Toxin-blocking clothes comfy and renewable - American Chemical Society Research

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Tuesday, March 30, 1999, in the San Mercury News

Toxin-blocking clothes comfy and renewable

Researchers at the University of California- have developed a process

that could make pesticide-protection clothing as comfortable as an old pair

of jeans.

The research, reported at a meeting last week of the American Chemical

Society, is intended to protect farmworkers from pesticides. Rather than

blocking the chemicals, the goal is to destroy them, by incorporating into

the surface of ordinary fabric a compound that breaks down the harmful

chemicals on contact. By wearing clothes made from the treated fabric, a

farmworker would become a walking detoxification plant, rendering a

pesticide harmless before it reached the skin.

The compound -- called a hydantoin -- must be activated by the addition of a

chlorine atom. And that leads to another advantage: Washing clothes in

bleach renews their pesticide-destroying capability.

Researchers found the fabric destroyed up to 99 percent of some pesticides,

but cautioned the treatment has not been tested with organophosphates, which

account for a large portion of pesticides.

Mars shows Surveyor another unusual face

Mars seemed to be smiling for the camera when a NASA spacecraft began

mapping the Red Planet this month.

The ``Happy Face Crater'' was captured in a wide-angle image recorded by

Mars Global Surveyor's camera on Monday. The feature, which has a much more

mirthful appearance than the better known but decidedly grim ``Face on

Mars,'' is actually the 134-mile-wide Galle Crater on the eastern side of a

basin called Argyre Planitia.

Features within the circular crater form the eyes and mouth.

In color, the picture has a bluish-white tone caused by wintertime frost,

said Malin Space Science Systems Inc., which operates Surveyor's camera from

San Diego and released the images Thursday.

The Happy Face was first noticed in images sent back to Earth during the

Viking 1 mission to Mars in 1976.

Mars Global Surveyor, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was

launched in 1996 and reached the planet in September 1997. It finally began

its main science mission this month after a long delay in achieving the

proper orbit for mapping.

Hale-Bopp may have primordial origins

The comet Hale-Bopp may be brimming with some of the primordial material

from which the sun and the planets formed more than 4 billion years ago,

researchers reported this month in the journal Nature.

California Institute of Technology scientists who tuned radio telescopes

onto the comet's nucleus as it cut across the solar system in 1997 found

vents spewing a volatile mixture of gas and dust into space.

The images suggest that 15 percent to 40 percent of Hale-Bopp's mass is

pristine interstellar material, while the rest has been transformed

extensively during the comet's passage through space.

The researchers found two icy jets erupting with forms of primordial

deuterium-hydrogen, the poisonous gas hydrogen cyanide and a form of

hydrogen called heavy water.