations and would authorize EPA to stop the sale or use of pesticides and to seize those that violate federal law. Besides new and tighter regulations, Mr. Nixon plans to curb pollution by taxing the pollutant. He tried last year to get a tax on lead additives used in gasoline, but the proposal foundered in the House Ways and Means Committee. This year he wants to tax sulfur oxides emissions from smokestacks and plans to resurrect the tax on lead additives. Money from the sulfur oxides tax would be plowed back into federal environmental programs with some of the money going to develop technology to reduce sulfur oxides emissions.
