In an announcement that stunned scientists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cancelled grant applications for what was supposed to be a $20-million, four-year green chemistry program.
The mysterious cancellation, announced on Friday, came less than three weeks before the April 25 deadline for the grant proposals.
The federal grants, which were supposed to fund four new academic centers, would have been a major new source of funding for green chemistry, a field that seeks to design environmentally friendly chemicals and processes that can replace toxic substances.
The requests for proposals may be reissued, the EPA said Monday. But the program’s sudden halt and uncertain future – and lack of explanation – have left scientists disheartened. Lab researchers had worked for months on their proposals and scientists now fear their hard work will be wasted.
“My reaction is shock that it happened and total dismay that what appeared to be a novel program was cancelled without warning or explanation,” said Eric Beckman, a chemical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh who was working on a proposal.
Terry Collins, a green chemist at Carnegie Mellon University and a pioneer in the field, said the announcement “stunned me.” Collins was on a team of green chemists and other environmental scientists that had been working for months to put together a funding proposal. West Coast institutions, including University of California, Berkeley, also were developing a proposal.
Beckman said he’d never seen such a thing happen before – a government agency pulling the plug on a request for proposals so close to its deadline – in his more than 20 years in academia.
Imo, the Regime wants the universities “hungry” and “compliant”, as to award grants Now would produce “winners” and “losers”, and Communists traditionally starve/execute fellow-travelers, rather than make enemies/the “disillusioned” of whom, may embarass them pre-election, if they are among those who didn’t get grants. Also contributions are way down,–maybe there’s some way for the Re-election committee to obtain (–through Non-proft donations, those passed-thru, of course) funding BACK from the EPA, now sitting in the Globalist, “Cat-bird-seat” over the devolution of the USA economy, imo, at the request of the BilderBORGers.
“Green chemistry” is fraud. Greenies will accept
no chemical as safe.
Modern commercial chemistry is incredibly complicated – made all the more so by megalithic agencies with conflicting agendas. Health agendas (the Ag Department, the FDA) often conflict with environmental agendas (EPA) or Safety Agendas (OSHA, NFPA). Standards for packaging and labelling vary widely among DoT, IATA, IMO, ECHA, REACh, GHS, and others.
Given the massive amount of data required to *prove* a novel substance is *completely* safe before it can find a single commercial application, the EPA may have simply realized that the task of introducing something as simple as a new disinfectant may be far more Herculean than the already cost-prohibitive efforts to develop new pharmaceuticals.
Considering the expense of bringing something new on-line, $20 million would scarcely cover a single new chemical. Funding four new academic centers in such a restrictive environment to develop ‘green’ chemical alternatives would be complete futility.
Actually, Green Chemistry is a good idea if you actually read what it all about. It is NOT the greenies idea that no chemical is safe, and in fact has little to do with calling chemicals “safe”. I suspect the pulling of this particular grant has a lot to do with the fact that Paul Anastis, the so-called “Father of Green Chemistry,” left the Agency a couple of months ago.
I read it; it is still dumb.
“It is NOT the greenies idea that no chemical is
safe.” Really? The only safe chemicals are the
ones they haven’t gotten around to attacking
yet.
You are all wrong. EPA cancelled the grant because the Obama political appointee who wrote the solicitations went back to Yale and then wanted to get his wife and colleagues (at the same institution) to apply. EPA management panicked and cancelled everything, at least for now.