Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
rather reactionary quarters, in industry especially, was the superiority of
trial-and-error, Edisonian research to any other approach. This cluster of
assumptions affected the behavior in many ways.
In spite of the split between organic and physical chemists, a group
identity asserted itself that featured the same ambivalent aspects of the
culture as a whole. The combined strengths of organic and physical
chemists would enable them to explore, appropriate, rule over, and (in
some cases) settle vast territories beyond the horizon.
The victory of the As over the Bs, at the end of the 1960s, was con-
solidated by the polywater debacle, a story to be alluded to later, in con-
junction with some other episodes of lemmings-like collective behavior.
6.
The 1970s: Acquiring Environmental Consciousness
I have referred to the Minimata mercury intoxication already. Other ac-
cidents, due to chemical spills from industrial production, struck closer to
the homes of European and American chemists (Taube 1983). A book
published right at the beginning of the decade heralded the new environ-
mental concerns (Benarde 1970). Chronic pollution of the Rhine led
countries responsible for the effluents (France and Germany) and coun-
tries suffering from the toxic wastes (The Netherlands) to sign a treaty in
1976. In principle, it guaranteed a return to a healthier state of the water.
But that did not prevent industrial plants close to the Rhine from continu-
ing, or resuming to use, the river as a sewer. A disaster occurred during
the following decade, in 1986: a major dump in the Basel area of 30 tons
of fungicide and mercury wastes killed 500,000 fish. The U.S. saw a
number of similar episodes. For instance, Union Carbide was sentenced
in 1981 for having dumped nearly 100 cubic meters of carcinogenic
chemicals in a river in Virginia, the Kanhawa.
In 1974, Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina published their con-
clusion of an extremely careful study of atmospheric chemistry: chloro-
fluorocarbons, chemicals used in a number of applications (
e.g
., as re-
frigeration fluids and propellants in spray cans), when bombarded by
solar UV-rays in the upper atmosphere, released chlorine atoms, which in
