Overview of Green Chemistry
Chemistry has had such a beneficial impact on our society in terms of the advances in treating disease, improving the efficiency of food production, and synthesis of the myriad of products that we use in everyday life. Crop protection and growth enhancement chemicals have helped us in the last century to increase the world population from 1.6 to over 6 billion, with an increase in life expectancy of 60%.[1] This has come with a price; our collective human health and the environment are now threatened by the waste products produced. Our bodies are contaminated with a large number of synthetic chemicals deemed toxic, carcinogenic, or their effects are unknown. In the USGS national water quality assessment program, at least one pesticide was detected in more than 95% of stream samples collected at 115 sites.[2] Many of the chemicals used work their way up the food chain and circulate around the global environment. Chemicals like flame retardants used in furniture and electronics are commonly found in our marine mammal populations, and pesticides used in the tropics and in our own latitude are being found commonly in the arctic where they were not originally applied. We need to look hard at the implications of our actions and how they affect the global society and environment.
Even with government regulatory actions, there are chemical manufacturers that do not do full testing on their products and do not promote the production of inherently safer chemicals. With the green chemistry movement, the focus is now to overhaul the way chemicals are designed from the onset. This makes sense and has shown to be a means by which companies can increase their bottom line. Green chemistry principles work to make industry much more sustainable and reduce wastes of processes. This allows companies to use less feedstock and reduce the expense of disposal and/or treatment of the historical disproportionate amount of waste from traditional synthesis of chemicals. The goal of green chemistry is to create better, safer chemicals while choosing the safest, most efficient ways to synthesize and reduce waste. This practice of eliminating hazards from the onset of the design stage has benefits for our health and the environment. Pollution in almost all legal contexts is defined as chemical pollution. Green chemistry is a "fundamental" approach to environmental problems caused by pollution.[3]
The current chemical industry uses petroleum as the primary feedstock to create chemicals. This production is very energy intensive, inefficient, and toxic! One principle that drives green chemistry is the idea that companies should prioritize the use of renewable materials as feedstocks. Generally, the use of these materials as feedstocks produces processes that are significantly less hazardous than with petroleum products. Pest management techniques have evolved over the past 50 years. Inorganic chemical pesticides were replaced by synthetic organic chemicals, and now biopesticides constitute a significant part of pest management technology.[4] Today chemists have the knowledge to determine the potential toxicity of the molecules they design and the reactants that they use. They can use this knowledge of synthesis to design molecules to avoid or reduce the toxic properties of chemicals in the past. The only way to prevent costs from rising is to avoid the use or generation of hazardous substances by designing chemistry through the use of green chemistry techniques.[3] They can design things in a way that they are very selective to certain modes of action and can prevent them from absorbing into the skin or so that they may safely break down in the environment. The idea of chemists taking a life cycle approach to these chemicals is very powerful and is essential to protect from furthering the ills of the chemical industry of the past. This green chemistry approach is the only way we will get close to processes and products that are safe in natural ecosystems and will ultimately produce products that safely degrade as a biological nutrient or will be safely recycled.
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