Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in the Vendor Viewpoint column in the January 2012 issue of ICT.
By P. Richard Warburton, PhD, JD
Marketing trends follow social trends; the language of the marketers is shaped to appeal to the popular interest. Awareness has grown in recent decades about the influence of hazardous chemicals on the environment and on human health. Books such as Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” made people aware of the hazards of pesticides and eventually led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and more recent books like Devra Davis’ “When Smoke Ran Like Water” which focused on the impact of pollution on health. Labeling products as ‘green’ is a selling point, because many people associate ‘green’ and ‘safe’ as being almost synonymous, but in many cases the opposite is true.
While many people consider the description ‘environmentally friendly’ to be synonymous to with “safe,” in practice the two terms are almost contradictory. An environmentally safe compound is one that reacts quickly with the environment upon release, but such high reactivity makes the compound hazardous to anyone exposed to it.
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