Summary of Some Important Points

Scientists may not be able to anticipate the influence of their work on society. 

Chemophobia is rampant at the same time that the real risks are often unappreciated. 

In the United States, oversight of herbal remedies and dietary supplements by the Food and Drug Administration would be desirable. 

Chemical accidents will continue to happen. Human error will often be the cause. If the chemicals being used were nontoxic, the severity of the accidents would be reduced greatly. 

The Toxic Release Inventory is proving to be a good way to encourage voluntary reductions of emissions. 

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Over the last decade, some research has indicated that (1) partition coefficients (i. e.,Kd) between solid and solution phase are not measured at true equilibrium [51,59-61], (2) the use of equilibrium rather than kinetic expressions for sorption in fate and effects models is questionable [22-24,60,61], and (3) sorption kinetics for some organic compounds are complex and poorly predictable [22 - 24,26]. This is mainly due to what has recently been discussed as slow sorp-tion/desorption of organic compounds to natural solid phase particles [107, 162-164,166-182]. The following is a summary of some important points supporting this hypothesis [1,66,67,170-183] ... 

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