today is the 20 yr anniversary of the chemical accident in
bhopal, india. there was an article by C&E News (American Chemicial Society's weekly mag) about
this accident and the regulations that grew from it. This has led me to think about a couple of things.
first off, of course the chemistry industry accidents we hear about, they have results that are either immediate or traceable. a bunch of circuit boards fall off a train and nobody cares; of course most people don't think about the fact that without the chemical industry those circuit boards couldn't be made. some people are calling for the chemistry industry to cut immediately to "green" processes (that is, go to using things that can't harm people if they do get released).
second off, i was thinking about the call for outside regulation of the chemical industry's safety. people assume that outside regulation results in better regulation. today we have what are called MSDS (material safety data sheets) which
OSHA requires workplaces to have. Good idea, crappy information. if you compare
methyl isocyanate (the stuff released in bhopal) with say
sodium fluoride (a low sodium salt substitute sold at the grocery store) you wouldn't really be able to tell that one will almost always hurt you while the other will almost always not. the msds also points out another interesting thing in that methyl isocyanate reacts violently with water (forming a variety of gasses) but the msds still calls for washing with lots of water if you spill it on yourself...
finally, i thought about what training are chemists given to react ethically? two weeks ago i was sitting in on a 1st yr graduate level o. chem class and the teacher was talking about how a particular substances reacted with dna (thus destroying the dna and could kill people. she then used the phrase "make things to help people not kill people." and everyone laughed, like that was obvious, people don't kill people. but i don't think that it is that obvious. chemists are asked to make weapons more effective by doing things like making tracer bullets or more powerful explosives (plastic explosives for instance) but are told not to make chemical weapons. what is a non-chemical weapon? i guess an energy weapon could be non-chemical but in order for humans to handle it it has to be made of something which is a chemical. we also synthesize things to kill insects and pathogens. back to chemical spills, we are told to follow certain safety procedures, but in reality many people skip over them, as shown by many accidents. in bhopal safety measures weren't running properly but people continued to run the plant. there is a general attitude of make do with what you have in chemistry and that extends to safety as well.
i think i missed out in not taking an ethics class while in undergrad.