As potentially or actually harmful ingredients are identified in commercial products, the goal is to replace them with safer alternatives. Yet a chemical ingredient is hardly a modular component that can be easily switched out. Further, replacement could remove one hazard and introduce others. To avoid this stymieing problem and ease an innovator’s choice of ingredients, Lavoie et al. report on a decision-making approach developed by the EPA’s Design for Environment program. A few case experiences illustrate its utility and recommend further use.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) impair living organisms by interfering with hormonal processes controlling cellular development. Reduction of EDCs in water by an environmentally benign method is an important green chemistry goal. One EDC, 17R-ethinylestradiol (EE 2 ), the active ingredient in the birth control pill, is excreted by humans to produce a major source of artificial environmental estrogenicity, which is incompletely removed by current technologies used by municipal wastewater treatment plants (MWTPs). Natural estrogens found in animal waste from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can also increase estrogenic activity of surface waters. An iron-tetraamidomacrocyclic ligand (Fe-TAML) activator in trace concentrations activates hydrogen peroxide and was shown to rapidly degrade these natural and synthetic reproductive hormones found in agricultural and municipal effluent streams. On the basis of liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, apparent half-lives for 17 R-and 17 β-estradiol, estriol, estrone, and EE 2 in the presence of Fe-TAML and hydrogen peroxide were approximately 5 min and included a concomitant loss of estrogenic activity as established by E-Screen assay.