In the run up to the recent Oscar awards ceremony, the environmental group Californians for a Healthy & Green Economy (CHANGE) held its ‘tongue-in-cheek ceremony, ‘The Toxies’, in Los Angeles for so-called ‘bad actor’ chemicals, featuring actors playing the various chemicals collecting the awards.

The event was staged at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, to promote and support California’s green chemistry initiative. The initiative originated in legislation passed in 2008, giving the state authority to create a comprehensive list of chemicals used and sold in California, and seeks to replace potentially dangerous chemicals with safe and sustainable alternatives.

‘A robust Green Chemistry program is essential if we are to ensure the products Californians use every day don’t contain toxics that can lead to cancer and other insidious diseases,’ said Mike Feuer, a member of California’s legislature and the principal author of part of the legislation behind the initiative.

‘These Bad Actor chemicals have deadly serious health impacts on all Californians. Consumers, workers, scientists and health professionals are all calling for a Green Chemistry program that delivers on its promise,’ said Pam Palitz from Environment California.

Amongst the awards presented at the ceremony, the Lifetime Achievement in Harm award, for example, went to the actor playing the metal lead, while, predictably given the current level of media exposure, Bisphenol A (BPA) collected the award for the Worst Breakthrough performance.

‘The Toxies awards ceremony and accompanying report on chemicals will highlight only a fraction of bad actor chemicals. We need a regulatory structure that can fast-track these high hazard chemicals such as BPA and phthalates,’ said Sandra Aronberg, environmental health ambassador with pressure group Physicians for Social Responsibility.

While lead is widely acknowledged as having significant health issues, the picture for Bisphenol A is not so clear. According to the European Information Centre on Bisphenol A, it has been studied, tested and safely used for over 50 years, adding that health authorities in Europe and around the world have confirmed and authorised the safe use of BPA and materials based on BPA such as polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins.

In addition, a new OECD guideline study concludes there are no effects from BPA on the nervous system. This new study, which exposed pregnant rodents to a range of BPA dietary doses from low to high, concluded that BPA had no effects on brain development or behaviour in their offspring that had been exposed to BPA in utero and throughout development.

Unfortunately all the scientific evidence in the world will never be accepted by those who are convinced about the justness of their cause. Once again the chemical industry finds itself running to catch up with such pressure groups.

Neil Eisberg - Editor

I am, I confess, a sucker for supermarket three-for-two offers. The more you buy the cheaper it gets – even if it means cramming more cans in the kitchen cupboards than Ikea ever intended. Bulk buying is definitely the way to get big discounts, and it doesn’t just apply to supermarket foods. Imagine then how powerful if we could harness the power of the internet to order all our preferred items en masse – a sort of global purchasing power online. Well now it seems that we can.

According to a recent report in the Financial Times, a ‘new wave’ of companies is now springing up in the US and Europe to negotiate discounts on everything from deluxe car washes to art gallery admissions and even skydiving. And the latest addition to the list of offerings obtainable is solar power. San Francisco-based start-up One Block off the Grid, or 1BOG, matches groups of US homeowners with solar installers offering group discounts of around 15%/home. The company is reported to take a flat referral fee from the installer, and 25 cents/W installed or about $1000/home.

‘In the [solar] industry, you have to do it in group fashion because that’s how you reach the tipping point where people realise solar is not only for rich environmentalists,’ 1BOG’s chief executive is quoted as saying in the FT.

The company has now signed up 600 homeowners for solar installations via campaigns targeted across 10 US cities. Last week, PR Newswire announced the firm’s latest campaign in Texas, in San Antonio, where homeowners are being encouraged to sign up free for a group discount rate of $4.80/DC watt – the lowest solar price offered to any 1BOG community. And in addition to 1BOG’s discount, San Antonio’s municipal utility CPS Energy provides rebates of around $3/AC watt as a further inducement for local homeowners to go solar.

Sadly, 1BOG is so far restricted to the US. Anyone considering the move to solar here in the UK may have to be content with the government’s new feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme due to come into effect on 1 April, and which is designed to incentivise consumers to adopt the technology by offering the money for unused energy fed to the grid on top of the savings in energy bills. A Department of Energy and Climate Change release estimates a typical household could make £900/year from power generation, in addition to a £140 reduction in energy bills. It is certainly something to think about for anyone with money to invest, especially given the current return on savings rates.

Sign on here if anyone is interested in clubbing together to try to get a group discount on the installation!

Cath O’Driscoll – Deputy Editor

Americans have rediscovered the food lessons the British took to heart during World War II – leftovers. Not that they really ever forgot them as ‘doggy bags’ and their more recent incarnation – the polystyrene clam-shell – have been a feature of US restaurant dining for many years. But as the American Chemistry Council (ACC) has recently reported: ‘In today’s cost-conscious economy, consumers are making choices to help them stretch every dollar.’ And where food is concerned this means reusing leftovers, but also eating smaller portions and cutting out on restaurant visits – so smaller doggy bags. They are also buying in bulk and trying not to create food waste.

So what has caused this sudden food interest at the ACC? A new survey, of course!

‘Nearly two-thirds of Americans indicate they have change their food consumption patterns because of the economy, and 80% of Americans say their families make a point of eating leftovers to save money, according to a recent survey conducted on behalf of Plastics Make It Possible, an initiative sponsored by the ACC’s plastics division. Other findings show that 72% of Americans pack lunch for themselves or their children, and 94% feel good when they store and reuse food rather than throwing it away.

‘I think what we are seeing today is very much a ‘back to basics’ approach when it comes to meal time,’ says Steve Russell, vice president of the ACC plastics division. ‘Proper storage of fresh food and leftovers goes a long way to helping ensure consumers get the most out of every meal.’

And how should they store this fresh and leftover food?

In air-tight plastic containers, of course.

According to the survey, 80% of those surveyed said that plastic containers and plastic wrap have made planning family meals easier. And those plastic bags and containers also make it easy to prepare and conveniently store an entire week’s worth of meals at once, says the ACC. And those same products of the chemical industry can help with portion control. ‘In fact, 56% of Americans say they are looking for products that help them practice portion control,’ says another part of the survey.

So nothing really is new, given that Tupperware, developed in 1946, and those infamous parties that date back to the early 1950s were a symbol of US technical advance in the kitchen. Tupperware is still with us and can now be purchased on the internet, although Germany has pipped the US at the post as the largest consumer of these ubiquitous containers.

So it is true: there is nothing new under the sun.

Neil Eisberg, Editor

UK food and drink industry experts gathered at Whitehall last week to discuss the problem that is currently troubling governments worldwide: how to ensure there will be enough food in coming decades to feed the planet’s burgeoning population. By 2050, it is estimated there will be 9bn people on the planet and farmers will need to increase agricultural productivity by upwards of 50% to cope not only with the growing number of mouths to be fed but also with the increased meat consumption among the swelling ranks of more affluent consumers in the developing world (C&I 2010, 1, 17).

Various solutions are being considered – from specially engineered and high yielding super crops designed to tolerate increasingly harsh conditions to precision farming methods geared to using the least inputs for greater gains and even the draconian step (for some) of adopting a more vegetarian diet.

One of the often under-reported aspects of the debate, however, is the no small matter of food waste, according to Joanne Denney Finch, chief executive of IGD, speaking at the Whitehall event. Food waste currently accounts for almost half of global food production, Denney pointed out: eliminating it would effectively double food production. Western nations are not the only ones guilty of accumulating vast amounts of food waste – although consumers here have no excuses – but the problem is arguably even more acute in the developing world, where inefficient methods of harvesting, poor infrastructure and storage facilities can lead to losses of upwards of 30% for some crops.

With 1 billion people on the planet (16% of the total population) currently failing to meet their minimum daily caloric intake, food security is already a major issue in many of the world’s poorest economies. ‘If the world really wanted to solve world hunger, wouldn’t we have done it already?’ asked David Frabotta, writing in a recent issue of Farm Chemicals International (November 2009, p 26). Building more roads and other infrastructure, Frabotta argued, would have a real and lasting impact in reducing world hunger, where all the previous aid efforts have so far miserably failed.

Plastic packaging meanwhile, is another often under-recognised weapon in the war on food waste, argues Dick Searle, chief executive of The Packaging Federation. The UK government-backed Food 2030 report contained just one mention of food packaging on page 16, Seale pointed out – and then only a statement about the need to reduce unnecessary packaging. However, modified atmosphere packaging can extend the shelf life of meat – one of the biggest contributors to the food industry’s carbon footprint – from two days to up to two weeks. As the old saying goes, waste not, want not!

Cath O’Driscoll, Deputy editor

Are you a denier or a doubter? Uninterested or engaged? These are the four categories of people identified in a survey carried out Italy and the UK as having views on climate change (I. Lorenzoni and M. Hulme, Public Understanding of Science, 2009, 18, 383). The researchers also add that for most people in Europe, climate change is distant from their lives.

And now with the latest revelations about the IPCC and the activities of its members, public disinterest is only likely to increase.

Over the past couple of months we have endured so-called ClimateGate, in which an exchange of e-mails appeared to suggest that data were being fitted to theory rather than the other way around; the lack of significant outcomes from the Copenhagen conference in December; and more recently, the discovery that the suggestion of a rapid disappearance of Himalayan glaciers was never investigated or checked but accepted as face value from a single report in a popular science magazine, resulting in what has been dubbed GlacierGate, and calls for the resignation of the IPCC chairman. Some commentators have even gone as far as saying that the IPCC may itself actually be in a state of meltdown.

Suggestions have also returned that, rather than global warming, we might be subject to increasing cold as a result of climate change – encouraged of course by the recent period of extremely cold weather across the northern hemisphere. Against this are reports from US National Aeronautical & Space Administration saying that the last decade was the warmest while the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has reported ocean surface temperatures were the second highest on record in December 2009. The plot thickens, along with sea ice at the Antarctic, according to the Norwegian Polar Institute, which has found that the temperature of the sea water under the East Antarctic ice shelf shows no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw due to global warming.

One key factor must be the politicisation of the climate change debate – especially with the general public’s lack of interest in politics generally. Most people appear to feel that it doesn’t matter what they think, the politicians will do what they want without any consideration of other suggestions.

One thing that is certain is that over the last few years C&I readers wrote more letters to the editor on climate change than any over topic. Over the last year, however, the letters have disappeared, reflecting perhaps the views mentioned at the beginning of these comments.

So what do you think now? Is the IPCC totally discredited? Should there be a new look at the science, without interference from the politicians? And are you a denier or just disinterested or are you engaged or a doubter? Post your answers here.

Neil Eisberg - Editor

Trying to get an independent comment on a news story these days is like pulling teeth. You might think the relevant sector organisations and experts would be glad to flex their intellectual muscle, to gain a bit of publicity for their cause or even just to see their name in print. After all, what we journalists generally want is just a simple two or three line statement on whether a particular press release has any merit: is this particular much-vaunted technology, research discovery or product development just more of the usual hype or does it have some real world value?

Sadly, it seems that trying to make sense of it all is becoming ever harder. No one wants to put themselves on the line anymore, reluctant to go on the record to say anything but the blandest of statements, let alone - heaven forbid - be willing to express their own personal opinion. Maybe it has something to do with the current socio-political climate. In these days of political correctness, who would dare to step out of line for fear of being castigated, ridiculed or, even worse in these difficult economic times, sacked.

A case in point was a response from one of the several organisations I approached last week concerning a story on animal testing, which initially remarked rather mysteriously that the ‘story doesn’t seem to have any legs’. At least, however, someone did respond: the organisation at the centre of the allegations has yet to get back to me after repeated emails, telephone messages and, in desperation, deadline extensions.

Admittedly, journalists suffer from something of a poor reputation in general. Some of this is certainly deserved, but in my experience in the science media, what most of us are really seeking is merely the truth. To do an honest reportage, we need to be acquainted with the facts from all sides – and there is usually more than one angle for every story.

The real danger, of course, is that all of the stories we write will be churned out like fodder – rehashed press releases or undercover advertorials espousing a particular company cause and not subject to any kind of serious scrutiny - search online and you’ll find plenty of such stories. Is this the standard of journalism we should all come to expect in the future? It would certainly make life a lot easier – if not nearly so interesting.

Cath O’Driscoll – Deputy Editor

I finally threw out the traditional chemistry set we bought my then ten-year-old nephew a couple of birthday’s ago just last week. After a couple of spectacularly unspectacular experiments to produce hydrogen by adding Mg to dilute HCl or relight a glowing splint with oxygen, it had sat for months gathering dust on a shelf at the back of the garden shed. The final nail in the coffin came on reading the article Whizz, bang, fizz… in the Christmas issue of C&I(2009, 24, 21), where one online educational toy retailer commented dismissively: ‘Chemistry sets sell to grandparents’. Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times; with so many more exciting computer games to compete against, adding a few chemicals into a test tube and watching a few bubbles emerge no longer holds the same attraction.

More worrying than the declining appeal of chemistry sets, however, is the alleged decline in practical hands on experience of chemistry in schools and universities. Already, according to University of Oxford microbiology professor Keith Gull, writing in the Evening Standard (7 January 2010), ‘the average UK undergraduate science experience has declined’, while the £2700 extra government funding for laboratory-based subjects is ‘totally inadequate’ to account for the higher costs of teaching science, he added. With the recently announced £533m cuts to UK university budgets, Gull warns that we are being drawn into an ever more Blue Peter-style ‘here’s one we did earlier’ approach to the teaching and learning of science, where lab demonstrations, group work, essays and electronic ‘virtual’ classes take the place of practical classes.

Chemistry school teachers would appear to agree, arguing that the modern obsession with health & safety is making it increasingly difficult to do ‘wow’ experiments without prescribed outcomes. While spectacular lecture demonstrations such as the phosphorus sun undoubtedly have their attractions, there’s no substitute for carrying out your own DIY experiments in the lab and learning from your successes - or more often failures.

There are plenty of ideas about experiments you might try with the kids at home, but my own personal favourite – and oft repeated with my niece and nephew especially as all the ingredients are readily available in the kitchen cupboard - is still the volcano. Simply add sodium bicarbonate to vinegar and stand back. Of course, it adds to the special effects if you have the right set: a colourful paper mache volcano. And be sure to add plenty of bicarb. Definitely not a reaction for grandparents.

Cath O’Driscoll - Deputy Editor

Welcome to C&I’s new Editor’s Blog – the first of a regular weekly posting of thoughts and comments on current topics relevant or related to chemistry and the chemical industry.

And also as this is the first posting of a new decade it is perhaps time to ring out the old and ring in the new – or is it?

And names are a particular case in point, particularly in the chemical industry. 2009 saw the final departure of ICI, which had already been dismembered and changed into a speciality chemical company from its petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals heyday. But ICI was not alone amongst the big names that have disappeared over the last few decades.

After all, looking back a couple of decades who remembers Cain and Sterling Chemicals some of the first of the privately owned chemical majors to be formed during the late 1980s by entrepreneur Gordon Cain? Cain acquired the poorly performing business units of other long established chemical concerns and by merging them turned them around into profitable concerns. Despite their disappearances, in some cases through purchase by the very same types of chemical majors that had sold the individual businesses in the first place, these companies set a trend that was followed by Jon Huntsman and more recently John Radcliffe who founded Ineos, now one of the largest chemical concerns in the world.

Those blessed with an elephantine memory will remember the name Hoechst as one of the German Big 3 chemical majors formed on the demise of IG Farben. Hoechst itself was split into various parts and merged with parts of other chemical and healthcare concerns. Hoechst’s pharma business joined those of French firm Roussel Uclaf and Marion Merrell Dow to become Hoechst Marion Roussel in 1999. The Hoechst name disappeared when the latter company merged with another famous French concern Rhône-Poulenc, another big name that has disappeared, to form Aventis in 1999. So the Hoechst name disappeared. Or did it?

Recently, the Hoechst name has resurfaced, this time in India as the brand name of a range of generic medicines produced by sanofi-aventis, formed in 2004 when Sanofi-Synthelabo merged with Aventis and now said to be the world’s fourth largest pharma major in terms of sales. The new Indian Hoechst business unit is expected to launch 15 products in key treatment areas including anti-infectives, couch, cold and allergy, gastrointestinal and pain.

So will there be any other revivals in 2010? Or will some other well-known names disappear as a result of the fall-out from the economic downturn?

Neil Eisberg - Editor