Taking green chemistry out of the lab and into products. - Foot Detox Machine Manufacturer

I first went to Washington as a young kid fresh out ofgrad school. This would have been 23 years ago, and whether it wasthe first Bush presidency, the Clinton presidency, George W. Bushor the Obama Administration, I have never seen things so polarizedas they are now. There"s that old saying that everybody"s entitled totheir own opinion, but they"re not entitled to their ownfacts.

That"s really important when you"re dealing withenvironmental issues, but especially the science of environmentalprotection. Facts need to reign supreme... When people doselectively use facts to make arguments, it doesn"t help thedialogue. And this really has caused tremendous obstacles to makingimportant progress on crucial issues.

e360: Of the issues you were involved in this time around at the EPA,what was the one that was most affected by the current politicalclimate in Washington? Anastas: Well, certainly climate change is extremely polarizing, and peoplehave put in quite an effort to make sure that it is a polarizingissue. It"s one of these issues that if you follow thescience, if you follow the data, it does not have to be polarizing.It doesn"t have to be a win/lose situation. I believe thatpeople often resort to polarization because they view these issuesas a choice between winning and losing and zero-sum games. But whenwe see that technological innovations and policy innovations allowfor win/win situations, all of a sudden you get people who wereformerly opposed to each other finding ways of working together.And more than anything else, that"s why a big part of my timedown in Washington has been devoted to sustainability andinnovation and how we move ahead on that. e360: What was the achievement that you were able to accomplish at EPAthis time that was most significant to you? Anastas: I think that seeing how the agency has structured itself in movingtoward using science, using technology in order to not just makethings a little bit less bad, not just reduce risk a little bit,but to actually start thinking about how do you move towardsustainable products, processes, and systems.

How do you use theidea of innovation, even transformative innovations, to createeconomic value and environmental health both at the same time? Howdo you think in terms of systems, rather than dealing with oneproblem at a time in a fragmented way. Those types oftransformations I think are fundamental to new thinking at EPA andto addressing environmental issues in general. e360: Probably the greatest environmental crisis that happened at thetime you were at EPA was the BP oil spill . You spent many months down there [in the Gulf of Mexico] rightafter the spill working on the response, and one of the decisionsmade at the time that was criticized by some environmentalists wasthe decision to use dispersants to deal with the spill.

Inretrospect, do you feel that decision was justified and the rightdecision to make? Anastas: During the spill, one of the things that a number of people,including myself, made a point of saying with regard to the oilwas, "Keep it off the shore, keep it off the shore, keep itoff the shore." Why? Because the most pristine, most fertileecosystems — where life is most fragile, where so manyhatcheries exist and life begins for so many different species— are right there along one of our most precious ecosystems,the Gulf Coast. So if the imperative When we look at the Gulf Coast today, it does not look as though 11Exxon Valdez"s crashed into the coast." was to keep it off the shore, then first of all, all efforts neededto be put into stopping the flow of oil. Until you can stop theoil, you want to collect the oil. You want to skim the oil, youwant to burn it if you have to.

You use all the mechanical methodsyou can to gather up as much of the oil as possible. And when youhave exhausted those efforts, and there"s still oilthat"s going to be released, what do you do? So the very difficult decisions had to be made. Can you usedispersants to put the oil in a form where it is able to beconsumed and digested and metabolized by organisms? Becauseit"s one thing for oil to become more dilute, it"s onething for oil to evaporate, but the only way that the oil trulygoes away is for it to be transformed down to carbon dioxide andwater, which is what happens when it"s metabolized by thesemicroorganisms. Coming back to the data, if we look at what actually happened,except for the area right around the well head, the rates ofdegradation were far quicker, far faster than we ever would haveanticipated.

So there was a breakdown of the oil. The levels of oilbroke down very quickly... And soon thereafter, we saw nodetectable traces of the dispersant at all because, as expected,they had degraded. Do we have perfect knowledge? No, that"swhy we test, test, and test some more. But if we follow the data,it seems as though it may have been the right decision.

Becausewhen we look at the Gulf Coast today, it does not look as though 11Exxon Valdez has crashed into the Gulf Coast — andthat"s how much oil was released, the equivalent of 11 ExxonValdez"s. e360: One issue that got settled near the end of your tenure this timeat EPA was setting safe exposure levels for dioxin... Anastas: My last day, actually. e360: This was a move that had been opposed by industry groups foryears.

Why do you think that assessment took so long? Was itbecause of the opposition? The political sensitivity of it? Andwhat impact do you think setting this assessment and thesestandards will have? Anastas: When it comes to environmental protection generally, there"snothing more important than awareness. There"s nothing moreimportant than information. So the fact that it took 22-plus yearsto have the dioxin assessment come out, the fact that it takesalmost equally long for things like perchloroethylene ortrichlorothylene, for these assessments to come out, isantithetical to good environmental protection. It makes no sense to be assessing one chemical at a time when weknow there are over 100,000 chemicals in commerce today and thatthere are over 4,000 chemicals being invented or discovered everyday, and when It makes no sense to be assessing one chemical at a time when thereare over 100,000 chemicals in commerce." according to at least one Nobel laureate in chemistry,there"s potentially 10 to the 63rd new chemicals yet to beinvented of modest molecular weight. The idea that thischemical-by-chemical approach is giving us the kind of informationwe need in a timely way that is actionable and that is going toprotect people"s lives is probably not the best long-termmodel for effective environmental protection and protection ofhuman health.

That"s one of the reasons why we put such an emphasis onsomething called ToxCast , where you have not just one or five or 10 assessments, but youare able to screen hundreds and thousands of chemicals acrosshundreds of different toxic end points. This year alone we expectalmost 10,000 chemicals to have this kind of toxicologicalscreening. The idea is to get the awareness with many chemicals atone percent of the cost as it takes to do traditional toxicologicaltesting. That"s the kind of transformative innovation that we need inenvironmental protection. It"s not just getting lots of dataon how bad something is.

If anybody didn"t know that dioxinwas very, very, very bad for you before that assessment came out,then they must have been living under a stone somewhere. The mostimportant thing about this data is not only understanding how badsomething is for you, but using those lessons of why thosesubstances are toxic and using it to design the next generation ofchemicals so they can"t be toxic. That"s what greenchemistry is all about. It"s designing our next generation ofproducts and processes so they can"t harm humans or theenvironment. e360: During an earlier stint at EPA, you were head of the greenchemistry division, and you"ve actually been called"the father of green chemistry." Can you explain alittle more of what the concept of green chemistry is, and how thatinfluenced the work you did at the EPA? Anastas: Green chemistry starts from the fundamental fact that everythingthat we see, touch and feel is a chemical — whether naturalor synthetic, they"re all chemicals.

We basically have twothings in this world, energy and matter. Green chemistry isredesigning the matter that"s the basis of our society andour economy and the materials that are Green chemistry is about as fundamental and as crosscutting as youcan imagine." used in all of the products we use so that it"s moresustainable and less harmful to humans and the environment.It"s about as fundamental and crosscutting as you canimagine. In the same way that these chemicals and materials can bedesigned so they"re of a particular color, whether it"sred or blue, or whether a plastic is brittle or flexible, you cannow have the beginnings of how to design these materials sothey"re not going to be toxic, they"re not going topersist in the environment, they"re not going tobioaccumulate in our bodies, and they"re not going tointerfere with reproduction or neurological development. That"s what green chemistry is about. It"s getting allof the performance and capabilities from the products that enableour quality of life, but doing it in a way that doesn"t causeunintended consequences for our health and the environment.That"s why it has been something that"s been adopted bycompanies around the world.

There are now green chemistry researchnetworks in 33 countries... Green chemistry has been transformedover the years from theory into practice. Now there"s good news, and there"s better news. Thegood news is that this is something being practiced by some of themost visionary companies, some of the real leaders in industryacross many sectors. The better news is that all of thoseaccomplishments so far represent a small sliver, a tiny fraction ofthe power of the potential of green chemistry.

So for every oneprocess or product that"s being reinvented using greenchemistry and green engineering, there may be a hundred or athousand that have yet to be rethought under these terms. So theupside both for profitability and economic benefits, as well asenvironmental and health benefits, has yet to be realized and is onthe horizon. e360: Can you give me an example of a breakthrough or innovation ingreen chemistry that you think was particularly significant? Anastas: Well, we know that solvents are some of the most highly regulatedsubstances and that they are of highest concern and are used inextremely high volumes. And they"re used in everything fromlarge industrial processes to fingernail polish to householdcleaners to large extraction operations that decaffeinate ourcoffee.

Many of these [solvents] have been very toxic, either interms of their potential for being a carcinogen or for damaging theozone layer. They can be environmentally toxic or toxic to humanhealth and the environment, so the redesign of solvents is atremendously active area of green chemistry. Turning carbon dioxideinto a liquid or what"s called a super-critical fluid isbeing used in industrial processes and even used as a dry-cleaningsolvent as an alternative to perchloroethylene. That"ssomething that"s transformative.

e360: Can you give me another example? Anastas: For instance, in certain chemical transformations that are used tomake drugs and pharmaceuticals, people my age when they werestudents learned that you could not do certain types of organicchemistry in water. It was just impossible. And yet there"s aprofessor named C.J. Li Every major pharmaceutical company is now looking at how they canuse green chemistry." up at McGill University who has demonstated that no, youdon"t have to use these exotic solvents, these toxicsolvents.

You can do these things right in water, and you havebetter selectivity, less wastes, and lower cross-toxicity, and bydemonstrating that, he has shown the pharmaceutical industry how todramatically reduce its waste. In the pharmaceutical industryhistorically, you would generate a pound of product while yougenerate a thousand pounds, a ton, of waste. A ton of waste perpound of product is not ideal, especially if some of that wasteitself is hazardous or if you"re making an anti-cancer drug,and you are generating a carcinogenic waste. It"s not a goodequation... I was lucky enough to be a part of forming the green chemistrypharmaceutical roundtable a number of years ago.

Every majorpharmaceutical company is now looking at how they can use greenchemistry, and this is good for them both in terms of reducingtheir wastes and also for increasing the productivity of theirproduct. The processes are more efficient. They are making moreprofits, and so it"s good economically as well asenvironmentally. And that"s one of the clean little secretsof green chemistry — at the same time as [companies] aremaking things that are more environmentally benign and lesswasteful, they are also making more money and introducing newcapabilities and new efficiencies. e360: Well, I understand that somewhere in your office in Washington,D.C., there was commendation from President Nixon for an essay youwrote while you were in elementary school on the creation of theEPA.

Tell the story behind that.

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