The $56 billion that American chemical manufacturers commit every year to developing new innovations can be fueled in part by the principles of green chemistry and green engineering. In fact, these principles continue to serve as important guide posts for manufacturing products that enhance safety and help improve the protection of public health and the environment.
Chemistry is already helping to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges — providing a healthy and plentiful food supply, clean air and water, safe living conditions, efficient and affordable energy sources, and life-saving medical treatments to communities across the country and around the globe.
Innovation in 21st century chemistry will require companies to look not only at product performance, but also to understand energy efficiency, costs, health and safety and sustainability.
Endocrine disrupting chemicals and green chemistry
This week at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, a session entitled “Endocrine Disruption: It’s Potential Impact on Green Chemistry – A Facilitated Dialog between NGOs, Academics, Industry and Government” will specifically focus on helping chemists grapple with the complex and evolving issue of endocrine disruption when developing green chemistries.
The speakers are experts from academia, industry and government, and collectively they will explore the scientific issues, testing strategies, regulatory implications and methods to assess for endocrine disruptors early in the cycle of new product/formulation development.
The objective of this series of talks is to familiarize R&D scientists with the endocrine disruption issue and demonstrate why the green chemistry effort for developing sustainable chemistries will need to rely upon basic scientific principles to be successful.
The session will feature the following talks and speakers:
1 - Framing the issue– why should chemist care about endocrine disruption? (Pamela J Spencer, The Dow Chemical Company)
2 - Basic concepts of endocrinology: Issues relevant to endocrine disruptor screening. (Raphael J. Witorsch, Virginia Commonwealth University)
3 - An industrial/agrochemical testing strategy – using a combination of traditional and progressive approaches for toxicity assessments. (M. Sue Marty, The Dow Chemical Company)
4 - Nonmonotonic dose response curves and endocrine-disrupting chemicals: Fact or falderal? (L.E. Gray, ORD/NHEERL/TAD, US EPA)
5 - Designing against endocrine disruption: Why and how. (Peter deFur, Virginia Commonwealth University)
6 - Towards 21st century evaluations: Ensuring validity of HT/HC assays. (Grace Patlewicz, DuPont)
7 - Basics of product safety testing for green chemists and engineers. (Christopher J. Borgert, Applied Pharmacology & Toxicology, Inc., and Ted Simon, Ted Simon LLC)
