Word: phthalic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...quite-but in St. Louis that view is understandable. One reason: the National Lead Co.'s titanium pigment plant routinely emits a sulphuric acid stench that is downright sickening. The city is also a booming center of the chemical industry, prolific source of exotic effluents like phthalic anhydride and chlorinated phenolic compounds, which make the eyes water and smell like the medicines children swallow while holding their noses. All too often St. Louis stinks, as one resident says, "like an old-fashioned drugstore on fire...
...Heinz M. Wuest, 76, supposedly retired but still active in his laboratory as a consultant to the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, pointed out that the thalidomide molecule contains both a form of glutamic acid and a form of phthalic acid. Glutamic acid is a common substance, whose derivatives are used as flavor additives for meat and beer. Phthalic acid is an un common drug component moderately irritating to the skin. But, said Wuest, in thalidomide the structural combination of glutamic and phthalic acids is most unusual. Experiments undertaken in three laboratories have shown that this combination causes deformities...
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