Green Chemistry Essay

In 1990 the Pollution Prevention act established a national policy to prevent and reduce pollution at its source whenever possible. The Pollution Prevention Act also provided an opportunity to expand beyond traditional EPA (Environment protection Authority) programs and made up creative strategies which would protect human health and the environment. Green chemistry is the use of chemistry to prevent pollution. In depth, green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. Green chemistry has become a highly effective approach to pollution prevention because it applies new advanced scientific solutions to real-world environmental situations. The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry, originally published by Paul Anastas and John Warner in Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press: New York, 1998), were made to provide a guide for chemists to put green chemistry into action. Creating this new approach to pollution prevention through the environmentally friendly design of chemical products and processes is the main focus of EPA's Green Chemistry Program.

Designing Safer chemicals is one of the 12 green chemistry principles which involves the process of creating chemical products which will still be just as effective yet have little to no toxicity. This would benefit people in general because of how many products we use which have so many chemicals in them which can be harmful to us. For example, Americans pour more than 32 million pounds of household cleaning products down the drain daily. Many of these products contain toxic substances that will eventually pollute the waterways and can be harmful to humans, due to ongoing or direct exposure There are over 85,000 chemicals on the market yet only 200 of these chemicals have ever been evaluated for safety by the EPA and only 5 have been restricted

The EPA has created a green chemistry Program with the main objective being that they want to strengthen the economy and protect the environment. To achieve this, chemical industries must reduce waste and increase efficiency. EPA have also gone and done their own research in their own laboratories to come up with safer and more efficient alternatives to what is used now. One of EPA’s research focus areas was green synthesis research, this involves the initiation of chemical reactions to form a more complex molecule. Currently, chemists are using toxic solvents to help this reaction method. As a new alternative, EPA

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