Design for Environment
egrossman | June 25, 2014When a widely used chemical is identified as an environmental health hazard and targeted for phase-out and elimination, among the most challenging questions for those involved with using and making such a chemical are: What to use instead? and Will the replacement be safe? The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) report identifying alternatives to the flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) illustrates how difficult those questions can be to answer. It also highlights how important it is to consider the entire life-cycle of finished products when looking for hazardous chemical…
egrossman | March 11, 2014“The United States is facing an industrial chemical safety crisis,” Chemical Safety Board Chairperson Rafael Moure-Eraso told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on March 6th. He spoke at hearing held to discuss President Obama’s August 2013 Executive Order on chemical facility safety, which Obama issued following the catastrophic incidents at the West, Texas fertilizer plant and Louisiana petrochemical facilities. In the wake of the Freedom Industries chemical release in West Virginia, improving the nation’s chemical safety has taken on a new urgency. Yet while the Senate…