When Paul Anastas coined the term “green chemistry” back in 1991, he was a 28-year-old staff scientist at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he was thought of as a little eccentric. By 1995, he had convinced then-US president Bill Clinton to launch the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge, and in 1998, he and scientist John Warner co-authored a textbook on the subject that still stands as the field’s dominant primer.
In it, the two laid out 12 principles for the new field they were founding, including “prevention,” the idea that chemicals should be designed to avoid waste as much as possible from the outset; “safer chemicals,” which instructed that chemicals should be designed to be both effective and non-toxic; and “safer solvents and auxiliaries,” which indicated that auxiliary substances like solvents and separation agents should be avoided wherever possible and innocuous when used.
That momentum behind green chemistry in the 1990s has never waned, but it has never exactly exploded either. In a recent paper on barriers to adoption of green chemistry, sponsored by the Green Chemistry and Commerce group at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, industry expert Tess Fennelly pinpoints various obstacles that have kept green chemistry from entirely realizing its potential.
Among them are the entrenched and efficient chemical industry, complex product supply chains and the lack of a shared understanding of exactly what green chemistry means. Additional obstacles include: shifting and sometimes confusing regulations and concerns that switching to a chemical that seems greener may result in unforeseen performance, cost or health issues.
Still, there are reasons to believe that green chemistry might be ready for its close-up. The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which governs whether and how chemicals are regulated in the US, is being revised for the first time since the 1970s.
While proponents of stricter regulation fear the proposed updates to the legislation still fall short, no one disputes the fact that it would be better than what we have now, which is legislation that has made it virtually impossible for the EPA to regulate, much less ban, any chemical even in the face of overwhelming evidence — such as asbestos, for example.
Despite the ongoing battle over US federal regulation, other policy changes have brought green chemistry advancements over the years, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s move to ban phthalates in children’s toys; changes to various state fire codes that have enabled the phasing out of chemical flame retardants in furniture; and California’s Prop 65 legislation, which mandates warning labels on products containing a wide range of toxic chemicals, and its Safer Consumer Products Law, also known as the Green Chemistry Initiative, which aims to pinpoint high priority products for regulation and work with manufacturers to phase out chemicals of concern in those products.
Although the latter law has come under fire for a number of reasons — it has moved very slowly, it charges an already overtaxed and under-resourced California Department of Toxic Substances Control with an enormous new task, and is extremely complex — if nothing else, it has helped to raise awareness among consumers and retailers, and spurred suppliers to look at alternatives.
In fact, all of these regulatory moves, along with the EU’s Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) regulation, have spurred innovation in green chemistry.
According to a 2013 report by the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), patents in green chemistry tend to track with chemical regulation. Pointing to publicly available patent records, the report highlights a noticeable increase in the number of patents filed for phthalate alternatives both in 1999, shortly after REACH regulation began, and again in 2006, when four phthalates — BBP, DEHP, DBP, and DIBP — were added to the REACH Authorization list, which required them to be phased out entirely by February of this year.
“It creates a market for green chemistry,” said CIEL’s Baskut Tuncak, who authored the study. “And not just for small green chemistry companies, either. The big guys, like Dow and Exxon Mobil, filed more patents for alternatives to phthalates, for example, than anyone.”
In addition to regulatory drivers, green chemistry innovation has been spurred in recent years by both growing consumer awareness and the procurement policies of big retailers.
Whole Foods has long had a strict green chemistry standard in place when vetting products for the shelves of its “Whole Body” section.
Chemist Bruce Akers said that for years, when a company has approached him wanting to work on a sustainable beauty product, the request has always been for “something designed according to the Whole Foods standard.”
Green chemistry really got a boost when Walmart and Target unveiled green chemistry purchasing policies a few weeks apart from each other in 2013. Bed, Bath and Beyond (BBB) quickly followed suit, publishing a list of restricted substances it plans to phase out from products it carries.
“BBB recommends that vendors exercise efforts to reduce or eliminate these substances of potential concern in their products,” the company wrote, cautioning that “vendors should avoid substituting substances on the [Restricted Substance List] RSL for another substance of equal or greater concern.”
All of which has helped consumer product companies change at a much faster rate than regulation alone could ever drive. Johnson & Johnson began phasing phthalates out of its products in the absence of US regulation of the chemicals because, Johnson & Johnson vice president of product stewardship and toxicology Susan Nettesheim said in the CIEL report: “There’s a very lively public discussion going on about the safety of ingredients in personal care products… It was really important that we had a voice in that… We want people to have complete peace of mind when they use our products.”
Meanwhile, SC Johnson has taken an industry-leading stance on ingredient transparency, becoming the first consumer product company to disclose fragrance ingredients in its products. Fragrance ingredients have long been protected under trade secret status, but public health advocates have been calling for more transparency for years. Giving consumers that transparency is key to the kind of company SC Johnson wants to be, according to the firm’s chief executive officer Fisk Johnson.
“If you want to earn trust and credibility, I believe you have to lay it all out for the scrutiny of the world, rather than keeping it secret,” Johnson told the Guardian via e-mail. “People fear the worst in the absence of information.”
The biggest step forward might come in a shift to how both chemists and regulators view chemicals: Rather than looking at one chemical at a time, leaders in the field are beginning to look at chemicals from the molecular level and then telescope out to evaluate the safety of entire groups or families of chemicals.
Anastas explained this approach in an interview as he was leaving his post as the EPA’s chief science advisor in 2012 to take on his current role as director of the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering.
“The important thing for anyone concerned about the environment is to understand that we’re not going to make the progress we want if we consider chemical by chemical,” Anastas told Environmental Health News at the time. “We have to have a better understanding of the nature of the hazard at the molecular level. Once we have that understanding, we can understand chemicals in terms of families and groups and the risk on humans and the environment.”
Green chemistry pioneer Arlene Blum, who runs the Green Science Policy Institute is focused on this approach as well. Blum — who is credited with getting flame retardant chemicals out of both children’s pajamas back in the 1970s and, more recently, furniture — has spent the last couple of years talking to regulators, policymakers, and the heads of assorted companies. The six chemicals of concern Blum has pinpointed are:
‧ highly fluorinated chemicals used to provide water or oil-resistant properties to cookware, outerwear, carpeting and food packaging;
‧ antimicrobials, such as triclosan, used in soaps, deodorants, socks and underwear to prevent microbial growth;
‧ flame retardants;
‧ bisphenols and phthalates, used in plastics, pesticides, and flame retardants;
‧ organic solvents, used in paints, coatings and dry cleaning chemicals;
‧ heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium and mercury.
“I believe green chemistry has helped to move us [beyond] petroleum-based chemistry, delivering both health and environmental benefits,” Blum says. “However, the rate of this transition needs to be increased.”
One way to do that, according to Blum, is to address the problem of “regrettable substitutions,” which happens when a chemical is banned or phased out and replaced with an equally problematic substance. Replacements are too often from the same chemical family and present similar properties and that cause similar harm, but that have not been studied.
“Green chemistry and technology can, and should, help us avoid entire classes containing related chemicals of concern and transition to healthier new chemicals, materials, and strategies that achieve needed functions with a reduced potential for harm,” Blum said.
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