First Do No Harm: A Chemist’s Guide to Molecular Design for Reduced Hazard

One of the fundamental principles of green chemistry is to design chemical products that minimize adverse consequences to human health and the environment. While chemists have been designing molecules for 200 years to have a limitless range of commercial applications, little or no attention has been given to developing commercial chemicals while avoiding hazards and toxicity. This book is the first to provide chemists with useful, practical guidance on how to minimize or avoid a wide range of hazards. Building on the insights gained from the pharmaceutical industry over the past 25 years on how to create desirable biological effects, the authors demonstrate how to avoid undesirable biological effects by design.

Predrag V. Petrovic is an associate research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment, Yale University, Connecticut, USA. He obtained a joint PhD in organometallic chemistry at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and the University of Strasbourg, France, in 2014 where he applied experimental and theoretical approaches in studying non-covalent interactions in organometallic complexes. In 2017, he joined the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale where his main research focus is setting a foundation for the methodology that will help safer chemical design that complies with the 12 principles of green chemistry by using various computational tools.

Paul T. Anastas is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the practice of chemistry for the environment. He has appointments in the School of the Environment, School of Public Health, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering at Yale University, Connecticut, USA. In addition, Prof. Anastas serves as the director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. He has also served as the assistant administrator and science advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA); director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, DC; and assistant director for the environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry during his time working for the US EPA and is a recipient of the Volvo Environment prize for pioneering work in developing non-hazardous chemicals in 2021.