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Issue 10
23rd
May 2011
C&I Magazine
C&I MagazineThe leading source of news and opinion in the arena of chemical technology
Cover Story
High performance supercomputing involving petascale machines
capable of performing 1015 calculations/second are transforming
how researchers operate in the lab, says Andrew Jones
News
Neil Sinclair,
23/05/2011
The ripples from Japan’s worst natural disaster have spread to the
world of global chemicals and pharmaceuticals, writes Neil Sinclair
Sarah Houlton,
23/05/2011
Pressure groups ChemSec and
ClientEarth are taking legal action
against the European Chemicals
Agency (ECHA), in an attempt to
force the agency to release the names
of companies that produce some
of the most hazardous chemicals.
Features
Cath O'Driscoll,
23/05/2011
Improved energy management in cars can lead to significant
savings in fuel and increased driving range, Cath O’Driscoll reports
Neil Eisberg,
23/05/2011
When is a biopolymer really a biopolymer? Even amongst producers there is
widespread confusion about the term and what it means, Neil Eisberg reports
Editor's Blog
Dose of poison
Agree or disagree? Post your views below
According to Paracelsus, ‘The dose makes the poison’; in other words, what matters is not so much the substance but how much of it is present. In modern usage, international regulators and scientific authorities have interpreted this by assigning to different chemicals so-called threshold values related to their observed or projected toxicities, below which doses we are led to believe they may be safely used and applied. LD50 values, at which concentration of substance half of the cells in a population will die, are another measure adopted to instil confidence that we have some handle on safety.
But can we be sure that staying below the recommended levels will keep us safe from adverse effects? With so many chemicals now circulating in the environment, is it wise to simply assume we are safe below a pre-assigned dose of any one of these without taking account of potential interactions with others?