I promised updates about the Southwest Regional ACS meeting. I unfortunately missed a lot of sessions that I wish I could have made it to, due to being lost, and a resume review session, but I did get to see some.
My favorite research by far was looking at air mixing by radioactive isotopes, coming out of Arkansas. They found troposphere and stratosphere mixing, and looked at things like time to see results from Fukishima. Interesting stuff. Also, some good green chemistry overview, but much of it seemed like just that-an overview, not new knowledge. An interesting model of toxicity studies-preliminary at any rate-to be done on the computer.
I did a lot of career events, because in part I was there looking for a job. I heard excellent panelists talk about things that you can do with a chemistry degree other than labwork, which I'm looking hard at right now. And about people's individual stories. I heard about being the only woman at a water treatment plant. I still hope to hang out with that speaker-she sounded very interesting.
I love getting to hang out in Austin, especially now, because I love warm weather. It's cold outside.
Showing posts with label ACS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ACS. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2011
Thursday, May 20, 2010
C&E environmental legislation
Another C&E article to write about, though I think I'm getting to this one fast enough that you can see it for a while without paying. Link is here -
There are a couple of things I want to say about this article, both from an environmental standpoint.
1-business to business labeling standards. Absolutely. You can't make a better product without really being able to figure out what's going on with your suppliers. Crucial. I can't believe this hasn't been done before. I use a bunch of chemicals in my daily lab work that I have no idea how they were made-"proprietary information" or what the impact of this synthesis on the environment is. My job currently is to tell you if there is any heavy metals in a particular batch of products-I can do that, for sure. But that doesn't tell you anything about how much waste was produced while these products were being made, how much water was contaminated even if the final product isn't, etc, etc. So we need to get on that.
I very much disagree that labels for consumers are already sufficient, and that there's any kind of good system in place for telling how environmentally friendly a product actually is. I can see claims that companies make, but this is much like I always found it less effort to write a B+ paper for my humanities courses in college than get a B+ grade on a test-when you're the one setting the discussion, you can write to your strong suits. That certainly has influenced what I write about on this blog-I'm going to write what I know, no doubt about it. You may know more than me about something else-that's great, but that's for your blog, not mine. The same thing can be easily shown in food labeling. Yeah, a cereal can make healthy claims that it is "made with whole grains" and be 100% correct. But that doesn't mention the 30 grams of sugar per serving(I'm making these numbers up, but the point is, you write to your strengths). And that works. That's done with household products as well "made from plant derived surfactants" great, but do you do anything about the amount of water/energy used, worry about how those plants are grown, etc? Nobody knows, because the dialogue is entirely set by the company doing the advertising, for their interests.
Which gets to my other beef with the article, and to an extent with a lot of articles that I see coming from the ACS-I don't know if it's official policy or not. Clearly I don't speak for and am not a representative of the ACS, and everyone reading this should remember that.
They advocate for voluntary standards. Nobody would be forced to even report or test anything they don't want to. This is a general position that I see them taking a lot-everything should be driven by what the industrial companies want. Now, they're an industry group-the position that the industry should regulate themselves only voluntarily makes sense within that context. However, I distrust voluntary regulation. I would like to believe that companies will hold themselves to high enough standards that will keep people safe from possible accidents from them, or possible bad effects of their products. But this is expensive. And business is about the bottom line. Therefore someone without this conflict of interest needs to be doing the regulating. I know it costs more to be held to a higher standard than you'd like to. And truthfully I'm looking to be proven wrong her-I'd love to work for a company that voluntarily holds itself to protect other people from itself. But as long as not every company does that, there need to be externally enforced protections.
Overall I do think increased information on the production processes for things we use everyday is important. You can ignore information you don't need, but can't use information that you don't have access to.
what do you all think?
There are a couple of things I want to say about this article, both from an environmental standpoint.
1-business to business labeling standards. Absolutely. You can't make a better product without really being able to figure out what's going on with your suppliers. Crucial. I can't believe this hasn't been done before. I use a bunch of chemicals in my daily lab work that I have no idea how they were made-"proprietary information" or what the impact of this synthesis on the environment is. My job currently is to tell you if there is any heavy metals in a particular batch of products-I can do that, for sure. But that doesn't tell you anything about how much waste was produced while these products were being made, how much water was contaminated even if the final product isn't, etc, etc. So we need to get on that.
I very much disagree that labels for consumers are already sufficient, and that there's any kind of good system in place for telling how environmentally friendly a product actually is. I can see claims that companies make, but this is much like I always found it less effort to write a B+ paper for my humanities courses in college than get a B+ grade on a test-when you're the one setting the discussion, you can write to your strong suits. That certainly has influenced what I write about on this blog-I'm going to write what I know, no doubt about it. You may know more than me about something else-that's great, but that's for your blog, not mine. The same thing can be easily shown in food labeling. Yeah, a cereal can make healthy claims that it is "made with whole grains" and be 100% correct. But that doesn't mention the 30 grams of sugar per serving(I'm making these numbers up, but the point is, you write to your strengths). And that works. That's done with household products as well "made from plant derived surfactants" great, but do you do anything about the amount of water/energy used, worry about how those plants are grown, etc? Nobody knows, because the dialogue is entirely set by the company doing the advertising, for their interests.
Which gets to my other beef with the article, and to an extent with a lot of articles that I see coming from the ACS-I don't know if it's official policy or not. Clearly I don't speak for and am not a representative of the ACS, and everyone reading this should remember that.
They advocate for voluntary standards. Nobody would be forced to even report or test anything they don't want to. This is a general position that I see them taking a lot-everything should be driven by what the industrial companies want. Now, they're an industry group-the position that the industry should regulate themselves only voluntarily makes sense within that context. However, I distrust voluntary regulation. I would like to believe that companies will hold themselves to high enough standards that will keep people safe from possible accidents from them, or possible bad effects of their products. But this is expensive. And business is about the bottom line. Therefore someone without this conflict of interest needs to be doing the regulating. I know it costs more to be held to a higher standard than you'd like to. And truthfully I'm looking to be proven wrong her-I'd love to work for a company that voluntarily holds itself to protect other people from itself. But as long as not every company does that, there need to be externally enforced protections.
Overall I do think increased information on the production processes for things we use everyday is important. You can ignore information you don't need, but can't use information that you don't have access to.
what do you all think?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
American Chemical Society meeting
so I said this blog would be about chemistry and attempting to get myself set up as such. Yesterday was the Minnesota section of the American Chemical Society meeting. First off, there was a crap accident on I-94 on Hennepin. which made me late. grr. . . I missed a lot of "How to be a Chemistry Ambassador". Most of which seemed to boil down to "look on the national ACS webpage" and "talk about interesting applications of chemistry." Good ideas, though I wasn't sure how to use that to take any kind of steps. Maybe I'm not in a position to be a chemistry ambassador. then there was dinner and talking. Most people seemed to be really nice. I got to talk to a couple of other job seekers, and at least one lady who knows her husband's company is looking for a chemist. Is this the "networking" they speak of? okay, sarcasm done. but that was good. There seemed to be a lot of teachers there too. an interesting social interaction mode that reminded me of both my high school chemistry teacher and a couple of professors at the U of I. very . . . distinctive, though I'm not sure I could really describe it. But it made me giggle. I also might have volunteered to judge for a science fair on Friday. They seem to be looking for working chemists, but hey, I've got time. It'll be good for me. Making a name as a chemist and all that. Then there was a presentation about biobusinesses. If I was looking to make a start-up, I'd have been fascinated, though apparently Minnesota doesn't have all that good of an outlook for startups. Not enough capital and support. Hmmm. . . If I was an investor I'd see what I could do, because I do actually want to take chemistry knowledge and make it useful-to see products that make someone's life better as a result of my research.
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