U.S. boxed in by stance on chemical arms The Bush Administration decision to retain the option of producing chemical weapons even after a multilateral treaty to ban such production went into force is continuing to stir confusion, concern, and opposition both within the U.S. and overseas. The basics of the new policy were confirmed last week at an American Association for the Advancement of Science colloquium on arms control by Sheila R. Buckley, multilateral negotiations director for the Defense Department. She explained that the U.S. may not have to exercise the option if it modernizes its chemical arsenal with an adequate supply of binary weapons before a treaty is concluded. Buckley admitted there has been no decision on how the new policy will be i m p l e m e n t e d . It w o u l d apparently call for a major revision of a text of a treaty that is being worked on at the 40-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. In recent years, general agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union has been instrumental in ac-
celerating progress toward a worldwide ban. This September at the United Nations, President Bush outlined an accelerated schedule for reduction of the current U.S. chemical arms stockpile. At that time he stated that the U.S. would retain a small chemical weapons arsenal until all nations capable of producing chemical weapons had signed a total-ban treaty. But he did not say that the U.S. would continue production after a treaty is concluded. The latest manifestation of Congressional disquiet over the Administration policy is a letter to Bush earlier this month from a bipartisan group of 16 Congressmen. They ask for a U.S. recommitment to a production ban and add that "ambiguity on this issue may seriously undermine the momentum of negotiations." Some of the same sentiments apparently have been quietly expressed to the Administration by representatives of many allied as well as nonaligned governments. Michael Hey lin
Oean air legislation tops Senate agenda "Clean air legislation will be the first order of business for the Senate when it reconvenes on Jan. 23," majority leader George Mitchell (D.-Me.) told his fellow Senators in the closing days of the first session of the 101st Congress. His announcement followed the Committee on Environment & Public Works' 15-to-l approval of a comprehensive rewrite of the nation's clean air law. The committee's bill is complex and is sure to be controversial. For example, it would require a 10 million ton reduction in emissions of sulfur dioxide and a 2 million ton reduction in nitrogen oxides, both acid rain precursors, from power plants by the year 2000 and it would place a nationwide cap on such emissions after 2000. Those provisions already have drawn fire from Senators from states that produce highsulfur coal or burn such coal in their power plants since the bill would require each state's utility customers to bear the cost of reducing emissions.
In contrast to the current law's approach to regulating chemical emissions on a case-by-case basis, the bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to control sources of some 200 toxic pollutants. The agency would issue standards by industry category requiring major sources to install "maximum available control technology" within seven years of the bill's enactment. Under the bill's provisions, no major source could cause more than a one-in-10,000 lifetime risk of cancer to the individual in the population who is most exposed to a pollutant or stream of pollutants. The committee bill would also require EPA to regulate, for the first time, small area sources of toxic air pollutants, such as gas stations and dry cleaners, and come up with regulations and programs, designed to prevent their sudden accidental release, for no fewer than 50 substances. Congress initially targeted 29 specific substances, but that was
pared to 26 after the committee deleted phosphoric acid, polyvinyl chloride, and sodium hydroxide from the list. The bill does differ in some important ways from the clean air package President Bush proposed in June (C&EN, June 19, page 5), so significant debate still lies ahead. Janice Long
Heininger wins ACS presidential election By a 2000-vote margin, S. Allen H e i n i n g e r has b e e n elected by American Chemical Society members to serve as the society's 1990 president-elect. Heininger, corporate vice president for resource planning at Monsanto in St. Louis, also will serve as ACS president in 1991 and as a member of the ACS Board of Directors from 1990 through 1992. Heininger, who has relatively little experience in ACS governance activities, received 13,733 votes, about 54% of the total, and his opponent Newman M. Bortnick received 11,779 votes, or 46% of the total. Bortnick, who is corporate research fellow at Rohm & Haas in Spring House, Pa., has substantial experience in ACS governance, including two full terms as directorat-large on the ACS Board from 1983 to 1988. The number of valid bal-
5. Allen Heininger November 27, 1989 C&EN
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