Alliance partners join forces in green chemistry application to the American National Science Foundation

BTH and the Institute for the Environment (IfE) of Brunel University (Uxbridge, UK) join as contributors to a US Federal Center Proposal headquartered at the Institute for Green Science (IGS) of Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

What skills and thinking will distinguish the future leaders of sustainability? This question has been the central focus of the sustainability leaders headquartered at the Blekinge Institute of Technology for several decades. Professors Karl-Henrik Robèrt and Göran Broman have developed at the BTH a number of research programs and doctorates around a unifying Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD). Likewise, there is a now nine-year old degree program entitled, the “Masters in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (MSLS)”. These programs unite scholars across disciplines, sectors and cultures in learning to apply the FSSD across the landscape of our civilization’s sustainability challenges. In uniting young people of diverse backgrounds, the FSSD and MSLS provide excellent models upon which other universities can build to incorporate sustainability into their curricula.

A key sustainability challenge for scientists consists of finding ways to contribute deep skills to the civilization-wide dialogue and redirection that the good future of civilization requires. To this end, Professors Robèrt and Broman have also assembled an Alliance for Strategic Sustainable Development (ASSD) that brings senior scholars from across disciplines, sectors and cultures into the uniting FSSD space. The Institute for Green Science (IGS) of Carnegie Mellon University is a founding member of the Alliance. Professor Terry Collins directs the IGS. He is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry. In March of this year (2013), the BTH and another Alliance member, The Institute for the Environment (IfE) of Brunel University (Uxbridge, UK) participated as contributors in an IGS proposal for a US Federal network devoted to the design of safer and more sustainable chemicals. Professor Susan Jobling heads the IfE. The network is called a Network for Sustainable Molecular design and Synthesis (NSMDS). BTH’s role is to contribute to the development of strategic

sustainability insight into the design tool development by allowing NSMDS scholars and students to network with BTH. It is difficult to imagine an attractive

sustainable society without chemistry, or the healthy development towards such a future without chemists. The challenge can be divided into two. On the one hand we need

to understand – at the underlying principled level as informed by the FSSD – how the release of CFC’s, dioxins and PCBs, DDT and endocrine disrupters into the biosphere could happen so that we can avoid similar mistakes for the future. On the other, we need to learn how to clean up ecosystems when such design principles have already been violated. So what are the tools?

This NSMDS will develop design tools to provide for organic chemicals (1) an excellent surrogate parameter for relative environmental persistence and, (2) a simple methodology for estimating environmental lifecycles. The design tools will exploit the remarkable chemical properties of TAML activators (Collins inventions) that are functional small-molecule mimics of the peroxidase enzymes. Peroxidase enzymes are among nature’s most potent powertools for degrading organic compounds. At one percent the size, TAML activators have been shown to outperform the enzymes making it possible to rapidly model in the laboratory pollutant degradation processes that play out in the environment over years or even decades. The two tools will be called the “TAML Persistence Parameter”, or simply “P_TAML“, and the “TAML Life Cycle Estimator”, or “LC_TAML“. Each will provide valuable information for designing safer chemicals and for choosing among candidate chemicals for commercial development with sustainability in mind. The design tool development will be incubated in a collaborative environment uniting researchers across disciplines, sectors and cultures. As prolific global lecturers, on-line educators and serial networkers for sustainability, Collins, Robèrt, Broman and Jobling will share the fruits of

this research through multiple mechanisms with the public, industry, government and academia. Why are the tools important at this time?

Persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic chemicals (PBTs) represent some of the most hazardous residuals of the modern

world. A simple quantitative parameter is available for estimating relative bioaccumulation (the octanol-water partition coefficient). The EPA’s Tox21 program is striving to estimate relative toxicity using screening data to predict the potential toxicity of chemicals and to prioritize myriad chemicals in inventories for testing. By developing P_TAML as a simple surrogate for estimating relative environmental persistence, the NSMDS will complete the surrogate parameterization of the PBT triad. P_TAML will deliver the ability to quantify how quickly any organic chemical will degrade in environmental waters compared to all others. LC_TAML will mimic the processes of oxidizing enzymes that metabolize drugs and other bioactive chemicals in our livers and in the bacteria of activated sludge used in water treatment. Because of the propitious chemical properties of TAML systems, much higher resolution life cycle snapshots can be developed than ever before. While NSMDS chemists decipher the LC_TAML degradation pathways of the estrogenic compounds and pharmaceuticals that pollute municipal wastewaters, in close interactions NSMDS cell biologists and ecotoxicologists will map the endocrine disruptive properties of the separable components and their mixtures and NSMDS sustainability scholars will help to frame the significance of the findings. What will be the broader benefits of this work?

P_TAML and LC_TAML will help society to better understand PBTs and improve the ability of chemists to avoid PBTs in chemical products

and processes. The NSMDS is structured to graduate leaders of interdisciplinary research, development and education that society needs to reorient toward a more sustainable future. This is where BTH’s insight is so important. These future leaders will acquire the crucial depth that scientific specialization brings, while also being trained in vital skills for communicating across disciplines, sectors and cultures. CMU chemist trainees will develop tools to advance the design of safer and more sustainable chemicals, becoming deeply proficient in chemical synthesis, mechanistic chemistry and the advanced analytical chemistry that life cycle studies require. UT-Galveston cell biologist trainees will learn how to detect disruption of hormonal cellular signaling and its consequences. As a team, both groups will interact regularly and cooperatively and come to understand the crucial value for sustainability of each other’s work. The trainees will further hone their skills for resetting society’s compass toward sustainability by working closely with international partners to study the toxic effects of the systems being researched on fish and other aquatic organisms with Brunel University and the strategic relevance of their work to sustainability with the BTH. The research will help the development of high technical and cost performing approaches for purifying water of endocrine disruptors.

For more information, contact Professor .