When you’re talking about toxic ingredients in personal-care products, you’re talking about chemistry. That’s what it is, really-manufacturers combining various chemicals to come up with a formula that creates the desired results. Up until now, formulators haven’t really thought a lot about the safety of the chemicals they were using. Sure, they avoided things that were overtly poisonous or damaging, but after all, they were paid to produce a result, so if they needed to add something at a low amount to make the formula work, they figured it was okay.
According to John Warner of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, the fundamental idea of green chemistry is that the designer of a chemical is responsible for considering what will happen to the world after the agent is put into place. However, so far, young chemists haven’t learned that message. “Astonishingly,” writes Stacey Malkan in her book Not Just a Pretty Face, “no university in the United States requires chemists to demonstrate knowledge about the health and environmental impacts of the chemicals they create-not one.”
However, that trend is changing. With today’s environmental concerns propelling green innovation in industry, we’re becoming more aware of the toxins we’re exposed to. Studies have shown us that toxic chemicals, even when used in small amounts, can build up in our rivers, streams, and body tissues, causing all sorts of trouble. Enter a new philosophy.
“Green chemistry,” according to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in Europe, is the chemistry of the future. Basically, it refers to the idea of developing technologies for synthesizing non-toxic ingredients and products designed to degrade into wastes that won’t hurt humans, wildlife, or the environment. The RSC says that green chemistry ensures both processes and end products are clean and safe, and that it aims to conserve energy and raw materials. “By rethinking chemical design from the ground up,” writes Elizabeth Weise for “USA Today,” “green chemists at universities and in private industry are developing new ways to manufacture products that fuel our economy and lifestyles, without the damages that have become all too evident in recent years.”
According to Toxic Beauty author Samuel Epstein, M.D., green chemistry “is now being applied to the production of cosmetic and personal-care product ingredients from a variety of organic sources, particularly plant oils and vegetables, as well as to the synthesis of ingredients, including soy-based sunscreens, preservatives, and detergents.” This is great news for us, as it means that some companies are catching on to the fact that effective products can be made in such a way as to remain safe for humans and the environment.
Listed on the University of Oregon’s website are the 12 principles that makeup the philosophy of green chemistry, created by Paul Anastas, Ph.D. and former director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) green chemistry program, and John Warner, Ph.D. and director of the green chemistry program at the University of Massachusetts. We’ve summarized them here.
The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry
- Prevent waste.
- Maximize atom economy. (Basically, this means maximizing the incorporation of materials used to result in few wasted atoms, which means the process is more efficient.)
- Design less hazardous chemical synthesis. (Methods used generate substances that possess little or no toxicity-in other words, few to any toxic by-products.)
- Design safer chemicals and products.
- Use safer solvents/reaction conditions. (The use of solvents to create chemical reactions is to be reduced, and in cases where it’s needed, less hazardous solvents are recommended.)
- Increase energy efficiency.
- Use renewable feedstocks. (Chemical transformations should use raw materials that are renewable, like agricultural products or the wastes of other processes rather than fossil fuels.)
- Avoid chemical derivatives.
- Use catalysts. (Catalysts help create reactions and reduce waste and unwanted side reactions.)
- Design for degradation. (Chemical products should be designed to break down into products that won’t harm the environment.)
- Analyze in real-time to prevent pollution. (Methods should be developed to monitor the progress of a reaction to know when it is complete or to detect any unwanted by-products.)
- Minimize the potential for accidents.
Have you heard about green chemistry? Let us know what you think.
Photo courtesy Pixels of Green en Jan via Flickr.com.
