At last week’s 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, several thousand research papers were presented on new chemicals and chemical applications, including those in “green chemistry,” “biofuels,” and “health” areas. More than 8,000 technical papers were presented over the five days of the conference. The ACS’s 235th meeting in New Orleans in early-April had a relatively similar program with speakers from their more than 30 different divisions.
The topics addressed by the chemists covered drugs needing FDA approval, personal care products, emissions from chemical processing facilities, and more. Some topics bordered on the mundane, while others attracted a lot of media attention due to their focus on human health, and still others attracted attention due to their novelty. One of those novelties concerned the addition of vegetative buffers surrounding poultry processing plants to reduce the odors and particulates emitted from these facilities. In a six-year study by researchers at the Univ. of Delaware, they found that a three-row plot of trees of various species and sizes could reduce the dust emitted by large chicken plants by 56%, ammonia by 53%, and odors by 18%. It is indeed encouraging to be reaffirmed by the advances being made at a conference like the ACS that work to continue to improve the human environment.
So while the focus of several billion people around the world for the last fortnight has been on the more than 10,000 athletes from 204 countries in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the focus of the ACS’s 160,000 members (the world’s largest science organization) was on a relatively similar number of scientists (mostly from the U.S.) who were participating in a more esoteric venue in Philadelphia. Obviously the jocks got more of the world’s attention last week, but the work of the nerds in Philly didn’t go unnoticed either. We express our hearty congratulations to both participants for their often life-long dedication and the resulting accomplishments.
