Chemical World This Week September 20,1971

The Top Stories

More than 8000 ACS members met in Washington, D.C., last week for the 162r.d national meeting 7

Cigarette smoking may well be a precursor of marijuana use among young people, according to a nationwide survey by Columbia University 8

Marketing research has a tarnished image in management circles, attendees agree at CMRA fall meeting in Williamsburg, Va. 12

Technology assessment, coined about five years ago, is still in search of a definition and a home of its own 14

C&EN's special report on water pollution comprises legislative actions, current state monitoring activities, and a C&EN survey of chemical companies' response to the government's Refuse Act permit program 16

Chemists and chemical engineers in the U.K. will have a trade union specifically geared to the needs of scientists come Jan. 1 26

Hodgkin's disease may be caused by viruses. Sloan-Kettering workers have isolated nucleic acid-containing agents from dis­eased patients 30

ACS, Institute of Physics, and National Bureau of Standards will collaborate to publish a quarterly journal of physical and chemical data 33

ACS MEETS IN WASHINGTON The American Chemical Society took a step forward in its efforts to get scientists and policy makers to­gether when it held its fall meeting in the nation's capital last week.

Marking one of the first major de­partures from programs character­istic of past ACS national meetings were a number of special events, in­cluding a Presidential Musicale at the National Gallery of Art, spon­sored by ACS and the Chemical So­ciety of Washington (ACS's Wash­ington, D.C., section). A number of members who were part of the con­cert's overflow audience took seats on the floor in rooms adjacent to the National Gallery's East Garden Court to hear the performance by members of Washington's National Symphony Orchestra.

A symposium on jobs for chem­ists and chemical engineers, a brief­ing conference for ACS members on patent operations held at the U.S. Patent Office, and an open forum featuring the candidates for ACS President-Elect were among the new meeting events received enthu­siastically by many of the more than 8000 members attending.

Locating the Society's 162nd na­tional meeting in Washington, D.C., brought out of the corridors of gov­ernment buildings into hotel meet­ing halls a number of high-level federal employees, including Lewis M. Branscomb, Director of the Na­tional Bureau of Standards; Wil­

liam D. McElroy, Director of the Na­tional Science Foundation; and Wil­liam D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Speaking at the symposium on herbicides and pesticides—policies and perspectives, sponsored by the ACS Committee on Chemistry and Public Affairs, Mr. Ruckelshaus said that scientists should not expect to be left alone by the public to make decisions on the use of chemical substances that affect the environ­ment. A free and open society would not permit scientists the lux­ury of seeking a quiet spot to con­template and carefully work out ra­tional solutions to environmental problems, he said.

"Decisions such as the fate of DDT are not decisions solely within the purview of the scientist for him to make in the solitude of his laboratory. Rather they are basic societal decisions about what kind of a life people want and about what risks they are willing to ac­cept to achieve it," Mr. Ruckelshaus said.

Also concerned with environ­mental issues is Andrew A. Aines of NSF's Office of Science Information Service. Explaining what the Gov­ernment is up to in the chemical information business, Mr. Aines pointed to some of the hazards and difficulties in establishing an infor­mation system for environmental-

At ACS Council meeting: (left to right) Hader, Calvin, Newman, and Wall

Chemical world This week ists. One of the main problems is the need to exploit the information existing today. Mr. Aines said that although scientists accumulate mountains of data, information, and documents, there is still a pressing need by many segments on the sci­entific community for more infor­mation. ' 'In the Federal Govern­ment alone/' Mr. Aines said, "I esti­mate that there are upwards of 50 programs scattered through various agencies that directly or indirectly involve the environment."

Information scientists will have to become interested in developing efficient ways to use new knowledge rather than just collect it. 'The ex­ploitation of knowledge must be considered a higher goal than mere information handling/' Mr. Aines said.

GENETICS: Less radiation damage Present standards for population exposure to radiation may contain an extra safety factor. Dr. William L. Russell, principal geneticist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, told a session of the 4th United Na­tions International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy last week in Geneva, Switzerland, that mutations in mice occur less frequently at small doses and dose rates of x- and y-radiation than ex­pected on the basis of studies at high dose rates and large doses.

Present radiation standards are based largely on studies of muta­tions in mice, conducted since the 1950's by Dr. Russell, his wife Dr. Liane Brauch Russell, and associ­ates at Oak Ridge. This lends par­ticular weight to Dr. Russell's con­clusions from his analysis of data gathered from studies with millions of mice since the standards were originally proposed in 1956.

Dr. Russell's studies in the fifties were conducted with adult male mice and measured specific-locus mutations (primarily gene muta­tions and small deficiencies) in­duced in reproductive cells (sper­matogonia) by x-rays at a dose of 600 Roentgens delivered at a high rate of 90 roentgens per minute. The observed rate of mutations per locus per roentgen was extrapolated through lower doses to the observed rate of spontaneous mutations in the absence of radiation. The rate was also assumed to apply to mu­tations in females.

Further studies during the past

15 years have extended measure­ments of specific-locus mutations to female reproductive cells (oocytes) and to doses as low as 50 roentgens and at rates as low as 0.001 roent­gen per minute. At low dose rates, Dr. Russell concludes that the mu­tation frequency for male mice is only 30% that found for the same doses delivered at high dose rates. The mutation rate for females is re­duced to near zero.

Dr. Russell notes that the reduced mutation rate at low levels of ra­diation supports the existence of a repair system that operates at low dose rates on mutational or premu-tational damage. At high dose rates, the repair system may be saturated or damaged by radiation.

The Oak Ridge geneticist qualifies the implications of his studies by pointing out that he has discussed only the rate for mutations detected by the specific-locus method. These mutations may represent a major part of the genetic hazard in man, he says, but certainly not all of it.

DRUG ABUSE: Tobacco a precursor Cigarette smoking may well be a precursor of marijuana use, accord­ing to a new nationwide survey of drug use among adolescents. Fur­thermore, as has often been sus­pected, the survey shows that youths who smoke pot are far more likely than nonusers to try other drugs and liquor.

Dr. Eric Josephson, Paul Haber-man, Anne Zanes, and Dr. Jack Elinson, all of Columbia University, interviewed nearly 500 youths aged 12 to 17 in their homes across the country and presented their results last week in Newark, N.J., at the First International Conference on Student Drug Surveys.

The Columbia team found that 15% of all young people surveyed had tried marijuana: 9% were ex­perimenters who had tried it less than 10 times, 3% were occasional users who had tried it between 10 and 59 times, and 3% used it more frequently. Another 10% of those surveyed indicated they would like to try marijuana. The incidence of use was the same for both males and females.

Only 3% of youths who do not smoke tobacco had tried pot, the team found, but 50% of the to­bacco smokers had tried pot. The use of cigarettes appears to de­crease with more frequent use of

pot, however. About 83% of those who experimented with marijuana smoked tobacco; only 64% of the frequent marijuana users did so.

Nearly 50% of the nonusers sur­veyed said they had tried liquor at some time, but more than 90% of the pot smokers had tried it. Among the nonusers, no more than 3% had tried any of the other drugs covered by the survey. However, 91% of the pot smokers had tried amphetamines, 82% had tried bar­biturates, 62% had tried LSD, and 11% had tried heroin.

The survey also showed that marijuana use was more likely among affluent youths in urban areas and in large metropolitan areas. Only 6% of youths from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had tried pot, whereas 19% of those with family incomes greater than $15,000 had tried it. And 11% of adolescents in the South had smoked pot, compared with 20% in the Northeast and 23% in the West. The regional differ­ence was even more striking among those 16 or 17 years old; only 13% of this group in the South had tried pot, but 33% in the Northeast and 39% in the West had.

Dr. Josephson cautions that the team's results cannot be compared readily with the results of preced­ing surveys, since those were all based on samplings at individual schools. Moreover, he adds, the survey does not disclose anything about trends in marijuana use.

TRADE POLICY: No barriers in 25 years Urging a "new realism" in U.S. trade policy and negotiations to end all barriers to international trade and capital movements within 25 years, a blue-ribbon Presidential com­mission has made 147 recommenda­tions to President Nixon for the na­tion's foreign economic policies over the coming decade.

Although the report was released at the White House last week, Mr. Nixon received the findings of the Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy on July 14. Several recommendations by the commission on import controls and wage and price measures parallel steps taken in the President's new economic program. The commis­sion's report also hints at what it will take to end the 10% import sur­charge and floating dollar.

The report involves all parts of

8 C&EN SEPT. 20, 1971