Chemistry, Society and Environment
This review appeared in Chemistry & Industry 7.5.01 and provoked an exchange of letters in the same journal with Friends of the Earth.
Chemistry and the Simple Life
I recall a sketch in a TV comedy series which involved setting up a branch of the Amish in England. The new converts took the view that since their American co-believers permitted themselves certain artificial materials – iron, soap, glass, paper – then their choice of technological cut-off date had essentially been arbitrary. That being the case then the British Amish were free to choose their own arbitrary date, and had settled on the early 1970s. Thus vinyls and eight-track cartridges were fine, but CDs were forbidden. They couldn’t use personal computers, but big main-frames with card readers and punched tape presented no problems. They had fridges and televisions, but no microwaves or VCRs.
The early 1970s is where Colin Russell’s history of the British chemical industry leaves off. I presume this is because the technological changes that have influenced the daily lives of the general public since then - the laptop, the mobile, the microwave and the video – may have required chemical inputs, but are not viewed as chemical products.
It was also during the early 1970s that the chemical industry, as opposed to chemistry as a school subject, began to impinge on my own consciousness. Two memories stand out: a visit to ICI’s chlor-alkali plant in Runcorn, and the Flixborough explosion. What I recalled from the Runcorn visit wasn’t the utility of the products they made, but the huge amount of electricity they consumed, and the project described by someone at the Castner–Kellner plant trying to find out how small but significant quantities of mercury leaked into the environment. I was totally unaware of the much more polluting processes for making alkali from salt that preceded the electrolytic methods. Similarly with Flixborough: I didn’t think about why they were making caprolactam, simply that this was yet another instance of the poor environmental and safety record of the chemical industry. And remember, I wasn’t your typical tabloid reader, or a green activist. I was a chemistry nut, and fully intended to make a career in that same industry.
And that, I think, is the problem the chemical industry has always had, and probably always will have: that the public, even the small scientifically literate subset of it, are glad to accept the fruits of the industry without thanks, will ignore any social or environmental benefits the industry brings, but will savage the industry for any short-comings. Perhaps this is understandable. The industry’s record has at times been dreadful. But when it improves the lives of ordinary people, or when it reduces the depredations on the natural environment, it deserves credit. And it should be judged by the standards of the time, as applied to any other enterprise.
To dip into the book, the nineteenth century alkali industry is an excellent example. In the early days of the Leblanc process, hydrogen chloride belched into the atmosphere and calcium sulphide was allowed to pile up in reeking tips. Until other businesses grew up around to use these by-products, there was no perfect solution to the waste problem, but much could have been done to minimise the pollution. In fact, the industry did nothing until forced to act by legislation. Egregious. How was it allowed? But consider why the Leblanc process was ever adopted in the first place.
Until the Napoleonic wars, virtually all alkali for soap, bleach, glass and paper had come from timber ash (“potash”). Combined with the demand for charcoal for iron smelting, this had resulted in the deforestation of huge areas of England. While artificial bleaching was expensive, hundreds of acres of good land were tied up for sun-bleaching linen. The new industrial source of alkali allowed these basic products to be made much more cheaply, indeed affordable by the mass of the population. The workforces in the Leblanc factories opposed regulation and legislation, fearing for their jobs. Anyway, the slaughterhouses and the leather tanneries of the day posed much greater environmental problems, as did the lack of proper treatment for human waste. In Benthamite terms it was an easy decision – the alkali industry was too valuable to be closed down.
I’m fond of another illustration, alluded to but not spelt out in the book. The age weighted incidence of all the cancers of the alimentary canal has dropped dramatically with increased use of pesticides. The reason for this is that fresh fruit and vegetables, with all the anti-oxidants they contain, are relatively much less expensive than a few decades ago, and form a bigger part of our diets.
So the chlor-alkali industry is good for the environment, pesticides prevent cancer, industrial chemists are all candidates for beatification? Well hardly. Dreadful incidents such as Bhopal, Seveso, the Sandoz cyanide spill still happen. No industry is without risk, but since the 1970s the chemical industry has cleaned up its act enormously. We continue to be caught out by the unexpected –CFCs and the ozone hole, nonyl phenols and hermaphrodite fish. Even in these areas the industry has acted responsibly in looking for alternatives. Friends of the Earth accuse the industry of dragging its feet and call for immediate bans, but ignore the environmental benefits that the products bring – urethane foams blown with CFCs for instance were superb insulators and made a big contribution to keeping down energy consumption.
The web of interactions between chemistry, society and the environment is clearly a fascinating subject, so I was delighted to be asked to review the book, and great pleasure I had in reading it. Anyone interested in the roots of our industry (and I would hope that all Chemistry and Industry readers would fall into that category) should get hold of a copy. My only quibble is that I wish the book had been bigger. Big important areas are glossed over or ignored completely – I would argue for instance that the paper and synthetic fibre industries are at least as much part of the chemical industry as copper smelting. Both have brought social changes and have had environmental impacts. Polyurethanes aren’t mentioned at all. I would also have liked a chapter on the decline of the British chemical industry since the early 1970s – what was inevitable, what could have been managed better.
Colin Russell and his co-writers have endeavoured successfully to produce a “warts and all” study, to show why the industry developed as it did, but not to ignore the problems that it brought. Unfortunately, those of a dark green tendency who want to see the end of our whole endeavour won’t read it, but at least the book provides powerful ammunition for chemists who want to put up a robust defence.
There are those in Friends of the Earth who freely admit that they want to set the clock back. Not just to the time of Ford Cortinas and purple Crimplene flairs: their long term aim is a greatly reduced human population living a lifestyle similar to that of the (American) Amish. The trouble is that their ideal social system with an Iron Age technology would still put intolerable pressures on the world’s forests. Even Bronze Age foundries caused serious local pollution. The choice is stark: unless we want a return to the Neolithic we need our Chemical Industry.
