After the Second World War

In 1947 the Town and Coxmtry Planning Act was passed. This required all new landfill sites to obtain planning permission. The new legislation did not apply to existing sites and there was still no consideration of managing leachate or gas emissions from sites and no effort to control the types of waste accepted. 

By the 1960s increasing amoxmts of industrial and chemical waste were being deposited in some landfills, and after one incident, when drums of cyanide 

In the 1970s waste began to be compacted using steel wheeled compactors. This reduced the void ratio and increased the density. Modem versions tend to break up the waste and make it more homogeneous, which may speed up biodegradation. 

Just two years after the Deposit of Poisonous Waste Act was passed it was replaced by the Control of PolluHon Act 1974. Earlier legislation on waste disposal had been led by a public health perspective with no concern for the wider environmental issues related to leachate and landfill gas. There was no classification of waste and no control over what types of waste were deposited in landfill sites. There are numerous stories of dead cows, chemical drums etc. being deposited in landfill sites. Sites were usually capped off with a layer of soil to cover the waste and without any thought of controlling gas emissions or rainfall infiltration. 

The Act also required consideration of the wider environmental effects of waste disposal due to leachate generation. However, there were some serious faults in the Act including the following  

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The basic ideas of thermoelectricity have been known for nearly two centuries, but until well after the Second World War the primary use was for temperature measurement (qv) using metallic wires. Then, upon improvements in semiconductor technology, thermoelectric power generation and refrigeration came under serious consideration. 

After the second World War, German firms manufacturing indigotin faced serious competition from Knglish and American dyestuff companies. To counteract this, the Germans developed continuous operations for manufacturing the dye. However, because of the complexity of the equipment and the operations (126), the batch process is still the preferred manufacturing method. 

The use of casein plastics was severely curtailed with the development of synthetic polymers, particularly after the Second World War. In addition stricter regulations concerning health and safety at work will have caused attention to be drawn to the formolising process. In the experience of the author the environment surrounding the formolising baths is most unpleasant and this will have accelerated the demise of the casein manufacturing industry. 

After the Second World War, the technical innovations, both in steelmaking and in the physical metallurgy of steels, continued apace. A number of industrial research laboratories were set up around the world, of which perhaps the most influential was the laboratory of the US Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania, where some world-... 

Acrylics are some of the most common and most versatile materials used in the PSA industry. Although the basic monomers and some of the acrylic polymers have been known for about a century, their commercial application as pressure sensitive adhesives did not happen until after the Second World War. 

The synthesis of toxic organic compounds by humans, and their release into the natural environment began to assume significant proportions during the 20th century, especially after the Second World War. Prior to 1900, the chemical industry was relatively small, and the largest chemical impact of humans on the environment was probably dne to the release of hydrocarbons, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), with the combnstion of coal and other fuels. 

HCH, sometimes misleadingly termed benzene hexachloride (BHC), exists in a number of different isomeric forms of which the gamma isomer has valuable insecticidal properties. These were discovered during the 1940s, and HCH came to be widely used as an insecticide to control crop pests and certain ectoparasites of farm animals after the Second World War. Crude technical BHC, a mixture of isomers, was the first form of HCH to be marketed. In time, it was largely replaced by a refined product called lindane, containing 99% or more of the insecticidal gamma isomer. 

After the Second World War, development of synthetic FBAs was extremely rapid. Several hundred commercial products, representing a wide variety of chemical types, have since been marketed, with FBAs probably corresponding to approximately 10% of world demand for dyestuffs. Several excellent books and reviews of the chemistry, application and properties of FBAs have appeared [3-13]. 

The mural paintings in the Monumental Cemetery of Pisa were detached in a restoration after the Second World War, and were later restored on several occasions. They showed an advanced state of degradation. In Figure 11.10 the pyrograms of two samples collected from the paint surfaces (CSG 13bis from Universal Judgement and CSA 5b from Stories of Holy Fathers ) are compared with the pyrograms of nitrocellulose, starch and arabic gum. 

After the Second World War a gas-to-liquids facility that employed an iron-based high-temperature Fischer-Tropsch (Fe-HTFT) process was constructed at Brownsville, Texas. The technology was developed by Hydrocarbon Research, Inc.,20 and the commercial facility was operated by the Carthage Hydrocol Company. The Hydrocol plant was in commercial operation during the period 1951-1957, and it was shut down mainly for economic reasons (the oil price was around US 2 per barrel at that time). 

Mark s open feelings about those who drove him out of Austria in 1938 are curiously free of contempt. He describes the Nazis as "misguided", and those scientists who supported them as "unfortunate". Before emmigrating from Austria he attended a conference in Mainz where a Professor Stuart sneered, "what are YOU doing here " Yet, Mark has never criticized his antagonist. After the Second World War, Mark was, in fact, very active in the reestablishment German and Austrian scientists to the World scientific community. His first action on returning to Vienna in 1947 was to call on his indirect successor at the First Chemical Institute, Professor L. Ebert, and reassure him that he would "never attempt to drive him out of the position he filled in such an excellent manner."... 

Mark s international prestige was assured before he immigrated to Brooklyn in 1940, but it was his second career, that of world traveler and "Johnny Appleseed" of polymer science, which has made him the patriarch of the discipline. This new, yet not so different, Mark was created by the increased managerial and editorial responsibilities he voluntarily assumed after the Second World War. 

Studies in radiation chemistry were renewed after the Second World War in Perrin s laboratory, which now was directed by Edmond Bauer, with Michel Magat one of the main researchers in the field. See Gueron and Magat, "A History," 20. 

Yet, while changes in instrumentation were to affect virtually all chemists, certainly after the Second World War, the application of advanced mathematics, including quantum mechanics, also was revolutionary for chemists, including the majority who did not practice quantum chemistry or chemical physics. 

Research in fundamental chemistry, physical chemistry, and chemical physics was carried out only at Paris, Nancy, and Strasbourg. Advanced physical chemistry was taught only at four universities in France immediately after the Second World War. 132 As we saw in chapter 6, the interest of Prevost and Kirrmann in ionic and electronic theories of reaction mechanisms developed later than in England and took a different turn than the Robinson-Ingold theory. 133... 

Insects are very sensitive to fluorophosphonates, so that the compound parathion was synthesised and used as an insecticide soon after the Second World War. However, it entered the food chain and eventually found its way into mammals and caused death. An important breakthrough occurred with the synthesis of malathion, an insecticide which has high toxicity to insects, where it is converted to malaoxon, a potent acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. However, malathion is much less toxic to mammals, since it is readily detoxified (Appendix 3.8). 

During and after the Second World War, attempts were made to graft tissues from one individual to another, especially skin grafts in order to reduce disfigurement caused by bums. Unfortunately, the grafts were always rapidly... 

The modern medicines regulation started only afterbreakthrough progress in the 19th century life sciences, especially in chemistry, physiology and pharmacology, which laid a solid foundation for the modern drug research and development and started to flourish after the second World War. 

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