The business of chemistry - C&EN Global Enterprise (ACS Publications)

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Editorial 1155—16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036 (202) 872-4600 or (800) 227-5558 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Bibiana Campos Seijo EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Amanda Yarnell PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: Rachel Sheremeta Pepling SENIOR ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER: Marvel A. Wills BUSINESS NEW YORK CITY: (212) 608-6306 Michael McCoy, Assistant Managing Editor Rick Mullin (Senior Editor), Marc S. Reisch (Senior Correspondent), Alexander H. Tullo (Senior Correspondent), Rachel Eskenazi (Administrative Assistant). CHICAGO: (917) 710-0924 Lisa M. Jarvis (Senior Correspondent). HONG KONG: 852 9093 8445 Jean-François Tremblay (Senior Correspondent). HOUSTON: (281) 486-3900 Ann M. Thayer (Senior Correspondent). LONDON: 44 1494 564 316 Alex Scott (Senior Editor). WEST COAST: (315) 825-8566 Melody M. Bomgardner (Senior Editor) POLICY Cheryl Hogue, Assistant Managing Editor Britt E. Erickson (Senior Editor), Jessica Morrison (Associate Editor), Andrea L. Widener (Senior Editor) SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY/EDUCATION WASHINGTON: Lauren K. Wolf, Assistant Managing Editor Celia Henry Arnaud (Senior Editor), Stuart A. Borman (Senior Correspondent), Matt Davenport (Associate Editor), Stephen K. Ritter (Senior Correspondent). BERLIN: 49 30 2123 3740 Sarah Everts (Senior Editor). BOSTON: (973) 922-0175 Bethany Halford (Senior Editor). CHICAGO: (847) 679-1156 Mitch Jacoby (Senior Correspondent). WEST COAST: (626) 765-6767 Michael Torrice (Deputy Assistant Managing Editor), (925) 226-8202 Jyllian Kemsley (Senior Editor), (510) 390-6180 Elizabeth K. Wilson (Senior Editor) JOURNAL NEWS & COMMUNITY (510) 768-7657 Corinna Wu (Senior Editor) (651) 447-6226 Jessica H. Marshall (Associate Editor) ACS NEWS & SPECIAL FEATURES Linda Wang (Senior Editor) EDITING & PRODUCTION Kimberly R. Bryson, Assistant Managing Editor Sabrina J. Ashwell (Assistant Editor), Craig Bettenhausen (Associate Editor), Taylor C. Hood (Assistant Editor), Manny I. Fox Morone (Associate Editor), Alexandra A. Taylor (Assistant Editor) CREATIVE Robert Bryson, Creative Director Tchad K. Blair, Interactive Creative Director Robin L. Braverman (Senior Art Director), Ty A. Finocchiaro (Senior Web Associate), Yang H. Ku (Art Director), William A. Ludwig (Associate Designer) DIGITAL PRODUCTION Renee L. Zerby, Manager, Digital Production Luis A. Carrillo (Web Production Manager), Marielyn Cobero (Digital Production Associate), Joe Davis (Lead Digital Production Associate), Krystal King (Lead Digital Production Associate), Shelly E. Savage (Senior Digital Production Associate), Cesar Sosa (Digital Production Associate) BRANDED CONTENT Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, Executive Editor Mitch A. Garcia (Editor) SALES & MARKETING Stephanie Holland, Manager, Advertising Sales & Marketing Natalia Bokhari (Digital Advertising Operations Manager), Kirsten Dobson (Advertising and Marketing Associate), Sondra Hadden (Senior Digital Marketing Specialist), Quyen Pham (Digital Advertising & Lead Generation Associate), Ed Rather (Recruitment Advertising Product Manager) ADVISORY BOARD Deborah Blum, Raychelle Burks, Jinwoo Cheon, Kendrew H. Colton, FrançoisXavier Coudert, Cathleen Crudden, Gautam R. Desiraju, Paula T. Hammond, Matthew Hartings, Christopher Hill, Peter Nagler, Anubhav Saxena, Dan Shine, Michael Sofia, William Tolman, James C. Tung, Jill Venton, Helma Wennemers, Geofrey K. Wyatt, Deqing Zhang Published by the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY Thomas M. Connelly Jr., Executive Director & CEO Brian D. Crawford, President, Publications Division EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicole S. Sampson (Chair), ACS Board of Directors Chair Pat N. Confalone, ACS President Allison A. Campbell, Cynthia J. Burrows, Jerzy Klosin, John Russell, Gary B. Schuster Copyright 2017, American Chemical Society Canadian GST Reg. No. R127571347 Volume 95, Number 19

The business of chemistry

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et’s start this week’s editorial with a quiz. Which of the following statements about the U.S. chemical industry is true? 1. The business of chemistry is an $800 billion enterprise. 2. Chemical companies invested $93 billion in R&D in 2015. 3. More than 96% of all manufactured goods are directly touched by the business of chemistry. 4. All of the above If you guessed 4, you’re right, according to American Chemistry Council data. The data are remarkable and are telling of the crucial role that chemistry and the chemical enterprise play in terms of economic welfare in the U.S. (To learn more, see page 20.) So the chemical industry should get some respect for that, right? Right, it should. But it doesn’t. Or at least it doesn’t feel like it does. The business of chemistry not getting enough respect for what it does is one of the points that Mark Jones, executive external strategy and communications fellow at Dow Chemical, made in the recent ACS webinar, “The Good, the Bad & the Uncertain: Public Perception of the Chemical Enterprise.” And of course the $64,000 question is: Why this lack of respect? Beyond being an economic engine, the chemical industry is a significant employer: In the U.S., it supports 810,000 skilled, good-paying jobs. For every chemistry job, 6.3 other jobs are created, Jones told William F. Carroll, a former ACS president and moderator of the webinar. The chemical industry creates products that make our lives safer, healthier, and more sustainable. The examples are innumerable, and Jones quoted just a few: Thanks to lightweight materials such as carbon fiber, the energy required to move travelers around by air has dropped by 60% since 1970. Thanks to the development of high-performance, durable materials, the average age of cars in the U.S. has gone from 8.4 to 11.4 years over a period of 20 years. And there are loads more. The chemical industry’s products have provided greater energy efficiency, multiplied agricultural yield, and much more. But chemists also get stuff wrong, and the business of chemistry does things like produce refrigerants that create a hole in the ozone layer. A problem is solved, but

another one is often created. Good and bad frequently go together. Here, Jones cited an excellent example that C&EN covered a couple of years ago: Fritz Haber, one of the most controversial chemists of the 20th century, who, following the theme of the webinar, embodies the good and the bad simultaneously. Haber received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a way to make ammonia at industrial scale. But he also supervised the development and first large-scale deployment of chemical agents in warfare. The industry pays a high price for the mistakes it makes, and so it should. The data mentioned in the quiz are impressive, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that getting it wrong has the potential to harm people and the environment. The chemical industry has a huge responsibility, and the level of accountability placed on it is probably greater than many other equally financially contributing industries. We must also accept that science is an iterative process, and we don’t know what we don’t know. In the case of Haber, he was helping feed the world with one hand and helping kill it with the other and doing so knowingly. In the case of chlorofluorocarbons, we were unknowingly creating a hole in the ozone layer. It took the industry two tries, but now it is selling substitutes that are both ozone-layer and climate-change friendly. I’d say the industry gets respect, but that is often overshadowed by any mistakes that it makes, which greatly affect public trust, sometimes irreparably. Chemistry is a very powerful science, not only because it explains why things are the way they are, but also because it offers the ability to make things, solve problems, and save lives. The chemical industry is at the core of these efforts.

Editor-in-chief @BibianaCampos

Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.

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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MAY 8, 2017