Chemistry World Blog

the conference dinner last night was a very pleasant cruise up and down the Danube. A great captive audience for RSC journals commissioning staff. I predict a sharp upturn in articles from conference delegates (many Nobel laureates among them) in RSC journals and books soon.

The competition for best young chemist was held yesterday. It was won by Jonathan Nitschke from the department of organic chemistry in at Geneva University. The runner-up was the very gracious Lee Cronin of Glasgow University.

All the talks on food chemistry seem to be accompanied by free cereal bars. Is this a conspiracy? Are we being reassured that ‘chemicals’ in food are safe? Passclaim is an EU project set up to add scientific weight to any claims made by manufacturere that their food has any life saving effects.

Oysters and mussels off the coast of America sprung into action in the aftermath of the devastating hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year. As the one year anniversary of the disaster is upon us, scientists involved in Mussel Watch, a project run by the US’s National oceanic and atmospheric administration, have been busily analysing the data from the molluscs closest to the site.

The 20 year programme has been using mussels and oysters to chart levels of trace elements and organic pollutants.

‘After the storm it looks like contaminant levels were actually lower,’ said Gunnar Lauenstein, Mussel Watch programme manager. Levels of trace elements rose – but this could be a consequence of crustal erosion – so the water washed the earth’s surface off into the sea. And at the same time washed out PHAs, DDT, and PCBs among others.

So the consequences of the storm on human health – with respect to pollutants and fertilisers making it into our food chain – seem to be minimal, at least that’s what the mussel watchers say.

Poster sessions here in Hungary include a manic half hour (called an appetiser) where presenters are given three whole minutes to talk about their poster. A great idea, but one which should be rebranded as a competition in talking really quickly.

The most striking lesson I learned was that environmental chemistry involves trips to the French Alps in winter AND summer, (to investigate effects of aerosols); trips to the beach in San Sebastian, Spain (to track CO, NO and sulphur dioxide – and the trip to the beach might be an exaggeration but there was an aerial photo showing swathes of stunning coastline).

I also learned what allelopathy is. It’s the plant world’s answer to St John’s wort. Actually, it’s any process in which secondary metabolites from plants or microorganisms affect the growth of other biological systems. The discipline is growing in importance as an alternative to pesticides, and researchers in Denmark are looking at cereal allelochemicals in soil – and the perhaps overlooked related toxicity that comes from these ‘natural’ pesticides breaking down in the soil to make much more biologically active compounds.

Environmental chemistry has its less glamorous side. Analysis of wastewater treatment plants in Romania for example. Solid phase extraction followed by GC/MS gives lists of chemicals that are not completely removed from waste water. 90 per cent of caffeine is removed, and the same for ibuprofen. But other molecules are not so well removed. Unfortunately the speaker was going so fast that it was hard to work out which ones…

Does the desulfurisation of fuel lower the atmospheric pollution with aromatic sulfur compounds and phenols? was the quizzical title of one talk today. The answer is an enigmatic ‘maybe’. No doubt hydrodesulferisation has lowered sulfur levels, especially in Germany where legal limits are 10ppm – the lowest in the world. But Jan Andersson and his team have discovered that street air from Munster, Germany, contained organosulfur compounds not usually associated with diesel fuel. Ansersson is now trying to fathom whether these are an effect of cleaner fuel or coming from somehwere else. Levels of sulfur-phenol compounds are higher in summer – which rules out one hypothesis Andersson had about these organics comeing from domestic heating oil. The highest levels recorded of dibenzothiophene were 2.1 nanograms per square metre. These are not huge amounts but Andersson still wants to know where they’re coming from. He told me that he’s going to monitor air from motorways and also directly measure emissions from an engine.

Sulfur removal has decreased the levels of acid rain – great news for the environment. But this has now prompted some farmers to add sulfur to their fields to make their crops grow.

I often wonder what Nobel laureates hope for once they have received the coveted prize. And now we know – for Jean Marie Lehn, winner of the chemistry prize in 1987 for his work on supramolecular chemistry – has told this meeting that this gathering of chemists from Europe for the first time is ‘a dream come true’.

Lehn went on to show how chemistry can rival physics and biology in answering life’s ‘big’ questions. How? By tackling the complex problem of complex matter – how do molecules in nature manage to organise themselves to work so efficiently in phenomenally intricate systems. He is looking at self-organising systems. Maybe one day self organisation could harness the power of nanotechnology to build something as powerful as the brain. So it seems Nobel prize winners have plenty to dream about.