Challenge Offered to the Chemical Community

Reasonably good testing methods exist for acute toxicity. The tests use surrogate animals, and the correlation to humans is the weakest element. The quality of predictive modehng for acute effects based on SAR (Structure Activity Relationships), is only modest. For chronic effects, testing with surrogates for humans is modestly good, particularly for cancer. Tests for chronic toxicity in animals are only fair and for 

At least for the present, it seems impractical to hope that we will be able to identify, empirically, all the environmental impacts that should be evaluated. Increasingly, researchers are working on collections of cells, micro-organisms, and entire mini-ecosystems, in which a broad range of subjects and surrogates are combined with mathematical models in an attempt to develop a more-accurate and holistic prediction or measurement of the effect of a chemical on an ecosystem. 

For a final time, let us return to the idea of pollution prevention. Industrial ecology can be considered as the aggregation of several environmental trends, including industrial 

Since pollution prevention first entered the environmental lexicon in the 1980s, it has become a touchstone of U.S. environmental policy. To succeed, pollution prevention programs need sustained top management support and defined links to the company s core business activities. Equally important, the values represented in the program must fit with the academic institution, company, or individual s existing values. For example, syntheses that minimize wastes are environmentally Mendly and may provide quality improvements and cost and energy savings. Environmental consciousness should be incorporated early into chemical research (Lnnt and Bowen, 1996). 

Benign chemistry seeks to develop and institutionalize alternative chemistries for pollution prevention. Significant challenges are available for chemists to design new products and processes that are less pollnting (Anastas and Farris, 1994). 

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