The Missing Elements: A Path to Restore Chemistry's Promise

Drawing on his acclaimed career and extraordinary personal experiences, the father of green chemistry lays out the changes needed for its universal adoption. We all remember the famous tagline: better living through chemistry. But in recent years, that promise has been distorted, as serious health effects have been traced to the chemicals in everyday products. When plastic baby bottle can interfere with brain and reproductive development, you know something is missing. John-Warner is working to fill in the pieces. Starting out as a musician, Warner never thought he would enter the sciences, let alone become a world-renowned chemist. Yet through extraordinary professional and personal experiences, he not only learned to create safe, environmentally-friendly chemicals, but discovered what was broken in the system. From an educational approach that teaches chemistry through rote instruction rather than creative exploration, to business models that short-shrift R&D, society at large is not fostering the development of benign chemicals.

The Missing Elements proposes a path forward, arguing for straightforward change-s in education, business, government, philanthropy, and personal behaviour that would support the universal adoption of green chemistry. The scale of reform is substantial, but so is the possibility when we restore chemistry's promise.