Today's News - December 4, 1999 ‘Green’ chemistry makes class safer
A University of Oregon program uses less toxic materials.
BY MARIE GRAVELLE, Statesman Journal
EUGENE — Chemistry class isn’t getting any easier, but at the University of Oregon it’s getting safer. Students in Eugene are taking a “green” approach to learning with a method that’s less hazardous to themselves and the planet.

Developed by professors Jim Hutchison and Ken Doxsee, UO’s “green chemistry” curriculum has caught the attention of the American Chemical Society, the Environmental Protection Agency and chemistry professors around the country.

“Rather than trying to protect the environment or workers from toxic material, green chemistry substitutes another material so you don’t have to worry about it anymore,” Hutchison explained.

Still something of a novelty at UO, the green chemistry program enrolled 30 students this term, the second year of its pilot project.

That’s less than 15 percent of UO’s organic chemistry students. While more than 200 students took traditional chemistry labs, those who took green chemistry were pleasantly surprised.

“It’s a great opportunity to take an environmental focus and avoid being exposed to so many nasty chemicals,” biology student Shannon Curnutte said.

General science major David ResSeguie chose the class based on its student-to-teacher ratio, but quickly learned he’d stumbled into something very interesting.

“This is taking chemistry in an entirely new direction,” ResSeguie said.

For example, students in traditional labs used highly corrosive nitric acid to produce adipic acid, one of the building blocks of nylon.

ResSeguie and Curnutte performed the same experiment using hydrogen peroxide and a simple catalyst.

Risks to students and the environment were minimized.

Chemical substitutions are new to college campuses but not entirely new to industry. For the past decade many companies have turned to less toxic, less polluting methods to create products. President Clinton even issues a “green chemistry” award each year to individuals and industries that reduce waste.

Examples include the less-toxic adipic acid synthesis, a new non-lead paint used to keep mussels off ship hulls and a carbon dioxide compound used in dry-cleaning to replace a toxic cleaner.

All these avoid regulatory and cleanup costs.

“It’s not just pie-in-the-sky environmental talk,” ResSeguie said. “This is being done by real chemists who have the bottom line, yield and economics in mind.”

Hutchison expects students to spread the word.

“Our hope is that students will be ambassadors of green chemistry and go off and prove you can do things differently,” he said.

It isn’t easy to adapt standard experiments or find alternative chemicals, but Hutchison, Doxsee and graduate students have adapted the latest techniques published in professional journals such as “Science.”

“Like anything that’s quiet new, there’s some level of skepticism,” Hutchison said. But he envisions most colleges and high schools will soon move to this method.

At Willamette University, a private school in Salem, chemistry professor and department chair Todd Silverstein called UO’s green lab “interesting.”

“Green chemistry is not just a fad. It really is important,” Silverstein said. While Willamette doesn’t have any green labs, several students each year experiment with the concept of substituting less toxic materials for more benign chemicals.

Like most colleges, Willamette uses micro chemistry methods to teach about combining and separating chemical compounds.

New in the early ’80s, micro methods reduce waste because students perform very small experiments with tiny amounts of chemicals.

According to Hutchison, an additional benefit of green chemistry is that students can perform experiments on large scales, such as those seen in industrial labs, because there will be little to no hazardous waste.