April Production Barely Changed. For the first four months of the year, there was little movement in the industrial production index for chemicals and allied products. Last week, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board reported a seasonally adjusted index of 121.8 (1992 = 100) for chemicals in April, up from 121.7 in March and the same as reported in January. On an annual basis, the index was down 2.7% from the same month in 2000 and off 3.6% from its 12-month peak in May last year. The government’s estimate of April chemical capacity utilization was 73.8%, up from 73.7% in March but well below April 2000’s 81.3%. (C&EN, May 21, 2001, p 16)

Employment Drops in April. U.S. chemical employment declined by 3000 in April to a seasonally adjusted 1,013,000 employees, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The April total is down by 17,000 compared to April 2000. While employment fell from the previous month, the average number of weekly production workhours moved up slightly to 42.9 from 42.8. On a year-to-year basis, the April workhour figure was unchanged. The Department’s index of aggregate weekly hours of production—essentially a function of the total number of production workers and the hours they work—declined to 99.0 (1992 = 100) from 99.2 in March. In April 2000, the index stood at 102.7. (C&EN, May 14, 2001, p 20)

Top 75 U.S. Chemical Companies Announced. Chemical & Engineering News has released its top 75 chemical companies (by total sales excluding pharmaceuticals). Topping the list this year is DuPont, with sales of roughly $28 billion. Rounding out the top five are, in order, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil, Huntsman Corp., and General Electric. (C&EN, May 7, 2001, p 27)

Chemical Trade Returns to Surplus. After sliding into a deficit in January, the U.S. chemical trade balance returned to a surplus in February, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The government data show a chemical trade surplus of $281.1 million in February, compared with a $400.2 million trade deficit the month before. On an annual basis, the February surplus was down 51.7% from a year earlier. The month-to-month improvement came on a 2.2% increase in chemical exports to $6.72 billion, which occurred while imports fell 7.7% to $6.44 billion. Year-to-year, chemical exports were up 10.2%, but imports grew at the much greater rate of 16.8%. (C&EN, May 7, 2001, p 17)

Chemical Prices Remain Unchanged in March. The producer price index for chemicals and allied products in March remained unchanged from February, but the index for industrial chemicals fell, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The index for chemicals and allied products of 155.5 (1982 = 100), however, was still 3.7% ahead of March 2000. The industrial chemical index fell 1.5% from February to 133.5 primarily because of high energy and raw material costs. Year-to-year, industrial chemical prices were 4.3% higher than in March of last year. (C&EN, April 30, 2001, p 15)

EPA Exempts Some Hazardous Wastes. The costs of handling wastes at chemical manufacturing plants are expected to fall collectively by about $5 million a year under a new rule signed by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. The rule exempts from regulation certain wastes that are mixtures and derivatives of hazardous wastes. Affected are mixtures and derivatives regulated under the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) solely because they are ignitable, corrosive, or reactive. The main beneficiary of this new rule is the chemical manufacturing sector, according to EPA officials. The new rule also exempts hazardous wastes mixed with low-level radioactive wastes from RCRA requirements for storage, transportation, and disposal, when such mixed wastes are disposed of at facilities under the purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (C&EN, May 7, 2001, p 36)

International Action on POPs. A treaty that could ultimately eliminate or at least minimize the use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) around the world was formally adopted last month in Stockholm. When at least 50 governments have ratified it, a process that could take several years, the treaty will enter into force. The treaty was finalized in Johannesburg, South Africa, last December by representatives from 122 countries at a negotiating session organized by the United Nations Environment Programme. Initially, measures will apply to a list of 12 chemicals. Production of most will be banned immediately; however, an exemption is included for DDT in some countries. Continued use of PCBs in existing equipment such as electrical transformers will be allowed until 2025, provided the equipment is free of leaks. (Environ. Sci. Technol., May 1, 2001, p 181A)

European Union Chemical Policy. Roughly 100,000 chemicals in commercial use would receive tougher scrutiny under a regulatory framework proposed by the European Commission (EC) in February. The proposal makes industry responsible for proving that products are safe for their intended uses. Under the current regulatory scheme, only so-called new chemicals—those marketed after September 1981—are required to undergo tests and risk assessments. Consequently, for most of the “existing” chemicals, representing 99% of the total substance volume on the market, general knowledge regarding their properties, uses, and environmental effects is lacking. The new EC strategy would require registration of basic information for all new and existing chemicals produced in volumes exceeding one metric ton. Substances suspected of being persistent and bioaccumulative would be subjected to a more stringent evaluation focusing on the effects of long-term exposure. (Environ. Sci. Technol., May 1, 2001, p 181A)

The Entire Proteome Picture. Although the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast proteome has been widely studied, only 279 proteins have been identified to date. Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute and Syngenta Agricultural Discovery Institute have now identified a whopping 1484 proteins in the S. cerevisiae proteome. To identify these proteins, the group coupled two-dimensional LC, in which a microcapillary column is packed with two chromatography phases, with MS/MS. The researchers analyzed complex peptide mixtures from three fractions of an S. cerevisiae lysate. After each fraction was loaded onto its own microcolumn off-line, the columns were inserted into the instrumental setup, and no additional sample handling was required. Peptides were eluted in an iterative process in which the columns were re-equilibrated and increasingly high concentrations of salt were added. The peptides were fed directly from the columns into an ion trap mass spectrometer equipped with a nano-LC electrospray ionization source. Like the chromatography and MS steps, the subsequent database comparison and identification of proteins were automated. (Anal. Chem., May 1, 2001, p 243A)

Transgenic Mice: Leading to “Green” Pigs? Experiments with transgenic mice may lead to environmentally friendly farm animals that could someday help reduce the amount of phosphate in agricultural runoff. The transgenic mice produce the bacterial enzyme phytase in their salivary glands. Researchers at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, think that they can develop transgenic farm animals that express phytase to hydrolyze phytate (inositol hexaphosphate), an organic phosphate that naturally occurs in cereal grains used as animal feed. Farm animals such as pigs and chickens cannot metabolize phytate, so inorganic phosphate is generally added to feed as a supplement. But the undigested phytate and inorganic phosphate excreted by the animals can leach out of manure and into waterways, causing eutrophication. The transgenic mice produce wastes having significantly lower phosphate levels compared with control mice, the researchers report, and although significant challenges remain, the next step is to determine how well transgenic pigs they have recently produced can digest phytate. (C&EN, May 7, 2001 p 43)

Tropical Clouds May Mitigate Global Warming. High-level cirrus clouds over the tropical Pacific Ocean appear to decrease when sea-surface temperatures increase. This “natural vent” provides a heat release mechanism so strong that it could significantly diminish global warming, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) and the NASA–Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD). The researchers compared detailed daily observations of cloud cover from Japan’s GMS-5 Geostationary Meteorological Satellite with sea-surface temperature data from the U.S. National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction from January 1998 to August 1999. The data revealed that fewer cirrus clouds are produced over warmer ocean regions. The authors propose that higher sea-surface temperatures directly cause the decline in cirrus clouds by changing the dynamics of cloud formation and rainfall. (Environ. Sci. Technol., May 1, 2001, p 190A)

Measuring Organic Fluorine in Humans. Researchers At 3M (Minneapolis, MN) have developed a method of quantitative detection of organic fluorochemicals by negative ion electrospray MS/MS that measures specific fluorinated organic compounds in biological matrices. The new method includes extraction with an ion-pairing reagent and analysis of the extract by HPLC and electrospray MS/MS. With this method, four organic fluorochemicals—perfluorooctanoate, perfluorooctanesulfonate, perfluorooctanesulfonylamide, and perfluorhexane sulfonate—were identified and quantitatively analyzed from the sera and liver tissue of 65 people. These studies yielded estimates of 27 ng/mL of total fluorine, which compares well with the earlier estimates of 26 ng/mL. (Anal. Chem., May 1, 2001, p 247A)

Biochemical Technology Division Presents Four Awards. The ACS Division of Biochemical Technology presented three individual awards and one corporate award at the recent ACS national meeting in San Diego. The awards are the 2001 Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial & Biochemical Technology, the Perlman Lecture, the James M. Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award, and the Industrial Biotechnology Award. The Johnson Award went to Gregory N. Stephanopoulos, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA). He was chosen in recognition of seminal contributions to metabolic engineering, cell culture engineering, and bioinformatics. The Perlman Lecture winner is Willem P. C. Stemmer, vice president for R&D, Maxygen (Redwood City, CA). Stemmer received the award in recognition of his development of molecular breeding technologies using gene shuffling. The James M. Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award winner is Richard C. Willson, associate professor of chemical engineering and biochemistry at the University of Houston. He was recognized for his leadership and sustained extraordinary contributions to the division. The division’s Industrial Biotechnology Award was presented to Cygnus Inc. (Redwood City, CA), for its development of the “GlucoWatch Biographer” for frequent, automatic, and noninvasive glucose monitoring. (C&EN, May 7, 2001, p 62)