Fusing the Phenol Frenzy
JOHN E. KINNEY, Sanitary Engineering Consultant
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Fantastic is the word to describe the role of phenol in pollution control.
Few water constituents receive so much attention. Arguments, discourses,
schools, studies, surveys, laws and regulations are directed toward it.
Why? In that single-syllable question lies the essence of the problem. A
wrong answer has directed the activities of scores of people. A correction can
offer direction toward accomplishment.
Actually, the wrong response resulted from an uncompleted line of reasoning. It was not the result of reasoning but merely an expression of something everybody thought they knew: phenol causes taste and odor in water supplies.
The fully completed line of reasoning would have shown that the objective of the pollution control program was the protection of public water
supplies from taste and odor. The logical sequel would have been to ask what
the role of phenol is in taste and odor control.
However, it must be recognized that once the short-range and limited
thinking was accomplished, there was a tremendous expenditure of energy in
gathering detail, data and misinformation on phenol. The results permitted
conflicting results and ranges in concentrations needed to put phenol under
control.
WHAT IS PHENOL?
With nearly 40 years of newspaper publicity on phenol, it is easy to assume that everyone knows what phenol is -- one more illustration of how erroneous assumptions can be. The lack of knowledge of what phenol is has not
been confined to the man on the street. How others, purportedly up on the
subject, have been developing new concepts will be discussed later.
In  simple  terms,  phenol is an organic chemical.    It can be obtained
from coal. It is used as a germicide.   It can be obtained at a drug store under
the name of carbolic acid.   Its characteristics are such that analytical procedures commonly used for phenol in pollution control measure other similar
types of compounds.
CONTROL OF PHENOL
Obviously, if phenol has no role in taste and odor control, there would
have been no basis for starting a fuss and furor on phenol. What its role was
supposed to be was pointed up by a series of incidents. Occurrence of chemical tastes at water plants located on rivers downstream from coke plants indicated the coke plants to be sources of trouble. Coke plants distill coal and
recover coal tar products. An index of recovery is the chemical compound
phenol. Phenol could be measured. Phenol was the gage used on the discharge .
This knowledge, gained 40 years ago, was supplemented by data developed by the U. S. Public Health Service. The PHS learned that -- and this
quote comes from a paper in the early twenties -- "if the chlorine dosage is
properly controlled" chlorination of phenol will develop chloro-phenols that
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