A conversation with Indulis Kibars, a retired chemical engineer

You are a chemist with interesting practical work experience, which we will talk about a little later! What is your take on the issues that have been considered topical in recent years, such as climate variability or climate change?

If you read history books, look at what has happened on Earth in the past, and delve into this information, it has been "much, much worse", if you can put it that way! Ice ages, little ice ages, and the like. We have currently entered a "different" period again, which depends not so much on man and human activity, but on geophysical processes. There is minimal human influence, but we can add that as a small plus or minus to the "major events". You know, just so we, the people, aren't forgotten in it all!

To what extent is man dependent on food? Can we "believe" in what we buy, or should we believe those who say: "...they are poisoning us, they are luring us in the wrong direction, they are teaching us incorrectly..."

Speaking of modified food or modified raw materials, which is probably the "most topical" subject, I think people are riling themselves up. There cannot be anything harmful there! If we look at it simply, a certain modification also occurs naturally. For example, new species are formed. Often, through our actions, we dismantle the natural modification that has already developed in a species. For example, as a result of selective breeding, we choose the "wrong" material. There used to be plants that could "get" the substances they needed even from stone. Now, over time, that has changed; the plant is unable to do so and dies.

"Large" plant cultures...

Large cultures... For some time now, we have been calling them monocultures, and they are certainly not dangerous, but the result of growing these crops is the depletion of the soil—that, indeed, is the case! Also the depletion of landscapes and the environment. Soil is well cleaned by grasslands and also cereals. Currently, as I hear, two crops are recommended to be rotated—grain – rapeseed, grain – rapeseed. We need another one. We should... Let's say – a third! But – that is economics; there is not much you can do about it!

If we link food and climate, we have been growing "southerners" in Latvia for a long time and not so long ago... Grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peppers...

Watermelons! Watermelons love the warm summers Latvia has had in recent years! They are being grown here more and more, and in the fields too, not just in greenhouses!

As for gardening, I recommend doing it if possible! A very good helper for gardeners (especially small-scale ones) would be the return of small shops to our daily lives, which would undoubtedly also stimulate the activity of small-scale market gardeners. I imagine it something like this – each shop has its own group of growers (gardeners). Of course, it also has its own clientele.

Large shopping centres are, of course, necessary, but small ones would certainly help locals and small towns, as is the case in Latvia. For example, in Los Angeles, where my daughter lives, there are many large shopping centres. But!!!! A shopping centre is a city within a city with little streets, where many small shops are located and operate. If these small shops exist and operate, they certainly have their own buyers, their own clientele! Small shops are closer to people, which is a very necessary thing in this day and age! Personal attitude, personal contact!

Your relationship as a chemist with the forest began early and developed in a very interesting way.

Mushroom picking, berry picking, and resin tapping during my school years, which is how I earned money. That is how it started! In my childhood and youth, I lived in the Smiltene area. Working with resin tapping, I earned a bicycle! I liked the tapping work itself, but those heavy buckets... I remember it even today! Compared to water, pine resin has a density of about 1.7. A ten-litre bucket weighed about 17 kg! My cousin's foster father was a master resin tapper, and we both "got" a small clear-cut area to work in. A year later, once we had gained our first experience, we "took" a larger area to work in. We made the tools ourselves! We, the "little ones", filled five 200-litre barrels in a season. The forests of Smiltene are magnificent, classic pine forests! By the way, at that time we often "cleaned" the forest during work from unwanted deciduous trees and bushes that used to grow (and still do) among the "beautiful pines". The forest was clean and beautiful after us! When I later moved to Dundaga to live, I saw many old, tapped trees in the forests, but no cleaning work had been carried out in that area. Resin tapping had taken place, but everything had subsequently become overgrown.

You have experience working at the Salaspils reactor...

Not exactly, but there is a connection! The Institute of Wood Chemistry owned the Radiation Chemistry Laboratory where I worked. One of the experiments I participated in was to impregnate wood with pyrrole, irradiate it with a certain dose, and watch the results. Of course, such things are done differently now. What happens as a result of the irradiation was subsequently tested with the help of ultrasound—they measured the material's strength, deformation, and structural changes. The laboratory was intended to carry out contract work to earn money!

"Those times" (Soviet) and earning money... Yes, indeed! Everyone needed money, even in the so-called Soviet times! Not far from Moscow, there were several institutes (scientist towns), and there was also Kaliningrad (not the one by the Baltic Sea), to where a trolleybus ran from Moscow. It was a closed zone! I would take the equipment and samples to a "certain gate"—they wouldn't let me any further! The handover and receipt also took place right there at the gate! This way of earning money "was good"! We fulfilled everything! It must be said that the work was more experimental; we were, of course, not informed about the use of the results obtained, and we did not know or ask either. We also worked a lot on researching the impact of radiation on sealing; there were many different experiments. We irradiated, for example, various microchips. I will say that many of our works (experiments) were related to space matters and rocket construction, which is why there was such great secrecy.

While working, we came up with the idea ourselves to investigate the possible application of radiation in agriculture. We tried it with peas, though only a little. There were small experimental plots where planting material irradiated with gamma radiation (electron accelerator) was planted; in the springs, you could see how both would sprout—the irradiated ones and the "normal" ones.

There are seeds that must be stratified, for example, for a year. At that time, we considered irradiation as a way of "removing it from circulation" for this year. The results we obtained, however, were not widely used; everything remained at an experimental level. When I moved to live in the aforementioned Dundaga, it had the largest collective farm in Latvia in terms of area at that time. We took sawdust to Leningrad to be irradiated, which after irradiation could be used in many places: as a raw material for cellulose, it could be eaten by animals, because the radiation had broken down the polymer compounds. It could also be used for fermentation—maybe that is forgotten now, but at one time wood alcohol was produced! Of course, the research was experimental; we did not manage to achieve anything fundamental.

There is irradiation with residual radiation and irradiation without residual radiation. Radiation and its intensity have different degrees of decay. Gamma radiation practically breaks down nothing, but it does change things! There are substances which, when irradiated, produce poison. For example, Teflon. Teflon was even used for the needs of the secret Manhattan Project when the first atomic bombs were created. The lowest temperature at which the release of Teflon components into the air has been detected is 230 °C. A frying pan can reach such a temperature after just 5 minutes, especially on gas stoves, where the heat is concentrated. If Teflon pans were heated to white heat, they would release pyrene compounds, from which chemical warfare agents are produced. I still believe that one should not fear many things, but one must know how to use them! Currently, there is information that a process will be created in the production of Teflon that will prevent perfluorooctanoic acid from entering the environment, neither in factories nor in households.

What I don't like: people work and obtain, discover, or invent something, and then some "smart aleck" says: "You are obtaining that using radiation; that must be dangerous!" And the "smart aleck" says that without delving into it!

For example, a retired Soviet army colonel was sent to work at a furniture factory in Dundaga, as was customary in those years. He was no good as a shop manager, and as a shift supervisor—also nothing, so they "put" him in as a safety engineer, because they had to find him a position! In the workshop, they were gluing decorative furniture panels. The colonel looks, looks at the glue pot, looks... "Why is the glue pot in an open place and, on top of that, open (uncovered)? It could catch fire!" We answer: "No, you can extinguish fire with this glue!" "That cannot be, if it is glue, it is a fire hazard!" That's it! There are plenty of such retired Soviet colonels in many places right now! If "it is like this or that", it is harmful, because it is written or read somewhere. Various informational materials are easily accessible, no matter how high-quality or scientific; these materials mention that "this is bad and this is harmful". A quick conclusion, without a deeper, understandable explanation. Superficial.

In the past, many great ideas have been "buried". In science, many things depend on their beginnings. And if a process was "buried" at one time and it happened a long time ago, there is a possibility that you will no longer find the "beginning" from which the result understandably depends, or you won't find it quickly! Unfortunately, there has always been the opportunity to ban or disallow something!