a plea from your chair

A plea from your Chair F ellow members of Chemical Health and Safety, as Chair of this Division I want to encourage each of you to join in and help make our Division, and this publication, meet your needs both now and into the future. In order to provide you with the information and interaction best suited to your professional or personal situation, this Division requests your input. My primary goal for the Division this year is to involve as many of you as possible in both our short- and long- range planning. I am particularly inter- ested in reaching out to our new or young members to ®nd out directly from youÐis there anything our Divi- sion could be doing to help you get more out of your investment in this particular aspect of your professional association with the American Chemi- cal Society (ACS)? In order to encourage fresh ideas and garner new input I am also intent on getting more of you directly involved in the governance and activities of this Division. Our Division is somewhat unusual within the ACS, in that our member- ship represents a particularly broad diversity of backgrounds and interests. Our members come from academia, industry, government agencies, and from the ranks of private consultants and public organizations. Such breadth makes it even more complex to provide the services our member- ship deserves. We are very fortunate to have a large percentage of our early and founding members still highly active in divisional affairs and this availability offers our newer members the opportunity to have a great deal of interaction with some very knowledge- able and in¯uential individuals. Most of you know that the last couple of years have been ®nancially dif®cult ones, especially with regard to professional associations. In such times it is even more important that we do everything in our power to insure that we provide the most essential and desirable services to you, our mem- bership. The tragedy that occurred on September 11 and the biological terror- ism that struck in October of last year have made the safety profession even more taxing. Many of us are facing increased workloads and unusually dif®cult problems in keeping our colleagues safe and productive. Opportu- nities to quickly share ideas and solutions become even more important under such trying circumstances. The Division is trying to meet this challenge through both programming and publi- cationÐbut we need you, our members, to let us know whether or not our efforts are succeeding. I would like to mention that I am very encouraged by the continuing quality and expansive range of articles found in Chemical Health & SafetyÐ our Division's publication. I offer my personal thanks to the members of our editorial board (and in particular to our Editor, Harry J. Elston) for the outstanding job they have done in bringing us articles that are of the highest quality as well as practical rele- vance to our readership. I congratulate our Program Co-chairs, James Kapin and Ralph Stuart, on their efforts to expand the number of papers and the scope of programming available to those fortunate enough to be able to attend ACS National Meetings. In the same vein, I would like to offer my sincere appreciation to the efforts of a special few of our Division who repeatedly go out of their way to offer high-quality workshops available to our members attending the National Meetings at fee levels signi®cantly below market. Finally, I offer my gra- titude to my colleagues serving on the executive board of the Division of Che- mical Health and Safety for their ser- vice and professionalism. Again, to youÐour newest and youngest members of this Division: I want your input and involvement. Do not hesitateÐplease contact meÐ or any board member, and let us know what we can do to help you! (http:// dchas.cehs.siu.edu/committees.htm) John Palmer GUEST EDITORIAL 4 ß Division of Chemical Health and Safety of the American Chemical Society 1074-9098/02/$22.00 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII S1074-9098(02)00308-8

a plea from your chair

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