Volume XX, Issue 4 - May 2023

Don’t be a victim of Chemophobia! We help you manage chemicals and cleaning processes rationally. Give us a call.
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Feature Article
Chemophobia
By Barbara Kanegsberg, BFK Solutions LLC
It’s an emergency! Regulators decide that the cleaning agent is unsafe for workers, neighborhoods, and/or the environment. Manufacturers are faced with the capital costs, testing, and performance verification associated with finding a substitute chemical and changing an established effective cleaning process. Within a few years, there’s another emergency. Regulators decide that the substitute chemical is also harmful, and yet another cleaning chemical and cleaning process must be found. What happens next? The world is saved by banning cleaning agent after cleaning agent after cleaning agent. It’s déjà vu all over again. At the same time, requirements for product performance and product cleanliness are increasing. Are the substitute cleaning agents as effective as the original one? Maybe, maybe not. Breaking the cycle of emergencies and repeated chemical substitution will require realistic, holistic, and encompassing risk/benefit analyses of the chemical and the process. Root causes of these seemingly inevitable, disruptive emergencies include the traditional chemical by chemical approach to regulation. Perhaps we can figure out how to ban Chemophobia. What is Chemophobia and is it real?