Rio De Janeiro Meeting on World Pollution

    Cheryl Hogue reported in Chemical Engineering News (6/25/12) that 45,000 people and 200 companies met at Rio de Janeiro to consider making the world a safer place through reduction of pollution. They like to call it "greening", but I think that's too non-specific a term. I prefer "reduction of pollution".
    While I don't have the complete agenda, Cheryl lists a number of subjects, on which I would like to comment.
    The subject of sound management of commercial chemicals in use and waste throughout their lifecycle particularly met my eye. I generally agree with the importance of the subject, but disagree with any of the implications involved. The agreement in Rio de Janeiro presumably confirmed the idea that underdeveloped countries should be able to use regulatory systems developed by other more advanced countries. Cheryl did not specifically say so, but we have seen the subject surface before and always under the proposal that chemical companies should be giving away their know-how. I repeat what I've said before. Know-how is private property and anyone wishing to use it should be required to purchase it, since it has been achieved by the owner at some considerable expense. More specifically, an underdeveloped country should not be able to obtain toxicological and similar information previously submitted to other government regulatory agencies as confidential know-how. In other words there should be no free-ride on the data of the originator. In the US, we have Manufacturer Safety Data Sheets, which contain substantial toxicological information available to chemical product users for avoidance of health problems. There were also suggestions on waste disposal with the same purpose. If a potential manufacture in an undeveloped country has intention of producing, he can either use the limited available information from the MSDS, which may be satisfactory to his government, or if not, he should be required to license the necessary know-how including basic toxicological data from the original generator.
    A second subject was so-called "challenges posed by electronic waste and plastic waste". As I see it, there is no environmental challenge. Electronic waste and plastic waste should simply be buried in landfills, which would be available in the future for mining.
    Next was persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Included in this group were hydrofluorocarbons (HFC's), which are widely used as refrigerants and replace previous refrigerants that were claimed to deplete the ozone layer in the upper stratosphere. The complaint now is that the HFC's are potent greenhouse gases, which is another ridiculous assertion, because their concentrations in the atmosphere would be so low as to be insignificant.
    The only good news is that I didn't see anything about carbon dioxide emission control, which would really be disastrous on a worldwide economic basis.
    Next, there was reference to greener government procurement and joint initiatives related to sustainability. Those general terms are only used to incite the general public to agreeing to the setting of controls which would be not only detrimental to local economies but to the world at large.