Around the world industrial facilities are 10 o more years old. In phenolic resin manufacturing, both formaldehyde and phenol are using. For avoid runaway reactions a venting relief are using. Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen as said IARC in 2006. The first question is why standards is not according with this issue. The disease are well known, but novel proposal in academic world are little treated. You know someth about this?
Please, all data is important for me
This is a relatively "old" story which happened with me. I taught a university-elective course entitled "Chemistry & Society" for 15 years. For an obscure reason, this popular course "among the students" was stopped by orders from above nearly 10 years ago.
I followed the subject, that you mention in your question, and found out that besides phenol & formaldehyde there are other carcinogenic compounds which are released into the environment causing harm to persons nearby such as 1,3-butadiene. Some students were given assignments "library search" to list harmful chemicals at home, in the market, and in the workplace.
Sadly enough, the lists were lengthy and the reason for their widespread is the huge "greed" by influential persons in industrial countries. They just want to gain heaps of money but they are reluctant to pay the cost for removal of the harmful effects. It is like a guest using a friend's kitchen for cooking food but after eating the meal s/he says good-bye without bothering to clean the mess or the dirt that is left behind.
We, scholars, are not free "as we may think" to talk about the politics behind "destroying" the human environment by powerful nations.
Dear Nizar Matar.
What you mention is still a reality, in the 1980s Swemberg warned about the problem of the carcinogenicity of Formaldehyde. But they had to spend 30 years so that in the First world they cataloged it as an agent with such toxicity. In the third world, industrial facilities, informal cosmetics (the classic laceado of Japanese hair) tell us about a complex reality. Formaldehyde in smokers, gas stoves, in foams, in phenolic resin (a production close to 20 billion tons is expected). What you say about your course reminds me of a phrase in my country: being intelligent is sometimes dangerous.
Thanks for your contribution, I give it a great value.
Developed in the 1930s under the trade name Freons, CFCs "chlorofluorocarbons" were thought to be marvelous chemicals "nontoxic, nonflammable, don't react with any common chemicals, and thus were assumed to be safe for the environment". CFCs were used in many things such as refrigerators, Styrofoam, air conditioners and aerosols (like hairspray or cleaning supplies), to name a few.
In the early 1970s, chemists Mario Molina & F. Sherwood Rowland discovered that Freons go into the atmosphere & cause the depletion of the ozone layer.They campaigned to end the use of such compounds under "opposition" of those who got lot of money from selling them. By 1987 , Molina & Rowland won the "scientific" battle & research started to find alternatives for the harmful Freons.
Imagine how many cases of skin cancer occurred in (e.g. Australia & USA) from 1974 until there was replacement of these unsafe chemicals. The powerful persons who "delayed" the effort were just greedy for money at the expense of the human health & environment.
Currently I am working in adsorption system.
Mi first success is operating in the venting relief line of a reactor aimed to manufacture phenolic resin.
The second is to clean air in closed environment.
The major issue is a weak legal system to protect the human health.
You speak about Freo. Finally ONU paid to change butane for not use Freon. For those facilities that manufactured polypropylene .
Sincerely
Carlos
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Philosophy
- Philosophy Of Science
- Reasoning