Grantee Research Project Results

Final Report: Encouraging Toxic use Reduction in Academic Laboratories

EPA Grant Number: SU832467
Title: Encouraging Toxic use Reduction in Academic Laboratories
Investigators: Steinfeld, Jeffrey I. , Leite, Susan , Bussey, Kendra , Tio, Jacqueline , Song, Lisa
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: II
Project Period: September 1, 2005 through August 31, 2006
Project Amount: $39,852
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet - Phase 2 (2005) Recipients Lists
Research Category: Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development , P3 Awards , P3 Challenge Area - Safe and Sustainable Water Resources , Sustainable and Healthy Communities

Objective:

This project began in the fall of 2003 with the intent to reduce hazardous wastes generated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Chemistry Department. In Phase I of this project, information on chemical procurement, use, disposal, and fate and were gathered and used to isolate a list of target chemicals for use reduction. Phase Il of this project used this informational basis to generate several strategies for reducing the hazardous waste stream at the source. These strategies aimed to:

• Implement extended user surveys
• Pursue educational initiatives 
• Establish partnerships
• Implement an internal award program
• Develop a user interface
• Foster communication and outreach

Using the source reduction Strategy, the combined efforts of Phase I and Phase Il served one overarching goal: to reduce the generation of hazardous wastes while simultaneously introducing safer, less toxic alternatives.

Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):

Over the past three years, this project aimed to both gauge behavioral attitudes toward chemical use and develop strategies to introduce more sustainable chemical practices into research laboratories at MIT. Since Signing a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice in June 2001, MIT agreed to pay a fine, support supplemental environmental projects, and establish an environmental management system. The Institute also agreed to enhance pollution prevention and sustainability, a goal that parallels that of our project. Over the past few years, however, the total generation of hazardous waste at MIT has increased, with the MIT Chemistry Department contributing significantly to this trend. Achieving the project goal with the strategies outlined for Phase Il, therefore, largely depends on the effect that this project will have on members of the Chemistry Department.

Through conversations with industry contacts, we learned that voluntary adoption of greener chemical practices through internal award programs might be more effective than compulsory efforts. An analogue of this idea grew with the continuation of the Sustainable Chemistry Award program, an internal award program designed in 2005 to encourage researchers to reduce the generation of hazardous wastes. This program has supported two projects. One project piloted a case study of replacing ethidium bromide, a toxic DNA staining agent, With the alternative SybrSafeTM in an undergraduate laboratory course during the spring of 2005. This project not only proved the viability of using SybrSafeT^M instead of ethidium bromide, but it also drew the attention Of graduate researchers and professors to use this chemical alternative, The second project, which also began in the spring of 2005, worked toward conducting a dangerous reaction on the microscale with microreactors. To date the research group has successfully conducted a reaction that has synthesized and consumed in situ isocyanate within a microreactor, which is a safer, more efficient alternative to batch reactors currently used to process dangerous reactions.

Incentives for voluntary adoption of more sustainable chemical practices must be supported by the tools to make these alternatives available. To this end, the project has designed and developed a user interface that provides information on chemical alternatives for hazardous solvents and substances. Chemical alternative guides were developed and made available to the public between November 2004 and April 2005. Design and development of the interactive "Wizard" database occurred between June 2005 and May 2006. This ultimately involved working with MIT Information Services and Technology and an outside contractor, iSolutions, Inc., to design and program the database which would later be transferred to servers within the LMrr Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Office. The database, known as the Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard, contains over 233 references on 99 chemicals and 87 processes that encompass practices in chemistry, biology, and chemical engineering. It is linked to M.I.T.'s online purchasing system and is available online for public access. The launch Of the Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard drew on contacts within the MIT community and affiliated research institutions, national laboratories, the Green Chemistry Institute, the American Institute for Chemical Engineers, the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Toxics Use Reductions Institute, and the Campus Consortium for Environmental Excellence.

The design of the launch of the user interface is closely aligned with results from conducting several extended user surveys. In the summer of 2005, seven laboratories from the MIT Department of Chemistry were interviewed to identify how best to promote greener chemical practices in research laboratories. Two rounds of usability testing of the Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard were conducted on February 2006, and March 2006. Based on these testing sessions, several changes were made to the database that affected the display of information, the type of information, and access to additional options, such as entering the purchasing system. Interviews with laboratory personnel also sought suggestions for how best to pursue educational initiatives for the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Since changes in curriculum require a different and more complicated path than simply providing a chemical alternatives database, these efforts still stand as a work in progress.

Communication and outreach efforts in Phase Il included presentation of this project at the 2005 Annual Meeting for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in Cincinnati, Ohio; at the MIT Chemistry Department's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Symposium, and at the July 2006 Campus Health and Safety Managers Association Conference in Anaheim, California. The survey results will be presented as input to a Workshop on Green Chemistry: Integrating Science and Policy to promote Innovation for Sustainable Prosperity at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in February, 2007, and the "Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard" system will be described at the international Symposium on Green Chemistry in China, which will be held in Beijing, PRC, in M2Y 2007.

The viability of this project and attaining its goals also depends on the network of partners that has been established throughout the years. This includes contacts within the local MIT community, industry, the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, Los Alamos I,aboratory, MIT-Lincoln Laboratory, the American Institute for Chemical Engineers, and the Green Chemistry Institute. Additional partnerships may result, moreover, with the launch of the Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard.

Conclusions:

In summary, the design and launch of the Green Chemical Alternatives Wizard was significant in furthering the other initiatives that have been established for Phase Il of this project. In the completion Of this project, however, several future recommendations have emerged th2t should be considered. 'ihese recommendations include:

• Promote more sust2in2ble chemical practices through departmental faculty and research advisors
• Emphasize greener altern2tives for ancillary chemical processes, such as purification procedures and cleaning
• Implement solvent-recycling program with an outside contractor to recycle the most commonly used solvents
• Improve and further incorporate green chemistry into the undergraduate curriculum and/or major course requirements
• Provide more detailed and technical information on applicable green chemistry rather than generic sug;estions or principles for graduate students
• Incorporate green chemistry lectures into graduate seminars
• Update the database through graduate students and/or members of the MIT EHS Office
• Consider the design of a Greenlist^TM analogue for rating chemicals used in academic laboratories

Journal Articles:

No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 3 publications for this project

Supplemental Keywords:

Chemicals, toxic substances, pollution prevention, alternatives, waste reduction, decision making, education sector, Sustainable Industry/Business, RFA, Scientific Discipline, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, POLLUTION PREVENTION, Technology for Sustainable Environment, Sustainable Environment, Environmental Chemistry, waste reduction, Economics and Business, Chemicals Management, Waste, cleaner production/pollution prevention, environmentally-friendly chemical synthesis, source reduction, waste minimization, academic laboratories, hazardous waste, alternative materials, cleaner production, toxic use reduction

P3 Phase I:

Encouraging Toxic Use Reduction in Academic Laboratories  | Final Report