The thirst for greater knowledge...

摘要

The first time I heard Aristotle's quote,“The more you know,the more you know you don't know,” was from my father during my childhood.I remember thinking it was such a profound thought,not realizing that he was just repeating something he had heard in his childhood.While we have a solid understanding of how products are designed to function,we often forget how much we,as a scientific community,still need to learn about the complexities of how these products may interact in the real world.It's one thing to experiment in a laboratory-a controlled environment-but the complexity of the real world doesn't allow us to fully understand and control all the variables.That should not stop us from trying,though.The air we breathe is just one example of this.We all want to keep it as clean as possible.To combat smog,California began statewide actions in the 1960s,and the Federal Clean Air Act passed in 1970 to control air pollution from automobiles and industrial sources.For more than 30 years,the California Air Resources Board(CARB)and the consumer products industry have worked together to improve air quality by regulating the volatile organic compound(VOC)content of consumer and commercial products.These efforts have been expended to ensure that our industry's products are regulated appropriately as part of wider emission control regulations.This effort in California laid the foundation for the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)and for other states to adopt regulations designed to improve air quality across the U.S.