Chemistry and its products today play an important role in almost all industrial ac tivities. Chemistry has captured our homes. We are supplied with new articles in an ever-increasing stream. New uses are being discovered. Old products disappear. Continuing and fast expansion is expected for the chemical industry in its proper sense. The reason for this is, of course, that chemistry has created products which meet requirements that we consider urgent or which in different ways make work easier, and make us more efficient, thereby increasing our standard of living in a wide sense: in terms of money, more spare time, social security, better education and better public health services. But a high standard of living also implies a good living environment. A lot of what has been done in praiseworthy aspiration of a better means of support and an im proved standard of living has involved a wasting of non-renewable natural resources. The products themselves or their waste products may pose a threat to the objectives we are trying to attain.
