Overview

The chemical industry accounts for 7% of global income and 9% of global trade, adding up to US$1.5 trillion in sales in 1998, with 80% of the world's output produced by 16 countries. Production is projected to increase 85% by 2020 compared to the 1995 levels. This will be in pace with GDP growth in the United States, but at twice the per capita intensity. There will be strong market penetration by countries other than these 16, especially in commodity chemicals (OECD, 2001). Over the past half-century, the largest growth in volume of any category of materials has been in petrochemicalbased plastics; and in terms of revenue it was pharmaceuticals. The latter, in the past two decades, has become number one. Overall production has shifted from predominantly commodity chemicals to fine and specialty chemicals, and now it is the life sciences. In the United States, the chemical industry contributes 5% of GDP and adds 12% of the value to GDP by all U.S. manufacturing industries, and it is also the nation's top exporter (Lenz and Lafrance, 1996). This information speaks volumes about the importance of chemical industries in our day-to-day life and in supporting the nation's economy. But it is plagued with several problems, such as running out of petrochemical feedstock, environmental issues, toxic discharge, depletion of nonrenewable resources, shortterm and longterm health problems due to exposure of the public to chemicals and solvents, and safety concerns, among others.

About 7.1 billion pounds of more than 650 toxic chemicals...