Ecology Center — Newsletter

Enviros, Industry Seek State Leadership on Practice that Could Benefit Environment and Economy

Ever since Rachel Carson educated a nation on the hazards of relying too heavily on toxic pesticides in the 1960s, the words "green" and "chemistry" have rarely appeared in the same sentence, except as an oxymoron.

In the popular imagination, chemicals are either beasts or blessings, but almost never positively associated with the environment. But if the Ecology Center and other Michigan advocates have their way, the state could become a leader in the emerging science of green chemistry -- the search for environmentally benign substitutes for the thousands of hazardous chemicals used in everyday products and processes.

Solvents and inks are being made from soybeans.
Plastics are being made from sustainably grown corn, corn stubble, grasses, and other renewable products.
Water purification processes have been designed that remove chlorinated pollutants, antibiotics, and other contaminants and don’t generate toxic byproducts as a result.
Enzymatic reactions have been found that can detoxify hard-to-degrade toxic chemicals.
There is even laundry detergent that inhibits dye transfer while cleaning clothes and reducing problematic discharges.

But the field is still a young one. As the publication Risk Policy observed in February, "Green chemistry is so groundbreaking that it has not yet been widely adopted by industry, which has focused on traditional chemical processes and products. But with growing demands for reduced toxicity, activists and others aware of the discipline’s potential are expecting to see it become more widely used over time."

To Kathy and Gary Henry, who live along the Tittabawassee River near Saginaw in a floodplain contaminated by highly toxic dioxins, green chemistry is no abstraction. Decades of “brown” chemistry at Dow Chemical, factory discharges, and flooding have fouled the river and adjacent shores for miles downstream.

Had Dow adopted basic green chemistry techniques and principles years ago, the Henrys might not be living in concern for their health. Like hundreds of other floodplain residents, the Henrys have received state warnings that children should avoid playing in the contaminated soil and that adults should wear a dust mask when mowing their lawns and doing yard work, to remove clothing outside before entering their homes, and to shower after yard work.

“Because of past practices by industry such as Dow,” Kathy Henry says, “there are areas like ours that are not suitable for people to raise their families anymore. It’s a frightening thought. Our future doesn’t lie with toxic chemicals. The future lies in greener solutions before the damage is permanently irreversible. It would be great if Michigan was one of the leaders in new, greener technology. Good for everyone all the way around.”

Will Michigan be a leader or a follower? The Ecology Center is now at the forefront of Michigan organizations pushing green chemistry as a job-producing opportunity to protect human health and the environment. Ecology Center staff are teaming with the Michigan Environmental Council, Clean Water Action and others to urge Governor Jennifer M. Granholm and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to make green chemistry a way of uniting the state’s need for job creation with its need to protect human health and avoid even more expensive chemical cleanups in the future.

Tracey Easthope, Environmental Health Director for the Ecology Center, explains the new emphasis: “The problems we have created with persistent bioaccumulative toxic chemicals and other high-hazard chemicals are intractable -- difficult to completely clean up in our lifetimes -- and expensive in every way: costly to the communities that suffer with them, threatening to our children’s development and health, stifling of economic development, costly in terms of lost services that an intact ecosystem provides, and also costly to clean up. This system makes absolutely no sense. After years of working at the back end of this industrial system we are now driven to look upstream and prevent problems in the first place.”

The after-the-fact government system of dealing with chemicals has proven itself a failure to most environmental observers. Peter Montague, the editor of Rachel’s Democracy and Health News, commented in January that “the wheels came off the U.S. chemical regulatory system in a very public way in 2005.”

Montague said: “Think of it -- 1800 brand-new chemicals gushing into commercial channels each year, without the responsible parties being required to provide any detailed health or safety testing data. Armed with minimal (or no) health and safety data, the government then has a scant few months in which to prove that one or another of these 1800 new chemicals poses an 'unreasonable risk' to human health or the environment. If by some miracle the government feels it can meet that scientific and legal burden and it orders the responsible party to produce some safety-test results, the responsible party can go to court to dispute the government’s order.”

One of the barriers to green chemistry is that novel technology that could reduce pollution also carries risks -- including cost that puts businesses at a near-term disadvantage to their competitors. So federal lawmakers and environmental sustainability advocates are urging government to champion green chemistry through recognition, research support, and linkages with colleges and universities.

Bill Stough, CEO of the Grand Rapids-based Sustainable Research Group (SRG), which defines its mission as creating “a system of commerce for our partners that is simultaneously life affirming, value-based and ethically driven,” has specific suggestions in mind for the governor and DEQ Director Steven Chester in promoting green chemistry in Michigan.

“We should be using green chemistry to restore the health of the Great Lakes,” Stough says.

He explains that the legacy of traditional chemistry includes hundreds of chemicals in the Lakes, their fish and wildlife, and in the people who inhabit the region. Because the Lakes are in a practical sense a closed system, they have served as a real-world laboratory for the failures of conventional chemistry, demonstrating how minute amounts of chemicals in the environment can be concentrated to levels millions of times greater in organisms at the top of the food chain, from bald eagles to human beings.

How could the state promote green chemistry? Stough says a Governor’s Green Chemistry Award, perhaps attached to a modest cash prize, could stimulate research and development in Michigan. “That would bring the weight of attention to green chemistry,” Stough argues.

Another suggestion for the governor and DEQ comes from Clinton Boyd, Senior Research Scientist at SRG. The state’s Clean Corporate Citizen (C3) program needs an overhaul, according to Boyd. Created by the administration of former Governor John Engler, the C3 program should go beyond recognizing companies that don’t break environmental laws to rewarding those that pursue and implement green chemistry strategies to prevent problems, he says.

Ultimately, the fate of green chemistry in Michigan -- as an afterthought or a pathbreaking means of meeting both economic and environmental needs -- rests in the hands of a distracted state government that has not yet recognized its potential.

“It has huge potential for Michigan’s environment and economy, but we need a clear signal that the state wants to go in this direction,” Stough says.

Dave Dempsey is a Great Lakes policy advisor for Clean Water Action in Minneapolis, Minnesota.