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tist
The Evolution of an Environmental Scientist
Part I
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“There are very few living organic peroxide chemists,” warned my first professor of organic chemistry when introducing that relatively brief topic at the end of our second semester. I instantly recalled this precaution some years later when I accidentally dropped a several-pound container of benzoyl peroxide and caught it before it could hit the floor and detonate. This early alert about this acute, if personal environmental insult, thus made a valuable impression on me. However, this was not my only introduction to environmental exposure back in the 20th Century! Hopefully, I am one of the few who has lost a chemist colleague to a chemical hazard, in this case to carbon monoxide.
Dr. Robert “Bob” Landolt
Other chemists may have similar experiences, but other factors subsequently stimulated my personal concern for environmental impacts. In grad school, I was a shocked at the very bitter comment about Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring from a respected faculty member who stated, “that woman is going to ruin everything.” This 1960s attitude resulted from publicity that chemicals constituted unanticipated hazards to birds and the food chains generally. Lesson learned? There are risks to ubiquitous introduction of money-making products into the environment!
As a 1960s post-doc, two other experiences impressed to me the need for safety considerations upon exposure to chemicals. The first occurred during two years of very careful work using sodium cyanide as a reagent: “Keep that damn stuff in the hood!” Even novices knew of its danger, due in part Nazi practices in WW II. The second was slow recognition of chronic consequences in our lab when a colleague conducted column chromatography on an open bench. The problem arose when he practiced eluting with chlorinated solvents as well as benzene. At the same time, the general public was at risk when living close to industrial facilities known to belch these things routinely!
A health problem may even arise when a common substance, expected safe, is used. Our family experienced this after our three children, upon recovery from chicken pox, developed life threatening cases of Reye’s Syndrome , which widely impacted children in the Midwest in the late 1970s. Our kids recovered with excellent medical care, but I was stimulated to help determine causative agents experienced in common by Reye’s patients. I claim no distinctive contribution to this effort, but ultimately it was discovered that aspirin was the culprit. Read the label on your aspirin bottle!
Moreover, the environment has been ‘insulted,’ even from more ubiquitous/routine use of something as common as drinking water, as it became obvious to me upon conducting re-
search about exposing coal to hypochlorite. What’s coal got to do with drinking water? At the same time in the mid 1970s that I explored using bleach to useful products from coal, others discovered the unexpected presence of chloroform and some of its cousins in drinking water. Chlorine was found not only to kill bacteria but also to cause certain organic compound generation in raw water during widely-used disinfection practices, including for swimming pools! My most direct early involvement with a notable environmental problem occurred in 1980 on projects to understand how best to clean up ‘priority pollutant sites’ identified in the 70s. Subsequent research focusing on how pH influences such results led me to coauthor a series of publications with my students. We showed how the chlorinated compounds and unexpected pH changes resulted during hypochlorite reactions similar to those going on when folks sanitize clothes in washing machines!
At the Radian corporation in 1980 I joined efforts to mitigate public exposure to hazardous stuff. This required extensive use of online resources, to see how our work dovetailed with that of scientists generally. Online access was equally important a short time later when I was invited work an environmentally focused project at the Naval Research Lab, to understand the best way to combat chemical warfare agents with hypchlorite. One does not have to go to scientific literature to know why this was a concern for the Navy, due to Cold War interest by the Russians in nerve agents. Significantly, bleach was a recognized way to counteract chemical warfare agents, but factors governing its reactivity required further study. From studies at Texas Wesleyan, we had learned that chloroform was a reaction product from citric acid, with reactivity dependent on pH. The Navy had found that the buffering agent, citric acid/citrate, decomposed hypochlorite at the pH of seawater. This led to research for the Navy Lab, farmed out to us at Wesleyan, that demonstrated bleach stability in sea water.
Environmental hazards with acute impacts tend to get quick attention, but the story is far more complicated when the threat is chronic. Not only do chronic threats require more than raising public consciousness, but also managing remedial efforts requires much more than scientific input, especially when military, government or private business is involved. Case in point: ‘priority pollutant’ (and associated ‘Superfund” sites) management. A comparable challenge was learning to deal with Climate Change.
PART 2
“What we need is one-handed scientists,” said the Committee Chair, frustrated by ‘expert’ panelist’s reluctance to be pinned down regarding causes for the Ozone Hole. The occasion was a Congressional Hearing on potential remedies for the recently discovered Hole discovered at antarctica. As an ACS Congressional Assistant Fellow with Jim Wright in the mid 1980s I attended this and other hearings. This occasion focused not only on this threat, but also raised alarm that a concerted, multi-nation effort would be required. Fortunately,
there’s evidence of Ozone Hole remediation through halocarbon regulation, but it’s taken some time!
Beside war, famine, and attendant problems of global proportion, the world began to recognize shortfalls of energy supplies during the “energy crisis” in 1973. It became increasingly obvious that sustainable energy sources were going to become important, especially when nuclear power lost its attractiveness due to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents. Making fossil fuels more available through fracking etc., has drawn attention to a host of environmental problems from ‘greenhouse gases’ including carbon dioxide emissions from combusting coal, oil, and natural gas. When highly profitable businesses are impacted, economic as well as environmental factors come into play. Conservation routinely is practiced as a last resort. Some time ago when home builders were told that alternatives, including electric heating would be required, their reported response was, “Now we’ll have to insulate!”
It's not an overstatement that, "The best way to learn something is to teach it" Providentially for me, teaching environmental courses for non-science majors at Texas Wesleyan included conveying the challenges of climate change. Further, in the 21st Century, the American Chemical Society (ACS) authorized development of its Climate Science Toolkit. An associated planning grant has enabled DFW ACS Section to sponsor programing, which for years served North Texas Community College Faculty as well as church and civic organizations. Our activities were recognized by an ACS ChemLuminary Award in 2017!
Being human brings us all to hold beliefs in high regard, but when it comes to Climate Change issues, please consider Bernard Baruch’s admonition, “Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” It’s been useful to interact with diverse audiences using insights drawn from “This Spaceship Earth,” cartoons, and communication with the public.
Understanding the past may be easier that predicting the future, but the latter is important for decision making. Significantly, scenarios may be generated using computer technology, allowing users to show the predictable impacts of decision making. Like the weather, time will tell the utility of such predictions.
