We live, like it or not, in what author Hugh D. Crone calls the "new chemical age." In his book, Chemicals & Society, Crone, an expert on personnel protection at the Materials Research Laboratories in Melbourne, Australia, offers a detailed look at the chemical age and its impact on society. His aim is to provide the reader With the technical background needed to make rational judgments about the fruits of the chemist's labor.
Using a no-nonsense, utilitarian approach, Crone looks hard at technical problems such as analysis of purity, toxicity and effective. ness. He gives special attention to chemicals frequently in the news— herbicides, pesticides, drugs and carcinogens—and also writes of the structural polymers—nylon, poly styrene and the like. The chapter on analysis, which examines the pitfalls of even the most sophisticated attempts to guarantee the absence of a harmful impurity, is especially useful. Zero levels simply don't exist as ...
