naptownCr
September 5th, 2009, 12:57 PM
Don’t Eat the Paint
Remember olestra—that fat substitute a few years ago that made potato chips “healthier,” albeit with a reputation for causing gastric distress and anal leakage? Well, it’s being reinvented as an ingredient in eco-friendly paint. Chemists at Procter and Gamble, olestra’s maker, have developed a very similar compound called Sefose that can replace the hazardous petroleum-based volatile organic compounds usually added to paint as lubricants. That’s right, the same properties that allowed olestra to slip through the human body add a nice viscosity to paint. “It seems like Sefose was a production of a much greener family of chemicals,” says Dave Andrews, a chemist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “And ideally all products should be safe by design.”—Katherine Tweed
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/fieldnotes/fieldnotes0909-briefs.html#7
Remember olestra—that fat substitute a few years ago that made potato chips “healthier,” albeit with a reputation for causing gastric distress and anal leakage? Well, it’s being reinvented as an ingredient in eco-friendly paint. Chemists at Procter and Gamble, olestra’s maker, have developed a very similar compound called Sefose that can replace the hazardous petroleum-based volatile organic compounds usually added to paint as lubricants. That’s right, the same properties that allowed olestra to slip through the human body add a nice viscosity to paint. “It seems like Sefose was a production of a much greener family of chemicals,” says Dave Andrews, a chemist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “And ideally all products should be safe by design.”—Katherine Tweed
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/fieldnotes/fieldnotes0909-briefs.html#7