Letters: April 2025

Serbian concerns about lithium mining

I was profoundly disappointed by the article ‘Opposition to lithium mines hampers green technology supply chain’ and especially by its dismissal of the environmental concerns of those opposed to lithium mining projects in my native country of Serbia. The reporting does not represent the highest standards of journalism that I have come to expect from Chemistry World.

The article does not interview anyone from Serbia, despite Serbian academics having written extensively about lithium mining and its risks (for example, see D Đorđević et al, Sci. Rep., 2024, 14, 17090). Instead, we are asked to take the word of Peter Tom Jones who works in Belgium and ‘has travelled to Serbia’, whose summary of the opposition is that even ‘educated Serbs’ have been misled by disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Serbia does not hold Europe’s largest reserves of lithium: Germany does. However, Serbia is not a member of the European Union and is thus not bound by the EU’s strict environmental regulations. For Germany and others, it is thus a very convenient source of lithium right in their backyard but without much responsibility for the potential pollution of the agricultural Jadar region. All that the Serbian public wants is a firm guarantee that this mining will be held to the same standards that would apply in the UK or the EU.

Such opposition does not hamper the global supply chain – it makes it better, more sustainable and more ethical. Lithium-ion batteries are a relatively new technology, and establishing global supply chains for such technologies offers the entire world an opportunity to do things right, by insisting on the highest standard for everyone in that supply chain.

Ognjen Miljanić FRSC
Texas, US

Editor:

Our intention with this article was to present a broad view of the prospects for exploiting Europe’s mineral resources in the context of the increasing demand for these materials. In the interest of maintaining the article’s focus, we did not attempt to cover the full political and legal aspects of the proposed Serbian mine, nor the issues of external malefactors seeking to influence the debate.

The article does note that the issue is highly divisive in Serbia and that the plan faces strong opposition. However, we acknowledge the story could have better explained the concerns expressed by those who oppose the plans. It was not our intention to dismiss or minimise those objections.

Should we adjust how we assess chemistry?

There are around 85 universities in the UK that offer chemistry as an undergraduate degree course. This means that there will be thousands of chemists graduating every year who are ready to begin the world of chemical work – right?

Focusing modules on examining theoretical chemistry (anything greater than 70% of a module) in my opinion is becoming a thing of the past. Yes, it is important that there should be some level of summative written assessment when it comes to chemistry, but there has to be a shift towards making chemistry courses heavier on the practical side.

There is a disconnect between the skills and the knowledge of chemistry graduates and this could potentially be addressed by increasing the required hours for accreditation for the Royal Society of Chemistry in universities. Producing graduates in the chemical sciences who can effectively run a flash column, crystallise a complex or perform an air-sensitive titration makes the UK a competitive producer of skilled chemists and makes students more employable.

Commensurate with this increase in lab hours and assessment of laboratory skills from the very start of undergraduate chemistry, the theory of the laboratory can be co-taught in these sessions and done in parallel. The associated downsides are of course that this will require much higher resourcing in staff and capital, but in my opinion the juice is worth the squeeze for the long-term future of chemistry in the UK.

Name and address supplied

It’s all Greek to chemists

In connection with the Last Retort article by Mason Wakley on etymology, it is instructive to recall some of the less well-known letters of the Greek alphabet used as prefixes in chemical terminology:

• Lower case α, β, γ, δ, ε denote the distance of a carbon atom in a chain from a terminal group, for example of an acid, and also the size of a lactone or lactam.
• Eta (η) and kappa (κ) are used in metal complexes, the first for the number of contiguous atoms of the ligand making bonds to the metal (hapticity), the second for any other arrangement (denticity), e.g. κ⁶-EDTA.
• Lower case ζ is used in ζ-potential, an electrochemical term.
• Lower case λ refers to the bonding capacity of some multivalent elements, e.g. λ³-iodane.
• Lower case μ (from μέσος = middle) pertains to usually oxygen-bridged dimeric symmetric compounds, such as O₃MnOMnO₃, written partially as “di-μ-oxo-…”.
• Tau as lower case, τ, was used instead of δ in the early days of NMR spectroscopy; it is also a small protein in the brain.
• Lower case chi (χ) is a symbol of electronegativity of atoms.
• Lower case ψ (from ψευδo- = pseudo-) is reserved for a C-isomer of uridine and ψ-DNA for a compact form of DNA.
• Lastly, a widely known Greek letter in chemical terminology is ω, used to denote the last carbon atom in a chain, especially in fatty acids such as ω-3.

Incidentally, all 24 Greek letters have found a use in mathematics.

Anastasios Varvoglis MRSC
Thessaloniki University, Greece

Chemistry World welcomes letters, which should be concise (normally fewer than 300 words) and timely. Those selected for publication are subject to editing for clarity and length. Letters should be marked ‘for publication’ and sent to chemistryworld@rsc.org

We do not routinely acknowledge letters.