Check out a request for proposal, P2i Ltd buys Surface Innovations, UK's Ultrachem buys RW Coatings, New Energy will bow transparent organic solar cell
Hello and welcome to your late week international coatings industry update, brought to you by SpecialChem. With your indulgence, I'd like to highlight a request for proposal that we received recently in our introduction. A what?! Yes, our Community section, which you should know well by now, has a feature that allows the posting of such things. This particular RFP outlines specs for a corrosion resistant immersion coating process to coat the insides of box section metallic assemblies - but without the downsides of dip coating (resin weep, etc.), or electrophoretic coating (throw problems and infrastructure cost.)
The poster is looking for a developer or technology partner to accelerate the development of this product. Any ideas? Several spring to my feeble mind, and if I were a younger man, I'd be on this like a duck on a junebug. Please take a moment to read the RFP - we've provided a handy link. While you're there, take a look around and see how our community section could help you.
In the news, UK's P2i Limited, which develops and manufactures liquid repellent nanocoatings, has acquired 100% of the share capital of Surface Innovations Ltd, a UK-based technology company with a wide range of functional nanocoating patents. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition expands P2i's product portfolio beyond its market-leading technologies for liquid repellency, adding "functional" coating technologies with applications including anti-bacterial resistance, liquid attracting (super wettable), and many others.
Ultrachem, a UK-based independent manufacturer of UV inks, water based coatings and pressroom chemistry, has bought RW Coatings' specialty manufacturing business. RW's clearcoat product and brand names will continue to be marketed independently through John Russell, Tim Webb, chairman of RW Coatings, said.
RW Coatings will dispose of its current Hertford, UK headquarters and move to Ultrachem's factory in Bristol, Webb added. The coatings producer has concentrated the business focus on exports, which fits perfectly with the ongoing strategy within our operations, said Tony Brinton, managing director at Ultrachem.
In solar coatings news, New Energy Technologies announced that researchers developing its proprietary SolarWindow technology have achieved major scientific and technical breakthroughs, allowing the Company to unveil a working prototype of the world's first-ever glass window capable of generating electricity in the upcoming weeks.
New Energy's ability to generate electricity on see-thru glass is made possible by making use of the world's smallest working organic solar cells, developed by Dr. Xiaomei Jiang at the University of South Florida. Unlike conventional solar systems, New Energy's solar cells generate electricity from both natural and artificial light sources, outperforming today's commercial solar and thin-film technologies by as much as 10-times.
This piece of litigation has the lifespan of a sea turtle and the tenacity of a cockroach - that's right, more news on the Rhode Island lead paint case. Defendant companies have appealed a judge's decision denying them reimbursement for the cost of defending themselves against a failed lawsuit from Rhode Island. You may remember that Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein ruled in May the state didn't have to repay them, and I said that's not the last you'll hear on the subject.
The manufacturers argued they were entitled to reimbursement because the state Supreme Court in 2008 ruled in their favor and reversed a landmark jury verdict that could've cost the industry billions of dollars.
A notice of appeal was filed Friday by the three companies that ultimately won the case - Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC. Three other companies that had been sued but didn't go to trial joined in the appeal.
Sherwin-Williams lawyer Charles Moellenberg says Rhode Island court rules enable winning sides of a lawsuit to recover their costs and this case should be no different.
In industry health news, people exposed to paint on the job -- including painters, plasterers, artists, decorators, and other workers -- appear to have an increased risk of bladder cancer, a study meta-analysis indicated.
In a pooled analysis of 41 studies, painters (and other individuals reporting an occupation that exposed them to paint) were 25% more likely to develop bladder cancer (RR 1.25, 95% CI 1.16 to 1.34), according to Neela Guha, PhD, MPH, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, and colleagues.
An analysis restricted to studies that controlled for smoking status yielded a similar result (RR 1.28, 95% CI 1.15 to 1.43), the authors wrote.
The findings were reported in the August issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Because of the consistency of the risk estimates across subgroups and the finding that longer exposure was associated with higher risks, the researchers wrote that the results support a causal relationship between paint exposure and bladder cancer.
"Because several million people are employed as painters worldwide," they wrote, "even a modest increase in the relative risk is remarkable."
On the basis of previous studies linking paint exposure to both lung and bladder cancer, the IARC classified exposure to paint as "carcinogenic to humans."
To quantify the risk of bladder cancer, Guha and her colleagues identified 41 cohort, record-linkage, and case-control studies addressing the issue.
Aside from painters, individuals deemed to have exposure to paint in the workplace were plasterers, glaziers, wallpaper hangers, artists, decorators, French polishers, and aerographers.
Overall, the meta-analysis included more than 2,900 incident bladder cancer cases or deaths.
In the individual studies, the relative risks of bladder cancer ranged from 0.42 to 3.10, with 33 studies identifying a significant or nonsignificant positive association.
The elevated risk of bladder cancer among individuals exposed to paint was magnified in women (RR 1.55 versus 1.24), although women might not actually have a higher risk, according to the researchers.
"The relative risk in women may appear higher because they have a lower background bladder cancer risk than men," they wrote.
The association was consistent across geographical areas and in analyses adjusted for smoking and for other occupational exposures in addition to smoking.
"The robustness of the summary risk estimates after adjusting for tobacco use [suggests] that residual confounding by tobacco use is unlikely and that occupational exposure as a painter is independently associated with the risk of bladder cancer," the researchers wrote.
The magnitude of the risk estimate was greater with longer duration of paint exposure -- the relative risk was 1.81 (95% CI 1.20 to 2.75) for exposure lasting more than 10 years and 1.41 (95% CI 1.00 to 2.01) for shorter exposure.
"These results support the conclusion that occupational exposures in painters are causally associated with the risk of bladder cancer," the researchers wrote.
Specific chemicals responsible for increasing risk of bladder cancer have not been identified, although Guha and her colleagues noted that painting exposes individuals to some of the same aromatic amines found in cigarette smoke. Those chemicals are thought to be involved in the strong relationship between smoking and bladder cancer.
"To permit identification of specific causative agents encountered in the painting environment, future studies assessing cancer risks in painters should present risk estimates associated with individual components in paint," the researchers wrote.
The authors cited several potential limitations to the study results: exposure assessment in many of the record linkage studies was often crude; occupation as a painter was usually assessed at a single time point and then linked to death or cancer registries, increasing chance of false positives; the wide variety of chemicals used in paints (which change over time); and the variability and complexity of painting environments.
And in case you are thinking that environmental concerns are the exclusive luxury of the "developed world," take heart of this news from India. A manufacturing unit of Berger Paints was recently probed for pollution of groundwater in villages near the Pilerne Industrial Estate in Goa, environment minister Aleixo Sequeira told the assembly Monday.
Speaking in reply to a calling attention motion, Sequeira said the state pollution control board was conducting a hearing after residents of Saipem village filed a complaint under the Water and Air Pollution Act.
"The state top pollution control authority is already hearing a complaint against Berger Paints. An inspection of the unit at the industrial estate has already been conducted after the complaint said that chemicals were being discharged by the company and was contaminating the ground water," Sequeira said.
The upshot of the probe was a business suspension order. The suspension order was issued by the chairman of the Goa State Pollution Control Board Simon de Souza after conducting a hearing on the issue.
The management of Berger Becker Coatings Private Limited, have also been asked to "manage, handle and dispose of all the hazardous waste stored at the unit", until which the operations will remain suspended.
The unit has also been asked to clear solvent, which was being discharged in the storm water drains, and report to the authority within seven days.
The order also directs the district collector to seal the premises and disconnect the water and electricity supply to the unit.
Berger Becker Industries Coating Pvt Ltd located at the Pilerne industrial estate, manufactures industrial paint, industrial color powders, white wash colors and paint pigments.
In other news, Hardide Coatings, the advanced surface coatings company, has appointed Robin Gillham as business development manager for its global valve, pump and automotive business ...more
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DuPont Performance Coatings (DPC) recently held a business conference in Orlando, Fla., for their champion jobbers in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Guam. The event's theme, "You Lead... Magic Follows," was inspired by DPC guiding principles and reinforced by the leadership philosophies of Walt Disney ...more
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The Pitman Company acquisition substantially increases Agfa Graphics' revenue in the US to more than $500 million ...more about this news
And finally, PPG Industries reported sales for the second quarter of $3.5 billion, an increase of 11 percent versus the prior year's second quarter. Second quarter reported net income was $272 million, or $1.63 per share. Second quarter 2009 sales were $3.1 billion and reported net income was $146 million, or 89 cents per share ...more about this news
Thank you for reading the Industry Letter!
Best, Mark Drukenbrod
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