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1
Introduction
For millennia, advances in human progress have been tied to our ability to
protect ourselves from the harmful effects of the wastes we produce ranging
from human waste to the organic and inorganic by-products of everyday living.
Across the world, cultures learned to bury their dead away from their homes and
to burn their waste or make certain that it was carried away by streams and rivers
flowing downstream from their homes. Those cultures that learned this most ef-
fectively thrived. When the industrial revolution took place in the nineteenth cen-
tury, rivers again enabled progress. They provided water needed for power and
energy, and they carried away the waste materials from industrial processes.
However, things had changed by the middle of the twentieth century. The
increase in human population and the growth of modern industry were leading to
signs that the system was overloaded. There were reports of rivers that had turned
orange or had caught on fire, the smog over some cities was becoming intoler-
able, and there were signs of negative health consequences from buried waste.
The methods of waste disposal that had helped us build our modern society were
turning back on us. Public attention was captured by Rachel Carson's book Silent
Spring, and events surrounding the Vietnam war were changing the political
landscape. In 1970 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was formed, and
the Clean Air Act was passed later that same year. Additional legislation fol-
lowed to cover other areas of the environment.
Many of the problems that needed to be solved were chemical in nature, and
the chemical industry was seen by many as the source of our environmental prob-
iRache] Carson, Silent Spring; Houghton Mifflin: New York, 1962.
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THE ENVIRONMENT
lems. Suddenly we had moved beyond industry and modern technology as the
source of our high quality of life. The chemical industry was no longer viewed in
a positive light. As with most such situations, there were conflicts between regu-
latory policy and the financial interests of the companies being regulated, and
progress was sometimes slow. But changes have been made. The rivers are
cleaner, and the smog has decreased. Bird populations are no longer suffering the
effects of DDT, and disposal of chemical waste is carried out in a safer and more
reliable manner. The chemical industry, through the American Chemistry Coun-
cil, has established a strong industry standard with its Responsible Care program.
The committee organized a workshop that was held in Irvine, California, in
November 2002, to address ways in which chemists and chemical engineers could
focus their R&D efforts on the solution of environmental problems. This report is
part of a broader project, Challenges for the Chemical Sciences in the 21st Cen-
tury. The overview report for the project includes a chapter on Atmospheric and
Environmental Chemistry.2 A series of speakers (Appendix F) presented lectures
(Appendix D) on topics that covered all parts of the environment the biosphere,
the atmosphere, soil, and water. They addressed issues in manufacturing, energy
production, and remediation of those parts of the environment that already have
suffered damage. Considerable input for the report was also provided by a series
of breakout sessions (Appendix G) in which all workshop attendees participated
(Appendix E). These breakout sessions explored the ways in which chemists and
chemical engineers already have contributed to solving environmental problems,
the technical challenges that they can help to overcome in the future, and the
barriers that will have to be overcome for them to do so. The specific questions
addressed in the four breakout sessions were the following:
· Discovery: What major discoveries or advances related to the environ-
ment have been made in the chemical sciences during the last several decades?
· Interfaces: What are the major environment-related discoveries and chal-
lenges at the interfaces between chemistry-chemical engineering and other disci-
plines, including biology, information science, materials science, and physics?
· Challenges: What are the environment-related grand challenges in the
chemical sciences and engineering?
· Infastructure: What are the issues at the intersection of environmental
studies and the chemical sciences for which there are structural challenges and
opportunities in teaching, research, equipment and instrumentation, facilities,
and personnel?
2Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National
Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2003.
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INTRODUCTION
9
We've seen much progress in the past few decades, but more remains to be done.
Some regulations are in place, while others are still being developed. The anxiety
over global climate change has introduced an entirely new set of concerns in the
last decade, with conflicting proposals about how the world should respond. One
thing is certain, however, and that is the need for the chemical sciences commu-
nity to participate in solving the problems.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
breakout sessions
