Difficulties of forecasting health implications.

I was planning to ask the audience a few questions-not what the conference gave to them-for which I have no answers. I thought I could get information about some compounds by inviting these experts but they declined: the reason some gave was that there was nothing as yet to report about health effects. The first problem, spontaneous copolymeriza-tion, is not acute but probably will arise in the future. Today this process is still too expensive for production and only the developers of these products at this stage are interested in their properties, but the principles of formation of alternating copolymers by spontaneous copoly-merization (1) are interesting. I don't know details about the products, but the reason I raised the question is that most of the compounds II, IV, VI, VIII, except for the acryla-mide (which is neurotoxic) are carcinogenic alkylating agents. If the process materialized into full industrial usage, we could have a potentially serious health hazard. The odd-numbered compounds (I, III, V, VII) with which the alkylating agents react to form polymers, could be replaced by the bases of human DNA. That would create carcinogenic or mutagenic hazards. Could anyone here predict that this is not likely to be a process of the future, that it will not be developed, or that it could be "han-dled with care" because of the recognition that this would be an occupational hazard? Another type of polymer is the class of poly-organophosphazenes (IX) which are formed from simple inorganic starting materials, namely, ammonium chloride and phosphorus pentachloride, which form a trimer which is then reacted with organic groups such as amines, to give a whole variety of either cross-linking or straight-chain polymers which may have properties of interest to industry (2).