Talk to Focus on Green Chemistry

The Northern West Virginia Section of the American Chemical Society, in conjunction with the Fairmont State University Department of Biology, Chemistry and Geoscience, will present a talk titled "Green Chemistry and the Future."

Presented by Dr. Terrence J. Collins, Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, the talk is planned for 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 18, in Room 305 of the Engineering Technology Building. A social hour will start at 6:30 p.m. Parking will be available in the parking garage. Tokens for the garage will be available at the talk.

Collins will be discussing green chemistry, which is the design of chemical products and processes to reduce or eliminate the use and generation of substances hazardous to human health and the environment.

The reasons why our civilization needs green chemistry, which began in 1991, will be set primarily in the historical context of our advancing understanding of the toxicity and ecotoxicity of synthetic compounds. The requirement to focus on reducing hazardous substances brings novel intellectually demanding, ethically appealing material to chemistry education. Green chemists are already providing less toxic and cost effective approaches to a variety of industrial processes and products, and the opportunity landscape for researchers is enormous.

Terry Collins is the Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University where he directs the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He taught the first university course in green chemistry at Carnegie Mellon, starting in 1992. Collins' research is focused on greening the historically dirty area of oxidation chemistry by designing nontoxic catalysts for activating the natural oxidants, hydrogen peroxide and oxygen. His widely patented TAML activators promise to revolutionize peroxide chemistry, allowing it to substitute more effectively for chlorine- and metal-based processes and to enable much more effective processes for destroying in water recalcitrant pollutants and hardy pathogens.