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THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

June 26, 1979

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Dr. A. Bruce Bishop

Executive Director

New York State

Energy Research and Development Authority
Rockefeller Plaza

Albany, New York 12223

Dear Dr. Bishop:

‘This is to respond to your letter of June 19th
requesting information on coal research programs at
the University. The Rockefeller University is pre-
eminently a biomedical research institute and we do
not have any programs here that might at first order
comply with the expressed interests in "a strong
technology base for coal conversion". For that rea-
son, I have not attempted to respond further to the
questionnaire -- which as you know itself must entail
some consumption of scarce resources.

On further reflection, however, it seemed to me
that there might be some lesson in the non-congruence
behind our response. Insufficient attention to the
health and other environmental consequences of energy
production, by other routes has had the gravest politi-
cal and economic consequenées already. I hope we will
not face the same sorry history in the exploitation
of coal;but this is quite likely to happen if we do not
pursue, much more aggressively, the potential health
hazards of various forms of carbon and particularly
of polyaromatic components that dominate most schemes
of coal ligqu@faction. In your further discussion of
the development of a university coal laboratory program
I hope you will be giving more than perfunctory atten-
tion to the research base needed to validate the health
effects of coal conversion, and by the health policy
standards of 1990 rather than 1950.

Yours sincerely,

foshua Lederberg