Project
Number: 2005-029-1-050
Title: Educational material for raising awareness of the Chemical
Weapons Convention and the multiple uses of chemicals
Task Group
Chairman: Alastair Hay
Members: Edwin D
Becker, Alberto
Fratadocchi, Peter
G. Mahaffy, Robert
Mathews, Brian Rappert,
Richard Robson, O.P.
Sharma, Rolando
A. Spanevello, Natalia
P. Tarasova, and Ralf
Trapp
Completion Date: 2007 - project completed
Objective:
To develop educational material for IUPAC chemists and chemistry teachers
about the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The material will start
with the beneficial use of chemicals, and raise awareness about the
possible misuses of chemicals, including the production of chemical
weapons. Students will be encouraged to develop their own codes-of-conduct.
> see plan for
Monday 6 Aug 2007 Workshop
Description:
The CWC and the role of chemists was the subject of a joint meeting
of IUPAC and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
held in Oxford (UK) from 9-12 July 2005. (see
project details) Two recommendations of the meeting were
(i) the need for chemists to develop their own codes-of-conduct, and
(ii) for the development of educational material which describes the
CWC and the obligations it places on the 160 member states who are signatories.
It was felt important to place the CWC in the context of the beneficial
uses and misuses of chemicals, and raise awareness of multiple uses
of the same substances.
Chemists played a formative role in the development of chemical warfare
(CW) and the CWC aims to prevent any recurrence of this activity. But
very few chemists know much about the CWC and what it covers, and few
chemistry students realize that beneficial substances can be misused
to produce chemical weapons. Educational material will fill this gap
and help get the message across to those in a position to harm the convention
but, more importantly, to encourage the peaceful uses of chemistry,
which are legion.
We aim to encourage chemists to consider the issue and to engage in
debate. Educational material will briefly describe the CWC and the types
of chemical weapons used in the past. Three case studies will encourage
much further discussion. The first will be on thiodiglycol, a solvent
used to make the CW agent mustard gas, but which has many other legitimate
uses. The second will be on how to identify orders for chemicals from
suppliers which ought to raise suspicions about their legitimacy. The
third will encourage students to think about what they do in the laboratory/industry
and to develop their own codes-of-conduct.
Material will be provided for the basis of lectures and interactive
workshops for chemistry educators. Reference sources will be provided
to encourage wider enquiry. While much background work to prepare materials
can be done electronically, it will be vital for key members of the
team to meet in person to produce a draft set of materials and test
it with teachers. This will be done in Moscow at a science education
conference for secondary school teachers on October 30, 2005. Comments
will be considered and the material modified before retesting of the
package in 2006 in Delhi, Canada, the UK, and Seoul (at the 19th ICCE
Conference). The final step in this project will be to identify partners
who can participate in the revision, web delivery, translation into
the five OPCW official languages, and broader global dissemination to
chemistry educators. Pilot materials will be made available on both
the OPCW and IUPAC websites at the end of this project.
Progress:
Moscow at the end of October 2005 was the setting for the first workshop
assessment of educational material produced for the project on multiple
uses of chemicals and professional codes of conduct. Some 25 academics,
high school teachers and chemistry students gathered in a seminar room
at the D.Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology to consider 4
papers. Produced over a couple of months after the project start in
August 2005 the papers covered 4 topics. These included an introduction
to multiple use issues; background on the Chemical Weapons Convention
( CWC ); toxicology of selected chemical warfare agents; and codes of
conduct. To facilitate their use all the papers were translated into
Russian for the workshop and readers were asked about their suitability
as teaching aids.
This first workshop was a trial run. Papers were introduced to the
audience who were then asked to break into smaller groups and consider
a number of questions. These referred to the subject matter in the papers
but went far wider and covered questions about control of chemicals,
availability of information and the responsibility of users of chemicals.
Peter Mahaffy and Alastair Hay led the workshops with Natalia Tarasova
translating. Discussion was lively and the feedback sessions equally
so. Overall, the participants enjoyed the workshops finding them lively,
dynamic and democratic. A wide range of opinions were expressed and
it was clear that the topics had generated plenty of discussion, which
was their aim. As for the working papers all were considered suitable
as teaching aids with some slight modifications needed on two. The changes
have been made.
Two presentations on the work covered by this IUPAC project were given
by Alastair Hay to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons ( OPCW ) in the Hague. The OPCW oversees the CWC internationally.
A meeting of national authorities at the OPCW was the venue for the
first presentation on 5 November 2005. National Authorities carry out
the day-to-day work in individual countries to collect data, organise
inspections and uphold the CWC. The second presentation on 9 February
2006 was to the Scientific Advisory Board of the OPCW. Both meetings
endorsed the work of the IUPAC project group and offered to help wherever
they could.
Further workshops are now to be held at the University of Leeds in
the UK, and in Russia over the next few months to increase the audience.
The Leeds workshops will test different approaches to using the prepared
written material. Feedback from the latest workshops together with the
working papers, in what is hoped will be their final form, will be presented
at the 19th International Conference on Chemical Education in Seoul
in August 2006.
July 2007 - A workshop on this project is to
take place during the IUPAC Congress in Torino on Monday, 6 Aug 2007,
at 10:30am and as part of a session titled Duality of chemistry for
both useful purposes and chemical weapons.
Session program:
- 10:30-11:10 - Ralf Trapp, The duality of chemistry for peaceul purposes
versus chemical weapons
- 11:10-11:25 - G. Picheca, The operating role of the italian National
Authority in the implementaion of the CWC
- 11:25-11:40 - P. Palanque, The universality of OPCW in the world
chemistry
- 11:40-12.50 - workshop/discussion panel
Multiple uses of chemicals and chemical weapons: the role for science
education in rising awareness, led by Alastair Hay, Alberto Breccia
Fratadocchi, Peter Mahaffy, and Natalia Tarasova
[Check
Congress program
- session 1 for room assignment and last minute updates]
The background materials to be used in the workshop have been piloted
earlier in Moscow, Seoul, Bologna, Leeds. Following comments from those
pilots, four papers have been produced, written by Peter Mahaffy, Alastair
Hay, Ted Becker, Ralf Trapp, and Brian Rappert. These papers have been
translated by OPCW into their five other official languages and also
used to produce a web version for which a pilot version can be seen
at: <www.iupac.org/multiple-uses-of-chemicals>.
This website is to provide resource materials to help teachers and students
understand the multiple uses of chemicals, learn about the Chemical
Weapons Convention, and develop codes of conduct to prevent harmful
uses.
Project completed - A final report has been published in Chem
Int Nov. 2007 (pp. 23-25) titled 'Multiple
Uses of Chemicals: Clear Choices or Dodgy Deals'. A version of that
report has also been presented at the OPCW Academic Forum in The Hague,
on 18-19 September 2007, and will appear in the Academic Forum proceedings.
Last update: 28 November 2007
<project announcement published in
Chem.
Int.
May-June 2006, p. 18>
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