July 30,
2010
Here We Go Again!
Dyna-Aqua Oil-SorbTM was
developed as a novel and superior solution to
address the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.
We set out to create a means to pick up both surface
and subsurface oil being released from the well, as
well as being able to adsorb the toxic fumes and
chemical surfactant intentionally released to alter
the size of oil globules. What was not recognized by
any of us was the sheer number of oil spills
occurring on nearly a daily basis and how limited
current solutions are in addressing these maritime
needs.
There is no doubt that the media
has helped to fuel attention on finding superior
cleanup solutions. None of the newer technical
advances were available to Exxon when Prince William
Sound became the site of the Valdez oil spill in
late March, 1989. In great part this calamity was
the driving force for many of the advances in
environmental cleanup and similarly solutions will
be the outcome from the Deepwater Horizon explosion
in the Gulf of Mexico.
But look at the papers every day
and there is a new spill. Last week it was the spill
in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Northeast China.
This week the accident is more than 1,000,000
gallons of oil which has spilled into the Kalamazoo
River, a major waterway that flows into Lake
Michigan, about 60 miles away. The leak came from a
30 inch pipeline built in 1969 that carries 8
millions gallons of oil daily from Griffith, Indiana
to Sarnia, Ontario. Enbridge Energy Partners, which
is the owner of the pipeline does not believe that
the oil would reach the Great Lakes.
Have we heard this before?
Already the oil has reached to Morrow Lake, a big
lake which is near Kalamazoo, Michigan. The amount
of boom placed on the Kalamazoo River now covers
28,000 feet. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
warns of a “tragedy of historic proportions” if the
oil reaches Lake Michigan. The Environmental
Protection Agency has now requested that the Coast
Guard make $ 2 million available to fund the federal
government’s operations in response to the spill and
the Environmental Protection Agency will move
additional vessels into the area within days to
assist in the response.
Booms are great, but they are
not the answer. There are newer and superior
solutions and DAI is delighted to have one of them
with our introduction of Dyna-Aqua Oil SorbTM. This
technology provides a system combining the
absorptive power of cotton with the adsorptive power
of activated alumina and allows most of the
recovered oil to be recycled.
July 29,
2010
China, as Your Economy Strengthens You Must Wake
Up to Your Environmental Responsibilities
China is the world’s economic
powerhouse. It has overtaken the United States as
the greatest consumer of energy and its’ economic
might is still roaring at full throttle. Your export
strength and investment in infrastructure are the
envy of the world. Great environmental sacrifices
have been made in the name of economic progress. Now
some of that money made for the sake of growth has
to be poured back into cleanup up the environment.
And China, this money has to be invested soon. For
much like China sends it material goods overseas, so
it sends its pollution overseas in the water, in the
air and in the production of the enormous carbon
footprint which is so heavily contributing to global
warming and the deterioration of our entire planet.
The stories of pollution become
more startling every day. A new government study
released in China this week noted that in the
Capitol City of Beijing air quality violated the
World Health Organization standards more than 80% of
the time during the last quarter of 2008. And this
was occurred after the closure or relocation of many
factories in order to provide good air quality for
the Summer Olympic games. The report also stated
that more than 25% of the countries’ rivers, lakes
and streams were too contaminated to be used for
drinking water. Due to the release of particulates
from coal burning factories and power plants acid
rain has become a major problem in nearly200 of the
440 cities where the Ministry of Environmental
Protection monitors air quality.
As noted in the New York Times,
state media in China have reported in the past two
weeks on a pipeline explosion dumping thousands of
gallons of oil into the Yellow Sea, the toxic
effluent from a copper mine killing tons in fish in
Fujian Province, and dozens of children being
poisoned by lead from illegal gold production in
Yunnan Providence.
The sad thing is that all of
these problems are resolvable. How tragic and sad.
We as well as other companies in the environmental
cleanup business have solutions for all of these
problems. Water purification, air scrubbers and
heavy metal cleanup are all simple to achieve and
affordable solutions are available which will not
interfere at all with China’s commitment to full
employment for rapid economic expansion. Sure the
investment into environmental cleanup may keep from
China from remaining a low cost producer, but that
is small sacrifice when the failure to do so has
such an impact on the health of its citizens and the
well being of our entire planet.
Gary Witman, MD
July 25,
2010
Oil Spills Are Much
More than Just the BP Disaster in the Gulf Coast
Accidents are inevitable even
when safety guidelines are implemented. Oil spills
into our water supply impact upon the entire food
chain from micro-organism right on up to the largest
aquatic mammals. While all attention in North
America has focused on the Gulf of Mexico there is a
disaster of similar proportions brewing in the
Yellow Sea.
According to Chinese officials,
an oil spill off the northeast coast of China has
now expanded to 183 square miles. The disaster began
last week in the port city of Dilian when an oil
pipeline owned by the China National Petroleum
Company exploded. Dilian is the 2nd biggest oil
import port in China, and imported oil provides 20%
of China’s energy requirement . Crude oil leaked
into the Yellow Sea and then burned in a huge
firestorm for 15 hours. China Central Television is
estimating the size of the leak at 400,000 gallons
of oil. Of note, Dilian was once named as China’s
most livable city. Of note, the resort island of
Bangchui which is east of Dalian in now barred to
tourists.
Greenpeace China was able to
take photographs at the environmental disaster
before Government officials forced them to leave.
Images send globally included showing oil slicked
rocky beaches, a man covered in thick black sludge
up to his cheekbones, and workers carrying
colleagues covered in oil away from the scene. Zhong
Yu, a worker with the environmental group noted
“I’ve been to a few bays today and discovered they
were almost entirely covered with dark oil. The oil
is half-solid and half liquid and is as sticky as
asphalt.”
The solution which the Chinese
are using consists of placing down straw mats,
measuring 2 square meters (21 square feet) which are
being placed in the ocean to absorb the oil.
An official with the Jinshitan
Golden Beach Administration Committee told the
Beijing Daily Youth Newspaper “we don’t have proper
oil cleanup materials, so our workers are wearing
rubber gloves and using chopsticks…this kind of
inefficiency means the oil will keep coming on
shore…this stretch of oil is really difficult to
clean up in the short term.”
In a region of the world where
environmental cleanup remains lax the implications
of Chinese petroleum demand attention. The
International Energy Agency stated yesterday that
China has overtaken the United States as the world’s
largest energy consumer, using the equivalent of
2.252 billion tons of oil last year.
Rather than recommending new
environmental guidelines, the official Chinese
response was to question the accuracy of the figure
released by the International Energy Agency.
There are better solutions than
straw mats and chopsticks. Think Dynamic. Think
ingenuity.
Gary Witman, MD
July 19,
2010
What Do You Guys Do Anyway?
Over the past 5 years you have
become aware of the fact that we are purveyors of
the finest silica and alumina based chromatographic
quality adsorbents offered to the scientific
community. But oh, we have become so much more.
Our efforts have been directed
to building upon our manufacturing and research
expertise and to stretch our products and services
beyond the established scientific community. We
provide specialty materials to a spectrum of
commercial enterprises. This week Textile World is
featuring some of our exciting new products in their
feature article “Aluminated Textiles”. ” This
article written by Managing Editor Janet Bealer
Rodie highlights how DAI has transferred and
embellished novel patented technology to create
entirely new non-woven materials for the textile
trade. It is our hope that this innovative direction
will help to springboard and rejuvenate a part of
the North American textile industry which has seen
most of it’s manufacturing move “offshore.”
This is our mission and our
pleasure. By providing novel and superior solutions
to our manufacturing base we are helping to bring
competitiveness back to North American commerce.
That is what we guys do anyway.
Dr. Mark Moskovitz
Gary Witman, MD
July 15,
2010
Less Carbon Dioxide Emissions, No Need to Import
Energy, What Could be Better?
An MIT Energy Initiative
recently released has provided some striking and
exciting figures regarding the immediate potential
benefits by switching to natural gas to fuel our
national power needs.
The amount of natural gas which
is known to be retrievable amounts to 92 years worth
at present domestic consumption rates. Much of this
is entrapped in shale, and it must still be
demonstrated that this gas can be collected. On a
global scale the retrievable natural gas amounts to
16, 2000 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) which is enough
to provide energy demands for 160 years at current
consumption rates. As a point of reference the US
consumption of gas is 22 Tcf annually, with a gas
reserve thought to be in excess of 2,000 Tcf. The
largest global gas reserves are in the United
States, Russia and in the Middle East. Even Israel
is getting into the game, with Noble Energy finding
a huge gas reserve offshore in the Michal license,
which should make Israel a net gas exporter in the
next decade.
Great expansion of the pipeline
and delivery system will be required to distribute
these newly found sources of gas in the Northeast
and Midwest. Furthermore, there will be significant
environmental cleanup demands as major
considerations need to be given to address shallow
freshwater aquifer contamination with fracture
fluids, surface water contamination by returned
fracture fluids, excess demand on local water supply
from fracturing operations and local community
disturbance due to the drilling and fracturing
activities.
DAI provides a spectrum of
products to support this emerging demand for natural
gas valves, pipelines and transport conduits. We
address the desiccant requirements associated with
gas hydrates by providing specialized activated
alumina with the highest level of drying capacity.
There is only one way to
substantiate our claims – by encouraging you to try
it!
Gary Witman, MD
July 14,
2010
Sometimes I Just Don’t Get It, and One of Those
Times is Now
There is such a paradox in the
world of macroeconomics and sometimes I just do not
get it. On the one hand I read in the press that the
US Government is doing everything it can to
encourage the export of domestically made
manufactured goods as well as services. In the very
next column I read that one of the most prestigious
pharmaceutical companies is shedding 15,000
manufacturing jobs over the next 36 months in order
to improve corporate profitability.
I understand that American
companies are competing on a global market. I also
understand that when it comes to manufacturing
generic pharmaceuticals the speed, skills and output
from Israeli, Indian and Chinese pharmaceutical
manufacturers are tops, and candidly there is no way
that American manufacturers are effectively able to
compete in terms of pricing when it comes to the
manufacture of generic drug compounds.
In order to constrain the costs
of health care it is the goal of health care
agencies to dispense generic agents as often as
possible. In order to maximize profitability
pharmaceutical manufacturers need to continue to
develop exciting new compounds which offer
advantages over existent technologies. Novelty is
what should drive the creation of a “blockbuster”
drug, one with the potential for generating more
than a billion USD in annual sales.
So, one would think that
pharmaceutical manufacturers would be ramping up
their research and development staff, and actively
looking for novel structures with unique mechanisms
of action in order to discover the next blockbuster
compound. But therein lies the paradox. For
management is only able or willing to devote a
defined portion of their annual budget to research –
far, far less than the costs allocated to marketing.
Even when drug agents go off patent and become
generic far more is spent in marketing than in
investing in the future and developing novel,
dynamic compounds.
Think of drug development as
infrastructure. Think of our pharmaceutical research
labs as the bridges and tunnels and roads of our
transport system. They are leaking and aging. At a
time when American technology is losing is edge we
should be investing more, not less into
pharmaceutical research and development. The
creation of manufacturing jobs in the pharmaceutical
industry will only be sustained as major advances
come out of our research laboratories.
Should federal funds be used to
help prop up the pharmaceutical industry? Of course
they already are. So many of the advances over the
past 60 years have stemmed from grants through the
R0 1 and PO 1 mechanisms under the auspices of the
extramural program at the National Institutes of
Health, and the competitive scores needed to obtain
federal funding are getting tougher and tougher.
But perhaps it is time to
rethink the process, and to think about the
opportunities which may exist for exploring our
habitat. The Gulf Oil spill should be turning on
scientific light bulbs. What organisms dwell 5,000
feet down in the Gulf at those incredible pressures
and ice cold temperatures. What novel lead compounds
may be elicited from the micro-organisms dwelling in
the Gulf? Should we not be spending more of our
dollars on medicinal chemistry and looking for novel
lead compounds before we destroy more of our
environment? Should we not be investing more in
marine biology, oceanography, plant sciences and
microbial ecology? Was it not only 60 years ago that
tuberculosis was rampant until Selman Waksman
working at an agricultural station in New Jersey
discovered streptomycin while studying actinomycetes
and changed forever our approach to medicinal
chemistry?
As I said above, sometimes I
just don’t get it. At a time when there is a
generalized retrenchment due to generics playing a
more substantial role in pharmaceutical sales I must
be the contrarian. I see it as the ripe time to
invest more in research and development, and bring
all of those smart minds back from the financial
services industry and into doing good for all of
mankind..
Gary Witman, MD
July 11,
2010
Just How Much Radioactive Waste is Around to
Clean Up?
Matthew Wald writing in the July
11th national edition of the New York Times is owed
a lot of gratitude for setting the figures straight.
He has provided us with a straight forward analysis
of the amount of plutonium waste generated by the
Energy Department, the Atomic Energy Commission and
the Manhattan Project, the World War II agency which
was responsible for the production of atomic
weaponry. The information which Mr. Ward published
comes from 15 years of analytical work by Robert
Alvarez, a former official with the US Department of
Energy. The analysis by Mr. Alvarez has been
accepted for publication later this year by the
scholarly journal Science and Global Security from
the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
The chief environmental concern
from the Hanford, Washington nuclear production site
is that plutonium can seep from stored underground
sites into an underground area called the saturated
zone and from there can enter the water supply of
the Columbia River. And because plutonium has a
radioactive half life of 24,000 years the long term
implications are profound for hundreds of future
generations of citizens living in the Pacific
Northwest Region of the United States.
Mr. Wald quotes the following
statement from Gerry Pollet, the Executive Director
of the Environmental Group Hearth of America
Northwest who states: “what is reasonably
foreseeable is that there are people who will be
drinking the water in the ground at Hanford at some
point in the next few hundred years. We’re going to
be killing people, pure and simple.”
Mr. Alvarez has re-analyzed the
Department of Energy data regarding the amount of
plutonium stored at Hanford, and has determined that
there is enough plutonium buried to create 1,800
bombs the power of that which was dropped on the
City of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. The total amount of
plutonium which was discarded as waste is 11,655
kilograms or three times as much as had previously
been reported.
The implications of this
radioactive waste assessment are enormous. From the
perspective of environmental cleanup superior
solutions must be achieved to be able to safely
store and destroy plutonium waste. One solution is
to place the contaminant in a solid form and shoot
electric currents through the material in order to
create a glass like structure.
Dynamic Adsorbents Inc. (DAI)
has custom designed and provides wide pore specialty
activated alumina materials capable of entrapping
plutonium and other radioactive materials in a high
density matrix. One entrapped the plutonium remains
fixed through adsorption within these alumina
particles making disposal secure and safe.
Environmental cleanup requires
attention not just to our current needs, but the
needs of future generations as well. The long half
life of radioactive plutonium points towards the
need for us to think about how we are impacting on
our world.
Global warming is only the
beginning of how we impact on Mother Earth.
Gary Witman, MD
July 2,
2010
Happy Independence Day
Dear Friends,
As
we gather this Independence Day weekend with family,
friends, neighbors and fellow citizens at parades,
picnics and backyard barbeques, we recall the words
of Thomas Jefferson in declaring America’s freedom,
234 years ago:
The unanimous Declaration of the
13 united States of America, “When in the Course of
human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of
the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,
a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them
to the separation. We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
Dr. Mark Moskovitz
July 1,
2010
Keep Bringing
on Your Imagination and Creativity
I was not old
enough to be raised at the time of Buck Rogers,
rather I am from the Dick Tracy era. Incredible
things, like TVs on wrist watches just mesmerized
me. Creativity is sometimes just overbearing.
Every single
day I am overwhelmed by the creativity of scientists
contacting us at Dynamic Adsorbents elaborating on
new and creative concepts for using our customized
activated alumina compounds. Certainly demand for
our product line originated from traditional organic
chemistry indications and needs. Yet, over the last
36 months how we have seen the indications and needs
for customized and specialized alumina grow!
Our marketing
team believes that our corporate growth parallels
the international level of interest in “going
green”. For sure, energy and environmental concerns
have helped to fuel the level of interest. But the
creativity! The ideas! The excitement! It truly
makes it a pleasure to come to work every single day
with the knowledge that we will be speaking with
leading scientists about ideas which remind one of
Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers and all of the whacky,
way out ideas which only days ago seemed like
science fiction.
Gary Witman, MD
June 20,
2010
Heartwarming and Satisfying
As a manufacturer of high
quality purification and sorbent products it is
comforting, heartwarming and satisfying to see that
our innovative technologies are becoming integrated
into the mainstay scientific community. By seeking
out our company name on computerized search engines
it is gratifying to see that Dynamic Adsorbent
products are increasingly being referenced in
recently issued patents as well as being referenced
and given credit in many peer reviewed publications.
Why? We believe it is because our products are
designed and manufactured to achieve the lot to lot
consistency you demand. When a scientist purchases
products from us they need to be comforted and
guaranteed in the consistency of performance. Using
fine quality sorbents removes one undesirable
variable from any experimental design.
Look for us to be soon
introducing more exciting and innovative products,
backed up by the same level of technical support and
quality control.
Gary Witman, MD
June 19,
2010
DAI fully and wholeheartedly endorses the Policy
of the American Society of Agricultural and
Biological Engineers (ASABE) regarding Use of Cotton
and Cotton By-Products for Oil Spill Remediation
Dynamic Adsorbents fully
endorses the policy statement of the American
Society of Agricultural Engineers recommending the
implementation of cotton for oil cleanup in the Gulf
of Mexico. As noted in their policy statement
“cotton and many cotton byproducts are much more
efficient than synthetics in absorbing oil. Cotton
fiber can absorb about 40 times its weight in oil,
as compared to synthetics that currently absorb 10
to 20 times their weight. The oil absorbed by cotton
along with the cotton itself will degrade naturally
in the environment, which is not the case for
synthetics. Additionally, cotton fiber and its
fibrous byproducts can be reused to absorb
additional oil.. unlike synthetic products like
polypropylene, cotton will compost naturally and
lead to bioremediation of absorbed oil“
Further, the ASABE Policy
Statement goes on to note:
“Assuming an absorptive capacity
of 50 times the weight of properly dispersed cotton
fiber, a 500 pound bale of cotton fiber could absorb
25,000 pounds of oil (76 barrels of oil based on a
specific gravity of 0.933). As of April 1, 2010
there were 8 million bales of cotton and cleaned
lint clean waste in storage in the US.”
What are we waiting for? The
challenge now lies in DAI and other innovative
companies taking advantage of the obvious benefits
of cotton, and to develop superior absorbent and
adsorbent technologies.
That is what our name and charge
are all about. We are Dynamic Adsorbents. We source
the best materials. We create novel products. We are
diligent in our efforts to take an environmental
disaster and turn it into an opportunity. And most
of all, we do not shirk responsibilities.
June 17,
2010
Ahoy, expect trouble from below for a long time
to come
At DAI we continue to fine tune
sorbent technologies to address the Gulf of Mexico
oil spill coming out of the Deepwater Horizon well
head. Environmental and marine scientists are
providing us with updated knowledge regarding the
magnitude of the problem. While our attention has
been spent addressing the surface cleanup, there are
problems deep below.
The research vessel F.G. Walton
Smith sponsored by the Rosenstiel School of Marine
and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami is
making some striking observations. This is an
extraordinary vessel, as it is a 96 foot long
catamaran with a draft of only 7 feet. This shallow
draft enables it to explore previously inaccessible
areas such as reefs, mangroves, grassbeds and other
shallow environments. Studies on this vessel have
found that there is an oil plume more than 24
kilometers long, 8 kilometers wide and 90 meters
thick which stretches from 700 to 1300 meters below
the surface south south west of the BP wellhead.
This is travelling in a direction remote from the
surface oil washing ashore along the coastline.
Furthermore, a seasonal change in surface current
flows, from the northeast to the southwest will take
effect in August, meaning that the oil at this depth
will remain in the Gulf of Mexico rather than
travelling out in to the ocean.
Expect trouble from below for a
very long time.
Dr. Gary Witman
June 15, 2010
Accidents Don't Happen in the Oil Industry?
The Captains of Industry are on
Capital Hill today telling members of the House that
the oil spill in the Gulf Coast last month was an
aberration. They are resolute in their public
statements that with careful attention to the tasks
at hand that accidents and spills do not occur?
Who are they trying to kid? Even
with vigilance to every safety issue accidents are
bound to occur. We have been launching rockets into
earth orbit for nearly 50 years, and even after
thousands of such launches things go wrong, rockets
explode, precious payloads are lost and precious
lives end prematurely. This is the price paid with
risky industrial endeavors. It is all a matter of a
risk to reward ratio. The petroleum captains are
attempting to make a convincing argument that deep
water oil exploration and production are essential
to the economy of our nation and of the world. And
they are right. I only wish that they would make
their presentation in a more humble and forthright
way, rather than pointing fingers at the BP
organization and saying that they were taking
shortcuts. And I wish they would publicly recognize
that 11 lives were unnecessarily lost because of
this industrial accident.
Drilling more than a mile under
the ocean and through three miles of rock to reach a
petroleum source is taking our existent extraction
technology to the fringes. We need to be prepared to
protect ourselves from the consequences of such an
environmental disaster. And we were not.
Dynamic Adsorbents (DAI) has
worked these past five years to develop innovative
products which address such environmental disasters.
We are creating new textile products impregnating
wide pore alumina which synergistically adsorb and
absorb oil and toxic fumes. We are impregnating
masks with materials to provide unheralded
respiratory protection. We have designed and provide
desiccant materials to prevent hydrates from forming
ice crystals at oil wellheads. And we have developed
an entire line of Dyna-AquaTM activated
alumina materials demonstrated to clean up a
spectrum of pollutants in our water systems –
whether copper, or industrial dyes, or radioactive
spillage, we have endeavored to develop a solution
to clean them all.
We have limited resources, but
an unlimited vision. We realize that even with the
best of safety guidelines accidents will happen, and
we must be prepared for them. Captains of Industry,
to not try to say that an accident is an aberration.
Admit that accidents can, do and will occur, insist
that a means will be achieved to prevent them from
occurring again, and work hard to assure that the
impact of such an accident can be contained.
June 14, 2010
Are there more spills, or has environmental
cleanup now become the focus of our media attention?
I wonder whether there are now
more oil spills, or whether we are just focusing
more of our attention on oil spills. I woke up this
morning to hear the news about the terrible tragedy
of an oil spill in Utah heading down toward the
Great Salt Lake. The press reported that a 10 inch
pipe carrying crude petroleum for Chevron Oil leaked
oil into Red Butte Creek, and that the oil had
reached the Jordan River and was continuing down to
the Great Salt Lake. This 10 inch wide pipe was
leading underground near Red Butte Garden by the
University of Utah and came from their Colorado
pipeline running down Emigration Canyon and heading
west over Beck Street in Salt Lake City to the
company refinery.
Local parks will be closed for
weeks. Because of a rapid response by Chevron the
environmental impact of this leak will be contained.
Chevron vacuum trucks quickly began to pump water
from the effected ponds, transporting the crude oil
to a local Chevron refinery in Salt Lake City.
A leak in Utah is a bit
different that one along the Gulf Coast of
Louisiana. When crude oil reaches into the Great
Salt Lake there is nowhere for it to go. The Lake is
a lake, and self contained. That crude oil does not
go away. It remains. And once entered into the food
chain it creates havoc.
The solutions are simple.
Vigilance. Safety. Superior clean up measures. We at
Dynamic Adsorbents are opting for the latter
solution, designing and refining superior clean up
measures. Accidents are inevitable. They are part of
business and even with the best in surveillance and
monitoring oil leaks and pipe disruptions are
inevitable. Our goal is to make sure that when such
an accident does occur an affordable, simple to
implement solution is available to damper the
environmental impact.
Gary Witman, MD
June 13, 2010
If They Build It Will They Come?
So much has been made and will
continue to be made about the oil spill in the Gulf
Coast. Regardless of ones thoughts regarding the
spill it is crucial to accept that petroleum
products are essential and their contribution to our
modern society is not going away very soon.
However, newer technologies are
coming on stream. This is the year that mass
produced battery powered vehicles will be reaching
mainstream America. This week Daimler Benz
introduced Smart minicards to the United States
running exclusively on batteries. In just a few
months the General Motors Chevrolet Volt and the
Nissan Leaf will be rolling off assembly lines and
into the garages of thousands of American families.
The Nissan Leaf is an all electric vehicle with a
travel range of approximately 100 miles, more than
enough to handle the commuter needs of most
Americans. The Chevrolet Volt runs on battery power
for about 40 miles at which point an internal
combustion engine back up power supply kicks in.
Lithium will fuel the batteries
which run these vehicles. We at Dynamic Adsorbents
are working to maximize domestic lithium sourcing by
improving the purity of refined lithium, reducing
the need for importing costly petroleum and reducing
the balance of payment deficits which impact on the
lifestyle of all Americans.
How will these batteries be
recharged? The recharging of the batteries will
require plugging vehicles into either a 110 or 220
volt power source and getting power back out from
the electric power grid. The introduction of
electric cars is being compared to the mass
electrification of kitchens and laundries in the
1950’s and the subsequent wide spread use of air
conditioning in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It is not
felt at the present time that the widespread
introduction of battery powered vehicles will have
an immediate impact on the electric demands of the
power grid. Ideally the batteries would be recharged
at night, when there is a lower power demand on the
electric grid. It is hoped that power companies
would provide consumers with an incentive to
recharge their batteries during off-peak hours. The
utility industry may be able to further encourage
the conversion to battery powered vehicles by
holding down the cost of battery recharging,
providing a further incentive for drivers to “make
the switch.”
So now it is time to wait and
see. If they build battery powered cars will the
consumer readily accept this disruptive technology?
Are Americans so tired of seeing their environment
impacted by oil spills that they would be willing to
willingly give up their internal combustion engines
and switch over to battery powered vehicles, which
promise no compromise in performance? We will be
able to see soon enough if they will come if they
build it. Good luck General Motors. Good luck
Nissan. You have been the innovators. To the victors
go the spoils.
Gary Witman, MD
June 3, 2010
Energy Companies, We Are Looking Out for Your
Blind Side
Energy companies, just like it
is described by the Canadian national anthem “we
stand on guard for thee.” The oil spill in the Gulf
Coast is an unprecedented national environmental
disaster. This is not the time to put blame on
anyone, or press legal or criminal charges. There is
plenty of time for the lawyers and the ambulance
chasers to worry about such litigative issues in the
future. Now is the time to race and find solutions,
both to cap off the well as well as to prevent the
consequences of this pressing environmental
catastrophe.
We are working diligently to
find a solution. We are working with our corporate
strategic partner Hobbs Bonded Fiber, Inc. of Waco,
TX, to rapidly develop an alumina impregnated cotton
material which both exceeds an oil sorption capacity
of greater than 50 grams per gram as fiber, as well
as achieving the means to prevent the fumes and
consequent respiratory complications of aerosolized
hydrocarbon release.
Other energy solutions are being
proposed and pushed as alternatives. Proton Energy
and SunHydro took out a full page advertisement in
the June 3, 2010 edition of the New York Times
proclaiming “In the Time It takes to Clean up the
Disaster in the Gulf…. Hydrogen Can Make Gasoline a
Fuel of the Past”
We at Dynamic Adsorbents fully
anticipate that hydrogen will become one of the
attractive alternative sources of energy for running
our domestic car fleet. We have designed DrysphereTM
alumina spheres for use in “point of use pump”
filters to keep water and other liquid condensates
from reaching the fuel line, thus assuring superior
performance from engine components.
So either way, with oil or novel
hydrogen energy sourcing we will have you covered.
“We stand on guard for thee”.
Dr. Gary Witman
June 1, 2010
Is BP truly on the way to arresting the Gulf
Coast calamity?
Thank you Secretary Chu for
having BP stop throwing ground up golf balls and
other “mud” components into the billowing oil and
gas spill one mile down at the bottom of the Gulf
Coast. Enough is enough. All of this experimentation
is being done at the expense of the environment as
well as at the expense of the hundreds of thousands
of people who make their livelihoods from the
bounties of the Gulf Coast.
So now BP engineers and
scientists have gone back to the drawing board, and
are looking for novel solutions to make the concept
of the containment dome work. At least they are on
the right track, and eventually one hopes that they
will find the right solution.
Crystalline formation from gas
hydrates obstructed the outflow and was the limiting
factor in the design of the containment dome. Now
the solution which the BP engineers have improvised
delivers hot liquid a mile down to the depth of the
ocean floor in an attempt to keep the gas hydrates
from turning solid and crystallizing. This sounds
like a keen engineering feat to perform and it will
be virtuous to accomplish this task. You are at
least on your way to achieving a solution BP, now
that your engineers have appropriately identified
the problem.
Perhaps in the future you will
come to recognize the benefits of using the highest
quality adsorbents to retard crystalline hydrate
formation. Certainly, the use of activated alumina
desiccants such as DrysphereTM
should become a part of your back up plan. The cost
to acquire this technology may be more than the
costs of purchasing ground up golf balls, but then
again, at what cost? Look what has occurred already
as other Rube Goldberg ideas were attempted and then
abandoned.
Dr. Gary Witman
May 23, 2010
Living Downstream
There is nothing more powerful
than visual impact. A picture is worth a thousand
words. I was riveted by the visual message of a new
film “Living Downstream” from the written work of
Dr. Sandra Steingraber. A good deal of this
environmental documentary focuses on the impact of
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Though outlawed
for most usage by regulatory mandate more than 30
years ago, this film reveals that the carcinogenic
impact throughout the food chain is overwhelming.
We have put a lot of effort into
finding an effective and affordable solution for PCP
cleanup. We have developed and support a corporate
sponsored website
pcbremoval.net
where we attempt to provide timely and unbiased
information regarding the cleanup needs and
solutions for this category of chemicals.
It is not enough to say that
PCPs are no longer manufactured, so don’t worry
about them. They continue to haunt us. Living
Downstream does a very good job of showing us how.
If you are fortunate enough to live in a community
where this film is going to be shown take advantage
of the opportunity and go see it.
Gary Witman, MD
May
23, 2010
Is Environmental Consciousness a Moving Force
That Changes our Style of Life?
I live in an urban, liberal
leaning setting in New England. People in my
neighborhood are not movers and shakers, but they
are very, very sensitive to the environment. Two
months ago many of us were immersed in up to 10 feet
of water. In my region the AMTRAK tracks were
immersed under 4 feet of water, and Interstate 95
was closed for days, shutting down most commerce
between New England and the rest of the country.
Many of us have yet to recover from that calamity
and it will take years until the bridges and
roadbeds are repaired.
Watching similar floods hit
Nashville but a stab into our hearts and how we
could feel for the people of central Tennessee. But
nothing is as shocking as the sites that come to us
every day from the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. For in
Louisiana the food chain will be impacted by the oil
spill for years to come. Who knows what the
estuaries will look like?
What are my neighbors thinking
and doing? They are waiting to buy electric cars, or
for those who cannot wait they are purchasing
hybrids. Those who have previously purchased home
heating oil to fuel their homes are running to get
hooked onto the natural gas power grid.
My neighbors just do not want us
to have to go seek deep sea underwater oil
exploration. They believe that if the demand for oil
dries up, then the need to find this oil and along
with it the environmental risks will go away.
Of course we in an urban liberal
setting in New England are just a microcosm. But my
neighbors simply say that if it does not start here
it will not start at all. Time will tell if they are
right, and if environmental consciousness is a
moving force which can change our style of life.
We at Dynamic will continue to
develop superior alumina based desiccants which will
make the delivery of natural gas, the safer and
cleaner alternative energy source, easier and more
convenient for you to use.
Gary Witman, MD
May
17, 2010
Sustainable environmental needs
The series of calamities which
have occurred this spring may appear unprecedented
but they are not. Mining disasters in West Virginia.
The calamitous oil spill off of the coast of
Louisiana in the Gulf. Certainly there is a
continual need for energy, and for fossil based
fuels. Our country and our world needs such fossil
fuels to support the life style to which we have all
grown accustomed, and we clamor for these fuels. But
at what cost? Is there not an acceptable compromise?
Why can’t we develop foolproof guidelines and
provide sustainable environmental controls to avoid
such mishaps.
Dynamic Adsorbents is committed
to achieving such sustainable controls. We have
offered to British Petroleum as well as to the
entire natural gas industry our alumina based
DrysphereTM
desiccant which prevents the buildup of gas hydrate
crystals such as the materials which prematurely
ruined the ability of the undersea Containment Dome
to trap the oil and gas emanating from the broken BP
pipeline. We are working on buffer systems which can
capture oxides being released from coal burning
power generators. And with sufficient resources it
is our goal to work on carbon capture technology
which may help address concerns regarding global
warming.
We realize that we are but one
small link in one small cog which makes up the wheel
of scientific endeavor tackling demanding
environmental issues. But take heart. Problems are
being addressed, and solutions will be achieved to
reduce such environmental calamities. And in our
lifetime.
Gary Witman, MD
May 8, 2010
Will They Listen? DAI Offers Free DrysphereTM
to Address Gas Hydration Problem with Oil Spill.
Dynamic Adsorbents has offered
to the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information
Center (BP) a means to be able to address the gas
hydrate problem that has been encountered on the
dome structure placed over the oil leak in the Gulf
of Mexico. We have offered DrysphereTM
desiccant free of charge, as a courtesy to provide a
solution for this dire environmental problem. Will
they listen? Is there going to be a problem with NIH
(Not invented here?) All the technical staff at DAI
can do is provide our technical expertise and our
resources. We fear for our coastline. We fear for
the future of the Gulf. If we can in some small way
help to offer a solution to this environmental
tragedy we will be delighted. We are not aware of
any other desiccant material providing such superior
drying of gas hydrates.
The next step is yours BP.
Gary Witman, MD
April 28,2010
“Off The Record” - From China
While in Shanghai this past week
I had the opportunity to meet with a senior member
of the Chinese Government. Of course I was told that
information which was imparted to me was “off the
record.”
China believes that in order to
continue to achieve its torrid pace of development
it is essential to prioritize national goals for
economic development. In the next two 5 year plans
the following three areas will drive growth:
-
tourism
-
infrastructure development
-
environmental cleanup
This official stated that
explosive economic growth in China could not have
been achieved in China if environmental concerns had
been a priority. Now that the country has achieved
some financial security, it is turning its attention
to the environmental disasters it created in the
name of progress. Only now is China able to look
back and question the benefits and liabilities in
building the Three Gorges Dam. At the time of
conception, the only concern that the Chinese
government had was in providing enough in the way of
power to satisfy the electrical thirsts of heavy
industry.
We can do our small part at
Dynamic to help China clean up the environment. Take
for example the textile industry. China has become
the dominant force in the textile industry and in
the manufacture of industrial dyes. For now waste
water is discharged in effluent streams at toxic
levels. Ambitious Chinese goals include having the
textile trade return spent effluent in a potable
state to the water system. Dynamic decolorization
alumina, coupled with other Dyna-AquaTM
materials should prove useful in providing to the
Chinese people high quality water – something that
everyone can savor.
Dr. Gary Witman
April 22,
2010
Happy Earth Day
While many people throughout the
word reinforce their appreciation of and commitment
to improving the environment
today, we at DAI are proud to continue reinforcing
our mission of finding the best, most cost-effective solutions for many
of the environmental threats facing our world.
Many of our unique, specialized, and
customized aluminas are targeted to dealing with
some of the most pressing environmental cleanup
issues facing our planet, including removal of pcbs,
removal of toxic metals from water, and drying of
gases and other liquids for cleaner energy and other
applications. Our "highest quality in the
industry" alumina provides the best, most
cost-effective solutions for the widest range of
environmental cleanup and other applications in the
industry.
Since the beginning, our goal has
been to find the best solutions to protecting
people's health and safety, not just sell products
off the shelves. We look forward in the years ahead
to joining with other companies to provide a
cleaner, healthier environment for people throughout
the world, and developing new products and solutions
towards that end.
Thank you for all of your support.
The DAI team
April 13,
2010
To All Our New Customers and Established
Customers A Most Gracious Thank You
We love to see where the orders
at DAI come in from. Santiago. Monterey. San Diego.
Seoul. Cambridge. New Haven. Montreal. Singapore.
Miami. Every Day we learn of separation scientists
throughout the world taking up on our offer to try
at no cost activated alumina in order to improve
their purification abilities. What is so satisfying
to us is that many of you sourcing these samples
come back and order and reorder and reorder. We are
able to turn skeptics into satisfied customers.
This is how we are building a
business. One satisfied customer at a time. And
often that customer tells others and a word of mouth
network begins.
We promise to listen to you. We
are here to address solutions to your needs.
As separation scientists we are building a business
based on providing solutions. Our technical
expertise lies in providing you with answers, not
just off the shelf products.
Dr. Mark Moskovitz
Dr. Gary Witman
April 12,
2010
India's Reliance Industries and Natural Gas
Energy needs and energy
solutions are global. I have written about the need
for America to become secure in its energy
requirements by taking advantage of existent
resources. Certainly President Obama made a lot of
hoopla last week when he announced that large scale
drilling for oil and gas would begin off the eastern
seaboard of the United States, much to the chagrin
of many environmentalists and some politicians.
An equally important story has
received considerably less coverage, but carries
with it significant implications. India’s Reliance
Industries, according to a story written by Joe
Leahy and Sheila McNulty and published in the
Financial Times will joint venture with Atlas Energy
to develop 580,000 acres owned by Atlas in the
Marcellus Shale gas formation. The Marcellus Shale
straddling Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York
is estimated to hold enough natural gas to meet the
entire North American demand for a decade. It covers
an area of 65,000 square miles, which if put into
perspective is larger than the nation of Greece.
Technical advances in gas
drilling have increased the estimates of US gas
reserves from 30 years to 100 years by providing
means to reach previously unavailable and untappable
resources.
So who is Reliance? This Indian
company operates the world’s biggest refinery
complex in a single location in India as well as
India’s largest gas field. The company will provide
an economy of scale as well as technical expertise
to an expanding natural gas drilling operation in
the Northeast states.
Couple this with the intent of
the Chinese to bring capital and expertise in high
speed rail systems and one gets the sense that there
is an invasion of enthusiasm, money and technical
knowledge for us here in North America.
To which I say welcome! I hope
that along with your money and your expertise you
bring a degree of respect for the environment which
many domestic operators have long ignored, as
demonstrated by the tragedy in West Virginia this
past week.
At DAI, providers of DrysphereTM,
the superior desiccant for drying of petroleum and
natural gas products we look forward to your
enthusiasm and “go to” attitude.
Dr. Gary Witman
March 31,
2010
Our Superior and Unique Adsorbent Provides the
Means to Export our Knowledge and Know-How, and
Create Jobs for American Workers
DAI only
company offering specially designed 50 micron
activated alumina to address textile wastewater
effluent
President Obama has been
dogmatic in proclaiming that one national goal is to
double our ability as a nation to export goods and
services. Easier said than done. Mature
manufacturing companies all over the world have
caught up with North America in terms of technology
and manufacturing skills. There are few places where
we hold a competitive edge anymore. Defense
technologies, financial services and the life
sciences remain those areas where we hold a
recognized technical and competitive edge.
Another neglected area where
North Americans hold a technical edge is in the
environmental sciences. As countries undergoing
rapid economic expansion destroy their environment
and deplete natural resources, they begin to examine
the consequences of their economic policies. China
has done much to address issues regarding the
quality of air, soil and water and other nations in
Asia and Latin America will follow.
Dynamic Adsorbents is doing its
part too. One of our most fascinating and unique
products is a spinoff from scaling up procedures
used by the pharmaceutical industry in the
production of plant alkaloids for the treatment of
breast and ovarian cancer. The taxane compounds
taxol and taxotere are isolated from parts of the
Pacific Yew tree, and specialized activated alumina
compounds were developed to expedite this
purification process. Through extensive trial the
best activated alumina for taxane isolation and
purification was found to be a wide pore material
with an average dp50 particle distribution of 50
microns.
Unbeknownst to us at the time
while developing this activated alumina product for
cancer drug development, a solution was found that
enhances wastewater treatment for the textile and
other dye producing industries. Specialty activated
alumina available only from DAI provides a superior
solution for the decolorization of dyes.
Due to the availability of low
cost labor elsewhere, most textile manufacturing has
now gone to other parts of the world, and while we
cannot bring these manufacturing jobs back to North
America, we can export the clean-up technology
making the environment safer where these jobs have
gone. Here we have a technical edge. By providing a
superior and unique adsorbent, we have the means to
export our knowledge and know-how and create jobs
for American workers.
In so doing we will be doing our
share to export our goods and technologies and help
to make the world a cleaner place. Further information
regarding our unique product can be found in the
article Utilization of
Specialized Activated Alumina for Decolorization
written by Dr. Mark Moskovitz and Dr. Gary Witman.
Gary Witman, MD
March 19,
2010
How Could I Have Forgotten to Rant About
Cadmium?
After a 2008 law implemented in
the United States imposed limits on lead usage in
products for children some manufacturers in China
turned to cadmium as a substitute. This heavy metal
is a known carcinogen which causes end stage renal
disease among its untoward effects. Testing of 103
children’s trinkets purchased in a store revealed
that 12 of them contained at least 10% cadmium by
weight. Some of the trinkets contained upwards of
84-91% cadmium by weight.
Health Canada has now gotten
into the act, raising concerns regarding the content
of both lead and cadmium in children’s toys.
We at DAI don’t enter the
picture until far later – when these trinkets are
disposed, and the next thing you know these toxic
metals are floating around in our surface and
drinking water. But we need to safeguard our
children. The actions of these selfish manufacturers
are reprehensible, but there is no one on site in
China to police these actions. We must monitor with
vigor the importation of all products which have the
potential to do as much harm as good.
Gary Witman, MD
March 17, 2010
Can Alumina Provide a Safe and Continuous Drug
Delivery System?
The power of alumina adsorbents
continues to amaze me. Now, an incredibly innovative
application is being developed which may offer a
major improvement for the diabetic population. One
of my closest friends has been a patient at the Mayo
Clinic for the past month receiving treatment for
the complications of his ischemic feet. He may
require amputations if a means cannot be achieved to
increase blood flow to the smaller blood vessels in
his left foot.. His circulation is good, but not his
microcirculation. For many diabetic patients the
options for treatment of vascular ischemia have
consisted of gangrene, or partial amputation. At the
Mayo he is receiving hyperbaric oxygen for two hours
a day.
Liu and Balkus at the University
of Texas, Dallas may just have developed a superior
idea. They embed fibers of zeolite, an
aluminosilicate, with fibers of polylactic acid
subsequently infused with nitric oxide. Apparently,
by controlling the porosity of the fibers, it is
possible to control the release of the nitric oxide
gas.
I had the honor of personally
studying under the late Robert Furchgott, the Nobel
Prize winning biochemist and former chairman of the
Department of Pharmacology at SUNY-Downstate Medical
Center. Dr. Furchgott won his Nobel laureate for
working out the mechanism of action of nitric oxide
as well as nitric oxide delivery. How Dr. Furchgott
would have loved to learn that such a product as
envisioned by these Texan scientists could be
incorporated for example into socks for diabetics
delivering nitric oxide through the skin, and
increase the circulation to diabetics and improve
their quality of life.
How gratifying I will find it if
activated alumina can indeed be woven into a
material which will form a safe and continuous drug
delivery system.
And for my friend at the Mayo
Clinic, the cavalry is on its way!
Gary Witman, MD
March 13, 2010
Is There Nothing Sacred Any More?
This afternoon I received an
alert from the Food and Drug Safety Information and
Adverse Event Reporting Program regarding
counterfeit flat sheets of polypropylene surgical
mesh, used in the repair of hernias and chest wall
defects. These products are being marketed in the
United States under the CR Bard/Davol brand names,
and they are not Bard manufactured products. Now we
as physicians are being asked to carefully examine
all manufacturers’ polypropylene surgical mesh
products for “anything unusual which might indicate
they are counterfeit”
It would be appalling if the
first sign of a counterfeit product would be the
herniation of a chest wall defect and the
eventration of vital organs.
Where is there honesty and
integrity anymore? Are the life sciences just
another business to exploit?
We at Dynamic Adsorbents
certainly don’t look at business in this fashion. We
do not take the short cuts that you may see from
other vendors, who you as consumers may find to be
more competitive in pricing. But do you ever wonder
why?
Gary Witman, MD
March 12, 2010
If We are Good to Mother Nature, She will be
Good to US - The Importance of Natural Plant and
Marine Alkaloids
It has been around 200 years
since Friedrich Sertimer, a 21 year pharmacy
apprentice isolated the first pharmacologically
active pure compound from a plant. This compound was
morphine, which was isolated from opium produced by
the cut seed pods of the poppy plant Papaver
somniferum. The real discovery explosion to identify
drug agents from the environment began after the
isolation of penicillin, and by 1990 nearly 80% of
the drugs in clinical usage were either natural
products or analogs of natural products. And natural
products continue to play a major role in drug
development, despite advances in medicinal
chemistry. Between 2005 an 2007 13 natural product
drugs were approved by the FDA in the United States,
with 5 of these drugs being members of new classes.
What a shame if mankind were to
destroy the very salvation of health care needs.! It
has been stated that 15,000 out of 50,000 to 70,000
medicinal plant species are currently threatened by
extinction. Before this extinction occurs, genetic
markers should be obtained providing scientists with
a clue of what we may be missing with sustained
global warming and acidification of the oceans.
As for the marine environment,
we as scientists are only now beginning to
comprehend the magnitude of opportunity for the
isolation and identification of novel drug agents.
Bugni and colleagues at the University of Utah
recognized that natural product libraries are
attractive for drug discovery, and have developed a
technique and method to produce high purity natural
product libraries for high throughput screening and
phenotype selective screens. They have developed a
two dimensional chromatographic strategy that
includes an automated HPLC-Mass Spect fractionation
protocol to general natural product libraries that
are sufficiently pure for high throughput screening
(HTS). Marine invertebrate specie extracts are
desalted, with solid phase extraction. Monolithic
columns were used for HPLC analysis. The final
fraction is directed into a 96 well format with each
well being mapped to a Mass Spect chromatogram.
These medicinal chemists believe that the
methodology has the potential to eliminate bioassay
guided fractionation.
Natural plant and increasingly
marine alkaloids will continue to provide the lead
for new medicinal compounds, as long as we provide
these organisms which have evolving over hundreds of
millions of years the chance to continue to thrive
in their environments.
Gary Witman, MD
March 10, 2010
Lithium as Our Primary
Energy Source
All the energy which this country
requires lies in this hemisphere. There is no need
to import oil or other petrochemical agents from the
Middle East.
Bold comment, no?
Take a look at the newspapers for
today March 10, 2010. They tell a startling story.
Chevron laying off 2000 employees. An article by
Jonathan White in the Wall Street Journal stating
that by 2050 there could be two billion cars on the
road, and 40% of them could be electric! That is a
statement by Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell
PLC.
It is meant to be! Over one half of the world’s
lithium output lies in Argentina and Chile.
Toyota Motor Company announced
plans a few weeks ago to develop a $100 million
lithium project at the Olaroz salt lake in Argentina
along with Orocobre Ltd of Australia. Analysts
believe that Chile and Argentina may contain
sufficient reserves of lithium to fuel the power
needs of our world at current consumption demands
for millions of years. The largest lithium in the
world, which remains commercially untapped is
located at the Uyuni salt lake in Bolivia.
The largest investor in the
lithium based battery technology for Coda Automotive
is China National Offshore Oil Corp, the big Chinese
government oil company, which is investing heavily
in electric vehicle battery technology.
The global demand for lithium is
increasing by more than 20% annually, with an even
further ramp up anticipated as demand for this power
source becomes essential for powering laptops,
digital cameras, cell phones and computers, and as
lithium becomes the prime energy source for motor
vehicles. An additional benefit in switching to
lithium as a power source lies in the reduction of
the carbon footprint, thereby dramatically alter the
pace of global warming as well as emissions of
sulfur dioxides and carbon dioxides. Add in the fact
that lithium stores three times more energy per
pound as a nickel metal hybrid battery and the
additional features which DAI provides and lithium
proves a winner.
We at DAI are so excited about
these advances. There is no better, safer or cleaner
way to extract lithium from the ground than through
the use of DAI’s high quality specially defined
activated alumina adsorbents consisting of defined
and characterized wide pore sizes. We are not aware
of any superior or more cost effective method to
extract or purify lithium than through the use of
specially designed and characterized DAI activated
alumina.
We look forward to working with
global leaders in lithium extraction in order to
help reduce our dependency on oil as our prime
source of energy. And as for the petrochemical
industry take note – we are here to serve you when
you take your heads out of the sand.
Gary Witman, MD
March 3, 2010
Inadequate Monitoring of the Dietary Supplement
Industry
A recent article in the Archives
of Internal Medicine highlights one of the pitfalls
of inadequate monitoring of the dietary supplement
industry. Selenium levels more than 200 fold higher
than those listed on product labeling were contained
in one dietary supplement liquid, leading to toxic
level exposure in over 200 individuals. I have
recorded these findings in my article “More
Carefully Scrutiny Encouraged for Purification and
Quantitative Testing of Nutritional Supplements”
which can be found here.
Gary Witman, MD
February 2, 2010
Dynamic's Role in
Stopping China from Winning the Green-Tech War
In the February 8th edition of
Fortune Magazine there is an excellent piece by
Brian Dumaine entitled "Will China Win the Green-Tech
War?"
Not if Dynamic Adsorbents can
help it!
But we are a small company --
what can be done to stop China from “winning the war”?
A lot!!
Every day the DAI team is
working on solutions that will allow America to
remain at the forefront of the green revolution.
DrysphereTM, when used as
directed, is the world’s best desiccant. Well
characterized, it provides the best means to dry up
industrial gases and is an answer for point of use
and point of delivery enhancement of hydrogen fuels.
Hydrogen may become an important source of energy
for powering transportation.
Superior methods for scrubbing
out nitrous and sulfur dioxides are essential for
clean coal. While no method of cleaning coal is
fool-proof, the coal supply in the United States may
provide a means for power generation for the next
200 years.
With burial of nuclear fuels at
Yucca Mountain now dead, attention is being refocused
on the collection of spent nuclear materials for
reuse. Our Dyna-AquaTM Uranium can clean up low grade
nuclear waste found in groundwater, surface water
and surface soils. This soaked up waste can then
potentially be safely destroyed or reused. Assuring
that low grade nuclear materials do not get into the
environment will allow nuclear energy to again be considered as an additional source for
electricity production to fuel America.
By designing specialized
activated alumina, Dynamic will be at the forefront
in the use of new high density lithium batteries,
with the lithium packed tightly into alumina spheres
increasing density and shrinking the size of the
batteries.
We welcome the chance to team up
with other innovators in ensuring that in
the short and long run, we can remain at the
technical forefront and generate the jobs to keep
the green revolution here in North America.
Gary Witman, MD
January 29, 2010
We make our adsorbents fit your
applications, not your applications fit our
adsorbents
This is the mission statement of
our company. Simple in concept, rational in scope
and critical to you as a separation scientist. We do
more that produce the best adsorbents. We ourselves
are separation scientists, and recognize the issues
that you address day in and day out.
This company was founded because
of a commercial void in the separation science
community. There was a need to work with scientists
to provide the best separation solution. Finding
separation answers led to our designing the new
Dyna-AquaTM line of products and to refining the
techniques for modifying surface, particle
distribution, and pore sizes using activated
alumina.
We welcome your calls. Almost
daily we receive calls from separation scientists at
the collegiate, university or industrial level of
people who are having problems with their current
adsorbents. They purchased from other vendors based
on price. Often they have obtained an adsorbent
manufactured overseas at what was a terrific price.
However once they use the product they find that it
is filled with fines, heavy metals, other
contaminants, or that it breaks down in an acidic or
basic pH setting or that it cannot withstand the
temperatures demanded for superior performance.
These calls are the mainstay of
the business. We never take an “I told you so”
approach. All of us have been tempted by pricing as
a primary consideration when acquiring adsorbents.
Aren’t they approaching a commodity item? Shouldn’t
we be able to purchase alumina and silica in an
interchangeable fashion based on pricing alone?
I go back to our mission
statement – we make our adsorbents fit your
applications, not your applications fit our
adsorbents.
Spend some time with our staff.
You may be very pleasantly surprised by the results
of your endeavor.
Dr. Mark Moskovitz
January 19, 2010
DAI's Unique Ability to Modify Alumina for
Specific Applications
If you follow the growth of our
company then you realize how passionate we are about
the use of alumina for purification in the
separation sciences – this includes the spectrum of
pharmaceutical, industrial, environmental,
nutraceutical and just plain basis research. We just
love to play with and manipulate activated alumina.
We modify it, reshape it and alter particle and pore
size – in fact, you could think of us as molecular
metallurgists!
In our commitment to our loyal
client base it our promise to continually expand our
product line. We have listened to your feedback and
wish to address your most pressing needs. In the
very near future we will be announcing the offering
of a superior 1 micron sized activated alumina
particle for ultra high pressure, high resolution
separations. Pumps and columns are now available to
utilize this exciting new Dynamic product. Until now
the limiting factor has been the adsorbent. Soon all
of this will change.
What else is on the horizon for
this year? New materials will be entering the
marketplace to address your proteinomic purification
requirements. New biocides bound to activated
alumina and integrated with non-woven fiber
materials for extremely broad anti-infective
applications.
Our ideas are boundless. One by
one we will deliver these exciting new solutions to
you.
Dr. Mark Moskovitz
January 15, 2010
Help for Haiti
Like the rest of the business
community, we at DAI feel strongly for the people of
Haiti in their desperate time of need. We are in
contact with officials to donate technology and
supplies to assist with their water purification and
other needs, and urge all businesses and individuals
to do what they can to assist Haitian earthquake
victims, and the people and organizations attempting
to assist them. Below you will find the many
organizations offering assistance, with direct links
to donate, in addition to the link below from the
Whitehouse.
Whatever all of us can do will
be extremely helpful and your support will be
greatly appreciated.
Dr. Mark Moskovitz
-
The
American Red Cross.
-
UNICEF
or
1-800-4UNICEF.
-
Wyclef
Jean's foundation,
Yele Haiti. Text "Yele" to 501501 and $5
will be charged to your phone
-
Operation
USA or
1-800-678-7255
or, by check made out to
Operation USA,
3617 Hayden Ave, Suite A, Culver City, CA 90232.
-
Save
The Children
-
International Medical Corps or 800-481-4462
-
Ben Stiller's
Stillerstrong campaign
-
Partners
In Health
-
Mercy Corps, or
1-888-256-1900
or send checks to
Mercy Corps Haiti arthquake Fund; Dept NR; PO
Box 2669; Portland, OR 97208.
-
Doctors Without Borders
-
Direct Relief
-
Oxfam
-
UN World Food Programme
-
Baptist Haiti Mission
-
International Medical Corps
-
Catholic Relief Services
-
American Jewish World Service's Earthquake
Relief Fund.
-
CARE
-
Orphans International America
PayPal.
-
The International Rescue Committee
-
NetHope
-
The Haitian Health Foundation
-
World Vision
-
The Jewish Federations of North America
-
United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF)
-
Friends of the Orphans, or
888-201-8880
-
World Concern's
-
Merlin USA
-
The Salvation Army or
1-800-SAL-ARMY.
-
American Refugee Committee or read about
their
volunteer opportunities.
-
AmeriCares or call
1-800-486-HELP.
-
Handicap International
-
Episcopal Relief & Development.
1-800-334-7626, ext. 5129 or
mail to
Episcopal
Relief & Development, PO Box 7058, Merrifield,
VA 22116-7058.
January 11, 2010
DAI's Product Line Expansion
2010 is starting off with a
bang, and the entire management team and support
staff at DAI are most grateful. Over the course of
the past three years we have continued to expand our
line of high quality products for the separation
sciences and the pharmaceutical and environmental
science industries. How successful are we becoming?
In the first week of this year we have done 15 x
more in sales than we achieved in the entire month
of January just three days ago. In part this sales
success is a reflection of the expansion of the
Dynamic product line. Even more importantly our
loyal client base has continued to expand the use of
our products and our client base continues to
expand.
I plan to be available to speak
with many of you in Orlando next month (Feb. 28 -
March 5) at PITTCON.
Please reach me at the office number (770 817-0123)
so that I may arrange a suitable time to discuss
your separation needs.
Mark Moskovitz, Ph D
January 1, 2010
Dynamic and PCB Removal
2009 proved to be a banner year
for awareness regarding the hazards associated with
the production, usage and disposal of
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). While now banned
for decades, these useful synthetic compounds were
incorporated into much more than power transformers
– 30 years ago they found their way into building
materials, schools and were immersed without concern
of long term impact into our environment. Only now
do we comprehend the ubiquitous nature of these
compounds. Exciting data from Labrador and published
this month in the Toronto Globe and Mail point to an
environmental solution for destroying these toxic
agents. Meanwhile the utility of activated alumina
for rapid and complete PCB cleanup remains
unheralded.
DAI sponsors
pcbremoval.net,
a website where unbiased timely articles from the
lay and scientific press are presented regarding the
role of pcb compounds in our environment and
multiple clean up approaches which are being used
for their eradication. Throughout the year the
company will be sponsoring additional websites which
will address the role and impact of environmental
cleanup.
Affordable solutions are
available to make our world a cleaner place to live.
At Dynamic Adsorbents, 2010 will be a year where we
continue making advances in the use of alumina for
not just environmental cleanup applications, but
protecting citizens throughout the world from viral
and bacterial health hazards.
Dr. Gary Witman
December 27, 2009
Dynamic Update - Looking back and ahead
As we get to the end of this
calendar year it is time for introspection. Did we
do well this year? Are we happy with our
performance? Have we helped to make the world a
better place?
Simple questions, but oh so
profound in their implications. It is our hope that
we have added to the education process by creating a
chapter on Flash Chromatography for Jack Kazes
masterpiece compilation “Encyclopedia of
Chromatography, 3rd Edition”. What a wonderful
addition of scholarship this work has become.
We continue to acquire patent
protection for intellectual property to develop
exciting new products that will keep us in the
forefront of cleaning our air, soil and water.
New websites initiated by the
company are exposing readers all over the world to
disruptive and exciting novel solutions for cleaning
up our environment. It is comforting to know that
our ideas are being disseminated globally.
We are placing a great deal of
emphasis on our means to manipulate activated
alumina in ways that have not been addressed before
and continue setting the standard regarding how
alumina is being used. By altering the structure,
the pore size and the particle size we are finding
solutions for superior drying agents, pollution
control systems, filtration systems, pesticide,
pyrogen and toxic waste cleanup, and novel solutions
for the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries.
We have accomplished much this
calendar year. And this is only the beginning. Happy
New Year to everyone.
Mark Moskovitz, PhD
December 18, 2009
New York Times: Lack of Regulation for Most
Chemicals in Water
The New York Times got it right
this week in their first page articles about the
quality of the water supply in the United States.
According to their latest article, "Only 91
contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking
Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used
within the United States, according to Environmental
Protection Agency estimates. Government and
independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of
those chemicals in recent decades, and identified
hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other
diseases at small concentrations in drinking water,
according to an analysis of government records by
The New York Times. But not one chemical has been
added to the list of those regulated by the Safe
Drinking Water Act
since 2000."
A healthy, safe environment is
not just about attempting to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions in order to cut global warming.
The growth in the population of the world is
unprecedented. By the end of this century nearly 9
billion humans will inhabit this planet, placing
strains on our environment which are currently
inconceivable. Just as in past centuries wars will
be fought over resource allocation, only this time
it will not be over minerals. It will be over land
and water. Sustainable resource utilization mandates
careful policy development and implementation.
We are doing our part at Dynamic
Adsorbents. We are the foremost company that has
developed and manufactured a series of specialty
activated aluminas that can remove many of the toxic
heavy metals that pollute our water supplies.
Recognizing water safety has not yet come to the
forefront as a public safety issue. But it will.
Contact your representatives.
Let them know that it is not just time to think
about C02 emissions and global warming. It is time
to restore our world to the beautiful place we were
given to live in when we came into this world and we
want it to be just as beautiful and safe for the
next generation.
Gary Witman, MD
December 15, 2009
How can an adsorbent company
such as DAI help our nation’s energy needs?
Day after day forward thinking
companies are contacting DAI to help provide
solutions to address our nations need for energy
independence. And the company can certainly help
them.
Here are just a few of the
exciting ways in which we can help our company
provide the means for energy dependency
-
remove the water and other
liquid solutions from hydrogen fuels which can
be used to power vehicles
-
stabilize the lithium used
in newer generation batteries which will power
the next generation of hybrid vehicles
-
remove the sulfur out of
unrefined and refined petroleum
-
assure that the water
reaching municipal water supplies is clean and
pure after shale fractionation for gas
extraction
We committed to assuring that
the environment is clean for future generation by
providing simple and affordable solutions now.
You will be surprised at what
solutions the DAI technical staff may be able to
suggest by helping you with your environmental
cleanup needs, Further we are here to provide the
essential technical support to help you work through
to the achievement of a satisfactory solution.
Dr. Gary B. Witman
December 9, 2009
New York Times: 49 million in the US Exposed to
Dangerous Water
I hope you had the chance to see
the
recent article first released in the December
8th edition of the NY Times and then nationally
syndicated regarding "49 million in the US Exposed
to Dangerous Water." This provocative investigative
reporting found that more than 20% of the nation's
water treatment systems have violated key provisions
of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the
last 5 years, with water serving 49 million people
containing illegal concentrations of chemicals like
arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium.
At DAI, we feel that it is a
good time to remind people that our company was
formed and is in business to fight such important
environmental issues by providing the best,
cost-effective solutions to cleaning up our
environment and protecting against other public
health hazards. We do this through the unique and
creative use of carefully defined activated wide
pore alumina that is
targeted to specific cleanup and other applications.
The special amphoteric
properties of activated alumina provide an important
weapon in the fight for a cleaner, healthier
environment. Unlike other companies which sell this
adsorbent, for years DAI has played an instrumental
role in defining how alumina can be modified and
manipulated to enhanced its utility for separation
and environmental cleanup applications. Not only do
independent lab tests show DAI providing the highest
quality alumina in the industry, but we are the only
company manufacturing unique, specialized aluminas
targeted towards specific applications. In addition,
we are the only company capable of developing
customized alumina targeted to meet the specific
needs of your company.
In the case of purifying
drinking water, our new Dyna-AquaTM line of alumina
provides specialized aluminas targeted to the
removal of lead, radioactive waste including
uranium, copper, and fluoride from the water supply.
DAI currently manufactures more than 30 specialized
alumina products targeted to unique applications and
will continue developing defined high quality
products that best deal with environmental cleanup
needs.
Please read more about our
products and applications throughout our web site
(products,
applications or
FAQ), or call or email us
with any questions or to request any product or
other info.
As, always, thank you for your
consideration and we look forward to doing business
with you in building a cleaner, safer environment.
Your ideas and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
From all of us at DAI wishing
you the best in this festive Holiday season. And let
us hope that the political leaders of the world are
able to come to a consensus in Copenhagen this month
recognizing that we are the shepherds of this earth
and it is our job to keep our environment clean and
sustainable for future generations.
Read Article
Mark Moskovitz, PhD
