News of the Week

California OSHA lists hazardous chemicals California's Occupational Safety & Health Agency held a public hear­ing last week to consider adoption of a proposed list of 794 hazardous compounds and classes of compounds in a step toward implementing the state's Hazardous Substances Infor­mation & Training Act.

The act, commonly know as the right to know law, which was passed in 1980, requires manufacturers and sellers of substances on the list to provide purchasers with a material safety data sheet (MSDS) for each substance on the list and requires employers to provide training and information on the substances to employees using them. The MSDS will list the chemical name, common names, and Chemical Abstracts Serv­ice number of the substance; the health hazards and other risks asso­ciated with use of the substance; safe handling practices; necessary personal protective equipment; and emergency procedures for spills, fire, disposal, and first aid. Manufactur­ers, sellers, and employers will have six months after the list is adopted to comply with the law's provisions.

In a statement read prior to the hearing, Peter Weiner, chief deputy director of California's Department

Chevron Chemical ends Chevron Chemical rang down the final curtain last week on its dwin­dling fibers business. It announced that it would stop production at its 30 million lb-per-year plant produc­ing Vectra polypropylene fiber at Odenton, Md., early next month. And it intends to sell its 22 million lb-per-year plant for Polyloom syn­thetic grass products at Dayton, Tenn., as soon as possible.

In early 1980, the company began phasing out its fibers interests when it closed a 100 million lb-per-year plant for nylon and polypropylene fibers at Guayama, on the south coast of Puerto Rico. Chevron had purchased that plant in 1976 from Phillips Petroleum's Fibers Interna­tional Subsidiary. It had entered the business originally when it bought the Vectra plant from Exxon Chem­ical in 1971.

Chevron, a subsidiary of Stand­ard Oil Co. of California, cites con­tinued financial losses due to weak sales of the upholstery yarn, tex-turized fiber and staple produced at

of Industrial Relations, said that the law complements existing statutes because it gives the state "authority to regulate manufacturers of hazard­ous substances to require them to submit certain information that they might otherwise not have shared with employers and employees." Weiner also said that an important feature of the law is that it "contains a frank bias in favor of sharing information except where there is a complete absence of risk to workers from ex­posure to a substance."

Weiner estimates that the law in­itially will affect more than 2 mil­lion of California's 10 million per­son workforce. Potentially, however, Weiner says that many more work­ers may come under the law because at present the state doesn't know where many chemicals are used.

The tone at the hearing was one of cooperation, but it was clear that aspects of the list do not sit well with everyone. Hank Martin, spokes­man for the California Manufactur­ers Association, pointed out, for in­stance, that although butane had been removed from the proposed list, methane, ethane, propane, and pen-tane had been left on it. Martin said that the association believes that a "next crucial step is to further re­fine the physical forms and concen­trations" of the substances to be regulated. D

ibers operations the plant; a noncompetitive market position; and outdated facilities as helping push the decision. On the other hand, the company notes that its Polyloom fibers—used to make artificial turf coverings—are profit­able, so that business should be attractive to potential buyers. The Polyloom plant will continue to op­erate while Chevron seeks a buyer.

Until the operations are com­pletely disposed of or are sold off, Chevron won't estimate what kind of write-off it will take.

Chevron got into the business on the tail end of a trend that began in the mid- to late-1960s of oil compa­nies' getting into the fibers business. But companies quickly found out that selling fibers was not like sell­ing gasoline, says one fibers consult­ant. "They all found out the mar­keting and merchandising were a to­tally different ballgame."

The two oil companies that are left in the fibers business— Phillips and Amoco—bought into the busi­ness and, particularly after some

hard times for textiles in the 1973-74 recession, decided to carve out strong specialty niches. Phillips, for exam­ple, is heavily involved with nonwo-ven polypropylene engineering fab­rics. And Amoco emphasizes poly­propylene-film carpet backings.

Chevron's problem, one source concludes, is that "they were always half in and half out. They never could decide what they wanted to do." D

Voters' group publishes nuclear power primer

Inspired by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and released on the heels of the recent pipe failure in the steam generator of the Robert E. Ginna nuclear power plant in up­state New York, the League of Women Voters has just published "A Nuclear Power Primer."

Author Marjorie Beame describes the 80-page primer as an "objective and balanced analysis of all the major nuclear power issues." She says she can make this claim safely because the primer's gestation pe­riod was longer than that of an ele­phant 's , primarily on account of thorough review procedures. Among the reviewers was energy expert Hans Landsberg, senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Landsberg, who tells C&EN that nuclear power "better have a future" and that the U.S. should "use it well before shaking," calls the book­let "excellent—a readable, objective and comprehensive" treatise on a "very difficult and controversial issue."

And comprehensive it is. The primer, says author Beame, "trans­lates highly technical" material "into language nonscientists and ordinary citizens can understand." Packed into its 80 pages are a short course on nuclear reactors, risk assessment, safety, economics, the nuclear fuel cycle, and proliferation—the link be­tween civilian power plants and nu­clear weapons production.

Rep. Richard L. Ottinger (D.-N.Y.), head of the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation & Power, was present at the primer's unveiling. He says it will serve as a useful basis for upcoming Congressional debates on the Clinch River breeder reactor, recycling, research funding of pro­grams to improve the efficiency of current reactors, and international reactor inspection procedures. D

8 C&EN Feb. 8, 1982