Abstract
The chemical industry provides essential goods we use in our daily lives and key ingredients for many diverse industries. On the other hand, their production and use require serious attention while they may be seriously harmful to local air quality. The Clean Air Act (CAA) and its subsequent amendments regulate the emissions of hazardous air pollutants to protect public health and welfare in the U.S.A. since 1970. This study aimed to assess the impact of CAA on the rate of patenting in the chemical industry. With this in mind, basic chemical utility patents were analyzed to detect the effects of CAA on the patenting activities. Subsequent to the fitting of the ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) model (producing the least square of errors), a significant outlier was detected with the Dixon’s r22 Ratio Test. This outlier was the number of patents granted in 1972. Contextual queries in the text of those patent documents have shown that there was a considerable increase in the patents of chemistry which takes the sustainability relevant terms (air, emission, pollution, etc.) into consideration. It was concluded that companies in the chemistry industry adapted themselves very rapidly to the changes and CAA was an important incentive to create novel technologies.
Highlights
The chemical industry produces raw materials and intermediates, along with a wide variety of finished products for industry, business, and individual consumers [1]
Data were retrieved from the website of the United States Patent Trademark Office (USPTO)
The USPTO states that “Patenting activity in the NAICS industry categories was determined by using the primary U.S Patent Classification System (USPC) patent classification assigned to each patent and a USPC to NAICS concordance”
Summary
The chemical industry produces raw materials and intermediates, along with a wide variety of finished products for industry, business, and individual consumers [1]. Hydrophobic chemicals may serve as long-term sources of pollution by absorbing to soils or sediments at contaminated sites; volatile chemicals may serve as air pollution hazards [5]. In this respect, policy arrangements and environmental sustainability regulations have been one of the powerful drivers of sustainability (for further information [6,7,8,9,10] can be read)
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