chEMPOWER

Shortly after the passage of the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics began exploring the idea of making chemical products and processes less hazardous to human health and the environment.

Paul Anastas (while working at the Environmental Protection Agency) and John C. Warner developed the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry.

The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry actually call on scientists to design products and chemicals that degrade and become innocuous after use.

While hair products may benefit from Green Chemistry, the pursuit of fuller hair is not one of the main overarching intents of Green Chemistry initiatives.

Old-fashioned milk-based paints are a less toxic alternative to paints containing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Moreover, they’re far less toxic than petroleum-, PVC- and organochlorine-based products.

The ideas behind the Principles of Green Chemistry are to minimize damage, prevent waste and reduce the hazards of chemical compounds. While eliminating hazards altogether is optimal, it’s not a requirement of Green Chemistry. So the best time to eliminate hazards is in the very start of the product design stage, because the Principles state that it’s better to prevent waste than to treat it after it’s been created.

To compute the Atom Economy, divide the Formula Weight of the Product by the Formula Weight of all the reactants.

While Environmental Science and Green Chemistry work together, they are not the same. Environmental Science identifies the sources of issues in the environment, while Green Chemistry seeks to solve those issues by creating alternative, safe technologies.

Acute toxins have immediate deleterious effects. Benzene's adverse effects, however, accumulate over repeated exposures, thereby making it a chronic toxin. The 12 principles guide us away from the use of such solvents.

While Carbon Dioxide gases play a hazardous role in global warming, when used as a solvent or reactant in Green Chemistry, CO2 also offers a valuable, non-toxic alternative to harmful chemicals.

From gasoline to plastics, almost everything we use contains petroleum. Green Chemistry seeks to find renewable alternatives that are not only renewable but less toxic to the environment.

Green Chemistry calls on scientists to conserve energy. Whenever possible processes should be designed for ambient temperature and pressure so energy costs are minimized.