Here's a crazy fact: A baby's body contains nearly 300 chemical compounds by the time it takes its first breath. It's the consequence of a chemical industry that has long paid little mind to where its products end up or what they do to people and the planet; of the estimated 83,000 chemicals on the market, some 80 percent lack basic health and safety data. But in reaction to stricter regulation and increased consumer demand, manufacturers are using green chemistry to cook up nontoxic versions of everything under the sun. It's not about "simply choosing the next, less-bad thing off the shelf," says chemistry professor Paul Anastas. "It's about designing something that is genuinely good." After all, why use petrochemical-based paint when water-based is just as durable? Companies are finding that they can make polyester with cornstarch, household cleaners with coconut, plastic with sugarcane -- and money with green innovation. Says Method cofounder Adam Lowry, "The companies that don't do it will become the dinosaurs."
Us and Chem
Companies move toward nontoxic chemicals and products 3
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Posted 3:53 PM on 15 Sep 2008
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GoodCheer Posted 3:11 am
16 Sep 2008
So the parts of the baby that are not these 300 chemicals... what are they made from exactly?
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konklarii Posted 3:47 am
16 Sep 2008
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cantTakeIt Posted 4:02 am
16 Sep 2008
I would just like to say that publishing articles which contain statements such as the one above continues to undermine the environmentalist's position within the community of regulators, legislators etc. with whom they must deal, as such statements express an (apparently) naive viewpoint. A baby born 10,000 years ago (well before the chemical industry existed) had thousands of chemicals in it's body, since as we know, proteins, enzymes, bone tissue, fats, and everything else the human body is composed of are themselves chemicals. It is much better to say "xenobiotic chemicals" or "synthetic compounds/chemicals" or some such thing, as this is what such articles are intending to refer to. To say just "chemical" supplies fodder to the anti-environmental viewpoint, which is unfortunate.
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