The Chemical World This Week
VINYL CHLORIDE NO MENACE NEAR PLANTS, EPA SAYS An Environmental Protection Agency survey of air for vinyl chloride near seven chemical complexes that make vinyl chloride or polyvinyl chloride has turned up "no scientific evidence to indicate that these emissions pose an imminent hazard to people living near these plants," EPA administrator Russell E. Train disclosed last week. However, Mr. Train told executives of 29 chemical companies summoned to Washington, D.C., by EPA for a session on the vinyl chloride-PVC problem that "prudence dictates that reasonable steps should be promptly taken to reduce vinyl chloride emissions to the lowest practical level." In all, this is rather cheering news for the chemical executives who no doubt entered the meeting braced for some unsettling development. Word that Mr. Train personally wanted to meet with the executives had prompted more than a few expressions of concern. Mr. Train told the chemical executives that although almost all of the samples collected in the EPA survey contained detectable levels of vinyl chloride, "more than 95% of the samples showed amounts of less than 1 p.p.m." EPA obtained a one-time high of 33 p.p.m. in a sample taken 0.2 mile from the B. F. Goodrich plant in Louisville, Ky., but Mr. Train added that this level was "unusual." Further, the average of samples at this site was in the range of 0.5 to 1 p.p.m. In all, EPA regional offices during May monitored 10 PVC plants owned by B. F. Goodrich, Borden, Goodyear, American Chemical, Uniroyal, Robintech, Stauffer Chemical, Diamond Shamrock, and TenTrain: lowest practical emissions
neco. Dow Chemical and American Chemical vinyl chloride plants also were monitored. Most of EPA's sampling for vinyl chloride in air was done within half a mile of the property lines of the plants, EPA says. In one instance, the agency found a vinyl chloride level of 3.4 p.p.m. 3 miles from a plant, but several readings averaged about 0.5 p.p.m. EPA also monitored plant water effluents and found that the levels varied with the degree of waste water treatment. The highest level of vinyl chloride EPA found in waste water was 20 p.p.m, but "more typically, levels of 2 to 3 p.p.m. were found." Levels of the chemical entrapped in sludge and other solid wastes from reactor kettles ranged up to 3000 p.p.m. Mr. Train stresses that these results of the EPA monitoring effort are preliminary and that much additional monitoring is needed. Even so, he says that at present, "There is no basis for considering that the levels of vinyl chloride detected in water discharges or in sludge, if handled properly, are hazardous to human health or to aquatic life." He says, "There is no currently available evidence to indicate that vinyl chloride is present in detectable levels in drinking water."
Chemists' role in new fibers may decrease The textile fiber industry of the future will be less dominated by the chemist in the laboratory whose new polymer discoveries often have led to development of new fiber markets in the past. Increasingly, it will be the consumer and the Government speaking for the consumer who will direct fiber research efforts by telling the manufacturer which properties they require in textiles. And the chemist, although still a key figure in fiber development, will find himself more involved in interdisciplinary efforts. Such is the very tentative forecast made by participants in a National Symposium of Fiber Frontiers held in Washington, D.C., last
week. Sponsored by the American Chemical Society's Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry and 13 other organizations, the symposium reflected the uncertainty that has overtaken the industry in the past year. Sudden realization that natural fibers and petrochemical feedstocks for synthetic fibers are in critically short supply has placed the industry at what one observer calls its most uncertain point in the past 15 years. Alleviating worldwide fiber shortages without misallocating limited agricultural and petroleum resources to create an oversupply of fibers will be a major challenge, says Braham Norwick of Norwick Corp. Limited resources and the great expense involved in promoting a new generic fiber probably mean that fewer completely new fibers will be developed in the future, Monsanto's John Lomartire and others predict. Instead, existing fibers will be modified, both chemically and by changes in processing, to provide the properties consumers are looking for. Future research will not be aimed at developing a single fiber for all uses but at matching the properties of fibers and fabrics with the requirements of the particular end uses they are designed for. The most obvious changes in the textile fiber industry probably will take place in textile processing technology, most participants believe. To boost productivity, the industry needs to produce yarns three to four times faster than can be achieved by the best methods now available, Dr. Mary E. Carter, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Southern Regional Research Center, told the symposium. To do this, totally new technologies must be developed, such as manipulation of fibers by controlled electric fields. In addition, many properties of a final fabric that were originally thought to be dependent solely on the chemical properties of its fibers can be changed by spinning, blending, and construction techniques that are just beginning to be developed. Dr. Giuliana C. Tesoro of Massachusetts Institute of Technology warns that textile chemists increasingly need training in areas outside chemistry. Finding solutions to problems such as textile flammability will require expertise in physics and engineering as well as in polymer chemistry, she explains.
