Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times


First of two parts

At first, the experimental shampoo looked like a putrid salad dressing. Its oil
and its water just couldn't get along. They separated in the bottle and, over
time, the shampoo took on an ugly brown hue.

 

The team at Avalon Organics, based in Petaluma, was trying to make a line of hair,
skin and bath products without toxic chemicals, using ingredients derived from
plants, such as lavender and coconut.

"It was a disaster," said Morris Shriftman, the company's vice
president at the time. "We thought we had failed."

In any recipe, whether for cake or shower gel, swapping out one ingredient for
another can result in a complete flop. But the chemists working for Avalon
Organics refused to give up. After years of tweaking recipes, at a cost
exceeding $1 million, the company reinvented more than 150 products and came to
lead a growing movement dubbed "consciousness in cosmetics."

"We accepted this stuff blindly for so long. Now we're asking questions,
seeking information. The awareness that we're living in a chemical environment
is finally taking hold," Shriftman said.

Innovations in designing green chemicals are emerging in nearly every U.S. industry,
from plastics and pesticides to toys and nail polish. Some manufacturers of
cosmetics, household cleaners and other consumer products are leading the
charge, while others are lagging behind.

For decades, many manufacturers used the most powerful weapons in their
chemical arsenals, with scant attention to where they wound up or what they
might have been doing to people or the planet.

Now, in a fresh take on the pre-World War II slogan, "Better Living Through
Chemistry," small chemical companies and giant corporations, including
BASF and Rohm and Haas, are implementing the tenets of green chemistry,
creating safer substances that won't seep into our bloodstream, endanger
wildlife or pollute resources.

Once viewed as part of a fringe lifestyle, rooted in the hippie movement,
natural and nontoxic are going mainstream. Driven by regulations, consumer
demand, an eco-friendly business philosophy and fear of future lawsuits, large
corporations, retailers and manufacturers are eliminating some chemicals,
pulling products off shelves and redesigning others. The names are familiar:
Wal-Mart, the Walt Disney Co., Ikea, Home Depot, Nalgene, Kaiser Permanente,
Baxter HealthCare, Gerber, Clorox and Origins.

Yale University chemistry professor Paul
Anastas, known as the father of green chemistry, said the movement is "not
simply choosing the next, less-bad thing off the shelf. It's about designing
something that is genuinely good.

"Green chemistry is not a theory," he said. "It's being
demonstrated by companies over and over again."

With a little ingenuity, every substance in the world "can be reinvented
and made safe," said John Warner, former director of University of
Massachusetts' green chemistry doctorate program and now president of a
research company creating sustainable chemicals.

But the greening of chemistry is a slow shift, not a revolution. Most chemists
lack basic training in understanding environmental hazards and seeking safer
solutions, and many businesses resist changing familiar chemicals and
manufacturing techniques.

Even companies like Avalon Organics are learning that manufacturing a shampoo
or shower gel without toxic substances isn't easy. Synthetic chemicals called
phthalates add fragrance, parabens kill germs, and sulfuric acid and
petrochemicals create a thick lather. Such substances have long been considered
key ingredients in cosmetics and bath products. But they have been linked with
cancer, skewed hormones and other threats to people and the environment.

"We heard from everyone that what we were doing was risky, that it was
unnecessary, that all the major cosmetics companies use these chemicals so they
couldn't be dangerous," Avalon's Shriftman said. "But we decided to
subscribe to the precautionary principle. We wanted to do the right thing. We
rebuilt our products from scratch. It took a long time. It took a lot of
experimentation. And it took a lot of money."

Though toilet bowl cleaners and body lotions may not save the planet, they are
the first step toward weaning its human inhabitants from their toxic chemical
dependency.

"We believe that the small act of scouring the sink," said Shaklee
Corp. Chief Executive Roger Barnett, "can be part of the giant act of
changing the world."

Early exposure

Chemical contamination starts in the womb. Even before a baby takes a breath,
her body contains chemicals passed on by her mother.

Tests of umbilical cords show that a newborn's body contains nearly 300
compounds — among them mercury from fish, flame retardants from household
dust, pesticides from backyards, hydrocarbons from fossil fuels.

Virtually everything we buy, breathe, drink and eat contains traces of toxic
substances. The names are confusing; the list, mind-boggling: Bisphenol A in plastic
baby bottles and food cans. Phthalates in vinyl toys. Polybrominated flame
retardants in furniture cushions. Formaldehyde in kitchen cabinets. Radon in
granite countertops. Lead in lipstick. 1,4-Dioxane in shampoo. Volatile organic
compounds in hair spray.

Every day, about half a dozen chemicals are added to the estimated 83,000
already in commerce. In the United
States alone, about 42 billion pounds of
chemicals are produced or imported daily. Although California
has no major chemical manufacturing plants, it is a large user: About 644
million pounds are sold daily in the state, according to a University of California
report on green chemistry published in January.

Many chemicals are probably benign, but basic health and safety data are
lacking for about 80%. Some, such as chlorine gas, are so highly poisonous that
a minuscule amount can kill. Others can raise the risk of cancer and other
diseases. Animal tests show that some suppress the immune system, obstruct
brain development, deplete testosterone, mutate cells, turn genes on and off or
alter reproductive organs.

Since the 1960s, when the pesticide DDT nearly wiped out the bald eagle, public
policy has dealt with the risks on a chemical-by-chemical basis: Ban a few,
restrict others and clean up the mess left behind.

Meanwhile, nearly half of the nation's waterways are classified as impaired by
pollutants, the air of most cities is shrouded with soot and smog, and the
multibillion-dollar bill to clean up the Superfund list of hazardous waste
sites keeps growing. Chemicals have moved pole-to-pole via oceans and winds,
turning animals and humans around the globe into unwitting lab rats.

Scientists and regulators continually try to figure out whether various
chemicals pose a threat, and to what degree, yet they rarely come up with
definitive answers. Even when a proven hazard is banned, it can take decades,
perhaps centuries, for it to dissipate. Sometimes, its replacement is just as
risky.

"California's
hazardous waste sites are still growing. And they're still leaking," said
Maureen Gorsen, who directs the state Department of Toxic Substances Control,
which is spearheading a Green Chemistry Initiative launched by Gov.
Schwarzenegger. "We need a massive chemical shift. We need to move to the
beginning, to the design part, what goes into the products we use rather than
what comes out the end."

A simple formula

The laboratory inside Shaklee's corporate headquarters in Pleasanton, Calif.,
looks like any other. But it's missing a lot: chlorine, formaldehyde, glycol
ethers, solvents.

Wearing a white lab coat, senior scientist Arshad Malik starts with a beaker of
water. He mixes in a vegetable-based thickener, then pours in a blend of
coconut oil and sugar extracted from corn. Finally, he adds a drop of a
preservative.

Malik is demonstrating the deceptively simple formula for Shaklee Corp.'s
household cleaner, the workhorse of its "Get Clean" line.

Gone are the petrochemicals and formaldehyde. Although cheap and effective,
they emit toxic vapors.

When Shaklee began searching for a green surfactant, the ingredient that
dissolves dirt and grease, no chemical company seemed interested in inventing
one made from vegetables. Not until Shaklee called Germany and talked to chemists at
Cognis, a specialty manufacturer.

The result: a biodegradable mix of coconut oil and sugar.

Josef Koester, marketing director for Cognis' Care Chemicals North America,
said his company created the coconut-and-corn surfactant by incorporating a
simple concept: "Using less chemistry."

Over the past few years, this less-is-more approach has become big business for
companies going green. Even Clorox, which got its name from chlorine, launched
Green Works, a nontoxic line of cleaners, this year.

Two of the biggest innovators in household products are California companies: Shaklee, which is sold
person-to-person, and San Francisco-based Method Products, which sells through
Target, Costco and other large retailers.

"What is driving this market now is concern over bioaccumulation of chemicals
in the body," said Jim Greene, Shaklee's vice president of product
development.

"The public is now reading labels and they're very concerned about what
they're putting not only in the environment, but onto their skin and into their
bodies."

Some green chemistry products are trying to grab a market share from the big
brand names by offering something beyond environmentally friendly ingredients.
Method's kitchen and bathroom cleaners, which cost roughly 10% more than
traditional ones, are scented with lavender and other essential oils and
packaged in hip, colorful containers.

"If it needs to be ugly to be green, it won't ever be mainstream,"
said Adam Lowry, a Stanford
University chemical
engineering graduate and co-founder of Method. "We show consumers that
buying green is not only more healthful but also more pleasurable, and it's
almost cost-neutral."

Sales at Method, one of the fastest-growing private companies in 2006, have
reached $77 million a year. Avalon Organics' market also soared; it was sold
last year for $120 million to Hain Celestial, known for producing organic
foods.

"We've built in green chemistry from the very beginning. It was at the
core of our business philosophy," Lowry said. "The companies that
don't do it will become the dinosaurs."

Formaldehyde-free

Johns manville co. may have learned the hard way. It was bankrupted by one of
the deadliest and most expensive toxic episodes in history: asbestos.

The building materials company, now under new ownership, wanted its new fiberglass
insulation to be as environmentally safe as possible. So it turned to Rohm and
Haas, a $9-billion-a-year chemical company that invented a new glue with no
formaldehyde, a carcinogen that has been the binder of choice for fiberglass.

Johns Manville is now the only manufacturer offering a complete line of
formaldehyde-free insulation, and because its factories emit no formaldehyde,
it is the only one exempt from federal hazardous air pollutant standards.

The new adhesives cost more per pound. But Mike Lawrence, Johns Manville's vice
president and general manager for insulations systems, said the manufacturing
process was tightened to bring costs in line. He said their products are priced
in the same range as competitors' and meet the same industry standards.

"It was the right thing to do for our employees, our customers, for our
shareholders," Lawrence
said.

Peggy Jenkins, the California Air Resources Board's indoor air quality
specialist, advises consumers to buy formaldehyde-free insulation to reduce their
exposure to the carcinogen.

Still, such products comprise only about 20% of the insulation market. Owens
Corning, the largest manufacturer, uses formaldehyde, saying there is no
evidence that trace amounts pose a health threat.

Colin Gouveia, a global marketing director at Rohm and Haas, said most
consumers are unaware that building materials contain formaldehyde.

"Sometimes green products," he said, "need a little kick from a
regulation to overcome the barrier to change."

That is what stoked the market for another green chemistry product, an
industrial paint. In 2006, the South Coast Air Quality Management District set
limits on smog-causing petroleum-based solvents in industrial coatings used in
the Los Angeles
region.

Caltrans had to find new paint for the state's 850 steel bridges that was not
only low-polluting, but could withstand the elements. Rohm and Haas' biggest
challenge was the perception that a water-based paint couldn't be durable.

Barry Marcks, Caltrans' associate chemical testing engineer, said the new
low-emission paint has been used for two years on the state's bridges — 86
million square feet of surface area. It's as rust-resistant as the old paints,
and has an added benefit: It retains its glossy colors better, he said.

The cost per gallon is in the same range, but the state saves on disposal and
cleanup. Caltrans workers like it too.

"Now the workers don't have to be around all those high-solvent-borne
paints. The waterborne ones are a lot less toxic," Marcks said.

Making sacrifices

Even green chemistry products have shades of brown.

No regulations or industry standards govern use of the words
"natural" or "organic" in cleaning products, cosmetics or
bath products. Many contain traces of toxic substances.

The Shaklee cleaner contains a small amount of a germ-killing biocide used as a
preservative. Avalon got rid of parabens but uses glycol ethers as
preservatives.

Sometimes consumers have to make sacrifices in the pursuit of green. Method and
Shaklee products, for example, are not disinfectants, because antibacterial
substances are toxic and not naturally derived.

The greenest products are 100% vegetable, made entirely of renewable, natural
feedstocks that are not chemically modified. Less green are those that include
minerals or inorganic materials.

Shaklee Corp.'s dish-washing detergent, for example, contains sodium carbonate.
The least green of the products use petrochemicals or animal substances.

"You can always say, I can do this greener," said Koester, Cognis'
marketing director. "But you don't want to go back to washing your hair
with soap, do you? That would be the consequence of going too green."

But more and more, the world's largest chemical companies are looking for
substitutes for some of the old petrochemicals that made them global
powerhouses.

BASF, which has $90 billion in annual sales, invented a plasticizer with no
phthalates, which are estrogen-mimicking compounds used to make vinyl. It is
marketed in China,
where 80% of toys are produced.

DuPont is using cornstarch as a key building block to make polyester. Dow
Chemical Co. is turning soybeans into a compound for polyurethane foam and
building a plant in Brazil
that will use sugar cane to make plastic for use in grocery bags and other
products.

Green chemistry is "not just a niche anymore," said Neil Hawkins,
Dow's vice president of sustainability.

"When you have retailers like Wal-Mart setting environmental goals,"
he said, "it creates a demand and a ripple effect for new, innovative
products. I see some real changes right now, driven by the market."