Filling the Knowledge Gap

This guest editorial is by Nance K. Dicciani, Honeywell Specialty Materials' president and CEO and chair of the American Chemistry Council's board committee with oversight for its Long-Range Research Initiative.

The chemical industry is unique in being simultaneously a broad, essential catalyst for human advancement and the target of suspicion and mistrust.

Be it through life-saving pharmaceuticals or new materials that make our computers faster or our soldiers safer, chemistry is critical to nearly every facet of human advancement. But at the same time, discoveries over the past decades that chemicals have had unintended consequences have fueled misgivings about their use.

This suspicion, born from a paucity of real information--or worse, from misinformation--has clouded public debate on chemicals and sometimes has led to misguided regulation or legislation.

But how does one fight suspicion and fear? With fact. Indeed, to paraphrase the eminent American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson, the antidote to fear is knowledge.

A little more than five years ago, the chemical industry, led by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), recognized the need for more scientific fact to ensure that public discourse and resulting regulation are based on data.

It did so by creating the Long-Range Research Initiative, also known as LRI. Its goal: to fill the knowledge gap that often distorts public debate on chemicals and replace misinformation with scientific data. It set out to do this by funding third-party independent research on the potential impacts that chemicals may have on the health of human and wildlife populations, as well as on the environment. Research results belong to the investigator and are published without approval from any LRI committee or ACC.

As chair of the ACC board committee with oversight responsibilities for LRI, I am pleased to say the initiative has produced impressive results. In pure numbers, over 60 projects have been completed under LRI, 300 articles have been published in peer-reviewed publications and 80 in other publications, and 980 presentations have been delivered at scientific meetings. This research has improved the fundamentals of risk assessment. For example, investigators have developed models of how inhaled reactive gases are deposited in the nasal cavity of laboratory animals and humans. This enables assessors to quantitatively extrapolate the dose delivered to sensitive tissues in a rat to those of a human. Still other research has shown the influence of age and genetics on how chemicals move through the body. With such information, assessors can better predict which populations might be more susceptible to exposure.

LRI has developed partnerships with the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and other government organizations to make more solid, independent research available to serve as the cornerstone of public policy. Importantly, this effort has been international as well; LRI data and findings have been shared through the International Council of Chemical Associations. More information on the scope and success of the program can be found in LRI's five-year report, "Research That Makes a Difference," accessible at www.uslri.org.

On a broader public-perception level, LRI has helped to fulfill the product stewardship aspect of the industry's crucial Responsible Care efforts by demonstrating that the chemical industry community is committed to safeguarding the environment, health, and safety.

The LRI-sponsored work is continuing today, with research on how to improve ways to detect and evaluate chemicals that may affect the endocrine, immune, and nervous systems; how to better assess effects on the developing organism and children; how to interpret biomonitoring data; and how to measure human exposure more efficiently and effectively.

But clearly, LRI has much more it must achieve, not only to ensure that tomorrow's regulations and public policies are based on facts, but also to ensure that the chemical industry can continue to be the enabling force for human advancement.

I encourage all readers not only to learn more and tell others about LRI and its importance to our industry, but also to find out how you can play a part in funding or guiding LRI efforts going forward.

Nance K. Dicciani
Honeywell Specialty Materials