»chemicals«

After years of discussion and argument, the European Union adopted a new chemical legislation, called REACH which stands for Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals. The European Parliament approved it today. "Its effects will not be seen for a while. Companies will only have to register chemicals they make, import or use after the European Chemicals Central Agency starts up in Helsinki, Finland, in 2008. At first they will register only chemicals they make in quantities over 1000 tonnes a year, with quantities over a tonne by 2019," writes New Scientist (13.12.2006). The legislation is - in principle - a paradigm shift: Now companies have to prove that their chemical products are safe. Until now, governmental authorities had to investigate whether chemicals are hazardous.

The German NanoCare project is aimed at studying potential hazards for researchers and workers in nano fabs. Christian Schwägerl reports in FAZ (20.2.2006) that the nanoparticles are almost safe when immobilized inside products (and there are many products). But during production and in research the particles may pose some yet unknown threat to people. Hence, major industrial companies like BASF, Degussa, Bayer and several universities cooperate with the project.
In a later article, Stephan Finsterbusch reports from the Nano-Tech fair in Tokyo (FAZ, 24.2.2006). Some notes: In Germany some 550 companies work in the field of nanotech, they received 300 million euros subsidies. "And we are just at the beginning," says Harald Pielartzik, Bayer's nanotech lead researcher.

However, after of the heavy dispute over the EU commission's proposed Reach programme (to check and register chemicals, which has been watered down in favour of industrial demands) now a study by the Danish research and consultancy organisation DHI comes to the conclusion that by year 2017 annually 150-500 million euros will be saved in environmental costs when chemicals are surveyed according to the Reach programme. However, the chemical industry is sceptical and says that an environmental cost assessment (as done by DHI) is speculative, at best. The European chemical industry council CEFIC comments that the study didn't account for the ever strengthening environmental legislation and improving technologies. Wiebke Rögener adds in here piece for Süddeutsche Zeitung (2.3.2006) that taking into account health care costs from prevented treatments all will sum up to 30 billion euros in 30 years. Well, the industry reckons with costs of some two billion euros in a decade. That should make clear: A tight Reach scheme will bring the most benefits and savings.

The new European chemicals legislation REACH may lead to more animal trials to study potential hazards of those substances to humans. Michael Lange reports in Deutschlandfunk radio (13.12.2006) about scientists with an EU-run research center in Ispra, nothern Italy, who investigate alternatives to animal trials. A favourite test system is using stem cells of mice and humans to probe cancer causing effects of chemicals. As of now politicians mostly talked on money to invest to follow the registration, evaluation and authorisation (ie. REACH) process for new compounds. But it will also take a lot of time to complete these studies and - presumably - a lot of animals to get the data.

An interesting route to store hydrogen for automotive and other applications investigates Jan Lublinski for Deutschlandfunk radio (10.7.2006). The chemist Claus Hviid Christensen of the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen developed a method to convert hydrogen (H₂) into ammonia (NH₃) which is then fixed by the salt magnesium chloride. Later, for instance, inside a car the hydrogen may be released from the salt at 500 degrees Celsius. At present, Christensen is still optimistic that his method will have a loss in energy of only 35 percent. Others are skeptic. Because real-time fixation of hydrogen at a filling station takes too long, energetic salt block may be exchanged battery-like. First demonstrations are envisioned for wheel-chairs and forklifts.

Paul Crutzen, the Nobel laureate of 1995 in chemistry for unravelling the chemical mechanisms behind the ozone layer's destruction, initiates a heavy debate among climate scientists: In a forthcoming article of the journal Climate Change he proposes an artificial injection of sulphur into the upper atmosphere. Thus, sulphuric aerosols or particles will reflect sun light or lead to cloud formation to reflect the light. Climate will cool down. For Crutzen who is the very senior scientist in climate change his initiative is some kind of last resort. He doesn't believe politics to succeed in cutting greenhouse gases. Well, as Samiha Shafy reports in Der Spiegel (10.7.2006) Crutzen has critics in his community. On the one hand they say the climate system is too complex to consider a simple measure to fit for everything. Nobody knows exactly how the ten million tons of sulphur needed will behave in altitudes between ten and 50 kilometers. On the other hand you might think: well, there's something at hand to geo-engineer our climate, take it easy, relax and return to business as usual.

Robin McKie points out in the Guardian (22.1.2006) that indeed chemical products for foods or medicine are better known (regarding effects and side-effects) than natural products. Well, that's a very general hypothesis. But the image of chemical is bad, while that of natural remedies (they are also chemicals!) is good. British chemists and toxicologists highlight growing fears about people's misconceptions about chemicals in everyday life in a paper called Making Sense of Chemical Stories.

Andy Coglan investigates for New Scientist (22.4.2006) about the recent food scare with worrying high concentrations of acrylamide that broke four years ago. Two Swedish scientists made the case public. Well, the issue faded from the front pages of the media, but is still a concern of nutritionists and health policy people. And also industry is researching in procedures to decrease levels of acrylamide in their food products.

Katja Ebbecke writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung (24.3.2006) about different environmental standards and legislation in Europe. For instance, vegetables may treated in Spain with pesticides which are prohibited in Germany. Thus products come on German markets with traces of these compounds. But Spanish farmer may apply for trade exceptions due to European agreements. NGOs like Greenpeace state that these undermines health and consumer protection.

Claudia Deutsch writes in the NY Times (28.2.2006) how the chemical industry looks for alternatives of crude oil as a basis for their products. They look for processes using biomass like wood, straw or crops as a feedstock for producing principle chemical compounds. Actually, it's a challenging vision because the chemical industry has optimized processes in refineries for many decades. Substituting these processes today is not economical, and some companies even don't put research money into a field that may have no alternative in the coming decades.