Saccharine, Dioxin, and NTA

Phosphate fibers were to be a product of a company that at one time in the past had manufactured saccharine, NTA, and traces of dioxin as a byproduct in Agent Orange. These three products are background and help to explain some decisions made by management in the Phosphate Fibers Project. We were also a manufacturer of phosphates for detergents. You can understand that our management had but small choice to move very slowly and deliberately with the Phosphate Fibers Project irrespective of the benefit to humanity. History had taught us that even the noblest of efforts can be turned sour for the providers. 

Many examples of inconsistencies in our present system come to mind. Consider the cases of saccharine, NTA, and dioxin. Since most readers are no longer familiar with NTA, perhaps it is a good starting material upon which to initiate this comparison. NTA is shorthand for nitrilotriacetate. It is a simple compound that was manufactured as a replacement for detergent phosphates, when detergent phosphates were beginning to be banned in the United States. NTA is still used in detergents in Canada, as it has been for three decades. 

It has now been many years since all active substances in detergents were condemned one right after the other. First it was alkyl benzene sulfonates because they foamed. This was followed by sodium tripolyphosphate because it is a nutrient, and then NTA as a result of ignorance and bad data. Within ten years of their introduction the finest detergents ever manufactured were under mortal attack. Before the phosphate detergents there were no satisfactory automatic washing machines. 

We scrapped phosphate detergents by mandate. Billions of dollars of wasted effort later, no detergent builders have been found that approach phosphates or NTA as detergent builders. NTA was surely the best substitute for phosphates ever found, but even it was a pallid second to polyphosphates, when cleanliness is truly next to godliness and good health.  

Hundreds of scientists with the highest credentials in many companies throughout the world had worked on NTA for several years before it was introduced as a new detergent builder. Like phosphates nothing could be found wrong with the compound. Both our environment and the general public should be served well and safely. 

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