Document XOrER6nO07qxEeYNRY2zMNkOR

f ^ ESScT J CURRENTS r ec eiv ed /\PB 2 2 1985 M.MMAUAN FEDERAL EPA's fiscal year 1986 operating budget will be $1,367 billion, which is $40.4 million more than that for fiscal year 1985. if President Reagan has his way with Congress. Under the terms of the administration's budget. Superfund will rise by 45 % to $900 million and no Superfund money will come from general reve nues. Rather, taxes on chemical in gredients could be increased, and a waste generation tax could be im posed. Also, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act funding will rise by $54 million to $247 million; water pollution control funding will fall from $248 million to $239 million. Funding for air pollution control will be $236.1 million, a $300,000 in crease from fiscal year 1985. Pesti cides and toxic substances control binding may rise 2% and 13%, re spectively, from the current $67.6 million for pesticides and S82.9 million for toxic substances. The research and development outlay will increase by $19.4 million to $324.8 million, with a significant increase for the study of acid rain. Tbe Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) may be granted a reprieve from the budget axe (ES&T, February 1985, p. 103). The admin istration is asking Congress for $705,000 for fiscal year 1986, which is the same as the 1985 appropria tion. However, this figure could be cut in half for fiscal year 1987. Also, the administration's proposal calls for the Office of Environmental Quality, which oversees an environmental management fund, to give CEQ $1.06 million. This sum goes to CEQ outside the-channel of congres sional appropriations. The 13 staff positions at CEQ, the same number provided for in the fiscal year 1985 budget, will be maintained. Rules for Superfund site cleanup could be waived under certain circumstances. Under the Superfund National Contingency Han. EPA proposes that federal cleanup stan dards be waived if a site's location makes it technologically impossible to meet them. Waivers also could be granted if cleanup is done to stabilize conditions at a site, if achieving standards could cause unacceptable effects on human health or the envi ronment, if the cost is excessive in view of other demands on the fund, or if there are certain "overriding public interest concerns" that call for selecting a noncomplying remedy. EPA also proposes ways to make cleanups easier and decrease the amount of time and money spent on studying solutions to routine site management problems. DingeilSees five-year renewal Rep. John Dingeil (D-Mkh.) ex pects that Superfund will be ex tended for five years. The law is due to expire Sept. 30. Calling the oneyear extension that some have pro posed "not for real," Dingeil said a five-year extension, "with a proper and equitable tax, would be politi cally saleable." The $900 million for Superfund would come from special raxes imposed on the chemical manu facturing, petroleum, and petrochem ical industries, rather than from general revenues. "I recognize that the chemical industry cannot be an infinite source of Superfund dollars," Dingeil told a Chemical Manufactur ers Association forum. He would prefer Superfund money to come from a broader industrial rax base. ERA has proposed rules for iodnerating liquid hazardous wastes at sea. These rules incorporate per formance standards for land-based incinerators and call fen* 99.99% destruction of liquid hazardous wastes. If the wastes consist of poly chlorinated biphenyls, dibercodioxins, or dibenzoforans, destruction efficiencies of 99.9999% must be demonstrated. Moreover, the pro posal sets forth standards to limit acid-forming emissions and requires incinerator emissions to be below marine water quality criteria. Under the rule, permits would be classified for research, operating, and emer gency applications. EPA might not strictly enforce a provision of the Resource Conserva tion and Recovery Act that requires hazardous waste landfill operators to comply with all groundwater moni toring and financial responsibility requirements by Nov. 8, 1985. Sec tion 3005(e) of the act requires oper- . ators to certify that they meet these requirements or close their landfills on that date. EPA fears that a strict interpretation of this "hammer provi sion" would cause tbe abrupt closing of up to 70% of existing land dis posal facilities. The agency also foresees increases in illegal dumping if a large number of facilities close. The agency would prefer chat facili ties come into compliance and pay enforcement penalties in the mean time. Vigorous congressional and public opposition to this move is concentration of blood lead that is coiasidered poisonous has been lowered by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, Atlanta, Ga.). CDC has determined that a_ hfdlnSndblaeartdimlevMel ^odf 3'n5 ^uTg/dinecTilTitehTe previous level, established by CDC in 1978, was 50 **g/dL. CDC recom mends that all children be screened for lead poisoning. The agency rea sons that since the original 50-^g/dL level was established, investigators have reported adverse effects from lower levels of lead exposure. CDC also defined an excessive lead burden as 25 /dL, as compared with the 1978 definition of 30 npiSL in whole blood. Lead poisoning is reported to4 cause disorders of the brain and nervous system. STATES States can now receive Superfund I money to supervise cleanups con- 001 >936X/&5/091 9-0295S01.500 1985 American Chemical Society Environ SO. Thcftncl.. Vtt. 19, No 4.1966 2M In another CPI-related development, ceramics are drawing interest as critical components of the heat exchangers and transfer systems that carry the excess heat (in some cases, up to 3000F or 1649C) generated in steel furnaces and aluminum smelters. Researchers at Coming Glass Works, for example, have developed a special ized silicon carbide heat transfer system that can be used continuously; at up to 3100F (1704C), exhibits high; thermal shock resistance and can dissipate as much as 20 watts of heat per square centimeter per ty>ur. The ceramic, named Celcor Hexaloy SA, was devel oped by The Carborundum Co., Ni agara Falls, NY, and extruded into panels with Coming dies. Heat transfer is effected via laser-drilled holes'jn the panels. ', While ceramics' relatively high cdsts^ still pose something of an obstacle to full acceptance in this application, the huge market potential--in excess of $1 billion a year, by some estimates-- is a major incentive to the research drive. Some recent developments, in fact, may help to increase ceramics' share of the heat exchanger market: Carborundum has announced a new high-volume extrusion process for manufacturing heat exchanger tubes featuring internal fins and baffles. The innovation, likely to be of particular interest to CPI companies, triples the tubes' surface area, thus permitting the use of smaller, less expensive tubes. Carborundum and Coors Porce lain, Golden, CO, reportedly can pro duce very small-diameter smooth tubes in volume for about $30 a foot--only about 20 percent of the current price for such heat exchanger-tubes. Electronics comprises yet another potential business area for advanced ceramics. The materials have long been workhorses of the industry in many ap plications, such as supporting and in sulating silicon chips in microcircuits. And Japan's Hitachi has recently an nounced a new silicon carbide that may be used as a heat-dissipator in high- power electronic systems. Ceramics' unusual electrical prop- Selectlvo Sequestrant The story is that the eyes ofcats given chelating agent EDTA lose their ability to glow in semi-darkness. The seques trant removes the metallic elements that form the reflective pigments. But EDTA is one of the treatments given people suffering from lead poisoning, and the cat tale points up a major problem-- EDTA removes too many vital elements, including copper and zinc, while it cleanses the body of lead. Now, it looks as if a treatment based on 2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid zeros in on the lead with far lesser effect on other metallics. Mercaptosuccinic acid is not a patentable compound, says pharmacol ogist Joseph Graziano, PhD, of Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons, who has been working with material supplied by Johnson & Johnson. Commercial medications "will probably be marketed by a new Arm," says Gra-. ziano. The Shi of Wage* - John Harvey-Jones, no favorite of Margaret Thatcher's, has gotten himself deeper in the British Prime Minister's doghouse. The Imperial Chemical In dustries chairman does not like the Thatcher government's economic policies, and recently he told a House of Lords committee so. Number 10 Downing Street reacted sharply, as might be ex pected; over-reacted, some say. For a man who got a 68 percent pay hike this year, a Whitehall staffer noted sourly, the ICI chief is hardly in a position to criticize. Mrs. Thatcher contends that such luge pay raises make it difficult for the government to encourage wage restraint. Personal Touch Stauffer Chemical broke new ground in magazine advertising recently-- Stauffer's ads in Farm Industry magazine were individually personalized. Each subscriber, in his particular copy of FI, found the ad for Dyfonate insecticide mentioned his name. The printing trick calls for putting the name onto completely bound and ad dressed copies by a system worked out by Video Jet Co., Chicago. Video Jet's equipment opens a magazine to the Stauffer page, zaps in the subscriber name and then moves the magazine onto the mailing stage. "It's not `prohibitively' costly," says Steve Venarchiek of Webb Co., the printers of Farm Industry. "But it doubles the time needed to get an issue in the mail." Leapfrog Breakthrough? Had enough breakthroughs? Bill Har ris, senior vice-president of PPG Indus tries, offers relief In his remarks at this year's Pittsburgh Chemical Day, he called for "leapfrog" R&D projects to revitalize the US chemical industry. But, he warns, leapfrog projects are "larger, more ex pensive and riskier" than incremental developments. Li short, you can kiss your money goodbye if your leapfrog does not turn into a prince. Against the Grain Brucine has long been used to denature alcohol, and now it seems that a variant on that idea has surfaced in Europe, where grain production is a hotly con tested issue. The Common Market Com mission, eager to keep some 3 million metric tons ofBritish wheat out ofmilling markets, is thinking of coloring the UK grains with dyes. The wheat, of bread making quality, would thus be down graded, knocking about $20 to $30 a ton off the world price and making it suitable for use only in animal feeds--presumably, for color-blind livestock. The Price ef Color Seems the hue of the ancient and ex pensive royal purple dye (reserved for the aristocracy, hence "bom to the pur ple"), can be altered by varying the spe cies of snail used, and by the process used to extract the dibromo indigotin dye precursor from the mollusk's gland. It takes about 60,000 shelled snails to make a pound of dye. Like many of the dye extraction pro cesses of early times, purple dye pro duction created environmental problems. First was the emission problem ofrotting snail bodies. And then, points out Patrick McGovern, an archeochemist at the Uni versity Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, the "crude alkaline solution of ammonia [usually urine] was used to reduce the dye." Tb fix the color, the treated fabric was then oxidized. "Al together, a very smelly process." JUNE 19S5 CHEMICAL BUSINESS PAGE 47 CYWI 3-000865 R. Johnson L. Maye NOTICE December 21, 1984 C. Hawkins A. Howard E. Maye R. Thompson IMPORTANT AND CRITICAL Our blood leads are increasing rather dramatically and are now at dangerous levels. Three people at 50 or above. Plant average up from 37 to 42 Fourteen employees'above 40. Each . of you should plan to take positive action to assure we reduce plant blood lead levels immediately. Please include the following in your program: A. Implementation of red hat program. B. Increased usage of breath air from compressor. C. Use of the green rubber respirators. D. Constant check of seal using the 3M nebulizer. E. Observation to assure each employee follows all Industrial Hygiene rules. eg: Finger nail brush Showering Clothes vacuuming Clean lockers rinsing mouth Please be prepared to discuss this with me the week of December 24th. HCG:ck H. C. Gaffney CYWI 3-000871 N14659.01