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Revision as of 10:32, 7 October 2016
Human Practices
Human Practices are a noticeable part of iGEM and more broadly of synthetic biology and science. The idea behind Human Practices is to investigate how our work will influence the world, what impact it will have and what good could the society benefit from it. It starts with reverse thinking, how does the world influence your work? What problem(s) does our project tackle? Our project, Frank&Stain, aims to find a biological way to degrade wine pigments, anthocyanins. But why caring so much about stains? Wine stains, among other stains, are difficult to remove after some time and people usually send their stained clothes to dry cleaners.
PERC
What is PERC?
Perchloroethylene (aka tetrachloroethylene or PERC) is the main chemical found in products used for dry cleaning worldwide. It acts as a solvent to remove stains from all types of fabrics, since it is an excellent solvent for organic materials. It is volatile, highly stable and non-flammable, reasons for which it is so widely used in this industry.
The big selling point of this chemical is that it is quite effective and quite cheap, which means that almost all dry cleaners throughout the glove use it daily.
The problem is that PERC is quite toxic, both for humans and the environment.
Like many other chlorinated hydrocarbons, PERC acts as a central nervous system depressant, and due to its volatile character, it can enter the body through both the respiratory system and dermal exposure.
The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer lists it as being a group A2 carcinogen, which means that it is “probably carcinogenic to humans”. It can also dissolve fats from the protective layer of the skin, potentially resulting in skin irritation.
Animal studies have already shown evidence that exposure to PERC increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease in ninefold, and the compound has been shown to cause liver tumours in mice, and kidney tumours in rats.
PERC is also labelled as toxic for the environment, since its degradation is quite slow, having an estimated atmospheric half-life of 100 days.
The predominant routes of exposure to PERC for the general population are the inhalation of the compound from both ambient and indoor environments, and ingestion, by drinking water contaminated with it. People working on the dry cleaning industry are, of course, exposed to higher levels of PERC than the general population, and, in addition, people residing near dry cleaning locations are also exposed to high levels, due to the volatile nature of the compounds and to vapour intrusion.
Because of all these reasons, the French government has set up as one of their goals for the Horizon 2020 the complete banning of PERC from dry cleaning establishments situated close to residential areas. Similar laws had been already passed in Denmark and the USA.
What are the effects of PERC on human health?
PERC’s mechanism of toxicity differs from tissue to tissue. The main two targets of PERC, in the human body, are neurological tissues and hepatic tissues.
In the case of the neurological effects, experimental studies in rodents have shown that PERC alters the fatty acid pattern of the brain’s phospholipids and amino acids. This explains its neurotoxic effects.
Other studies propose that PERC might be incorporated into the brain membranes, hence altering the neural conduction velocity.
PERC can also interfere with the voltage-gated channels and neuronal receptors of the nervous cells. Shafer et al. (2005) showed that PERC disturbs whole-cell calcium currents as well.
In contrast with these neurological effects, which are a result of PERC itself, the hepatic effects are a result of oxidative metabolites including trichloroacetic acid and dichloroacetic acid, which accumulate on the liver.
What are the effects of PERC on the environment?
PERC is a compound that tends to volatise quickly when released into water or soil. Furthermore, it is also mobile in soil and therefore has the potential of leaching bellow the soil surface and reaching groundwater, hence contaminating it. The United States’ Health and Human Services identified PERC in approximately 4% of aquifers in the latest US Geological Survey, showing that aquifer contamination is indeed a problem.
It can biodegrade to tricholoethylene, dichloroethylene, vynil chloride or ethane through dechlorination, but these compounds are not safer than PERC itself.
What alternatives exist already to PERC?
There are already some existing alternatives to the use of PERC in dry cleaning, but the scientific community is divided regarding their safety.
The first alternative is the use of liquid silicon instead of PERC. Silicon is a commonly used solvent, which we find in products such as cosmetics, deodorants and shampoos. It is both odourless and colourless making it in theory a perfect alternative to PERC. However, some scientists have expressed their concern over the use of this chemical since no complete analysis of its impact on humans has been performed to date. Furthermore, only some countries, such as Canada and the UK, have declared liquid silicon as not harmful for the environment, which shows that there is no global consensus on its safety.
Furthermore, the European Chemical Agency has reported that liquid silicone is bioaccumulative. It is very difficult to break down and it is likely to accumulate in our bodies, which is why the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) has called for further research.
Another existing alternative is wet cleaning. This method involves the use of gentle washing machines, water, biodegradable soaps and conditioners, and various types of pressing and re-shaping equipment specialised for different types of fabric and fibre types. This method is quite expensive because it requires the investment of acquiring different machines for different fabrics, and requires a lot of training for the operators.
Although a safe alternative for the environment, the specialised detergents and conditioners are mild and not as effective on getting rid of all stains, and many tailors do not recommend it as the process can harm sensible garments.
Another existing alternative is the use of KWL as a solvent. KWL is a petroleum-based solvent, which means that its use is not environmental-friendly. Furthermore, recent studies show that KWL is slightly toxic for human health and also that it is highly inflammable.
Similar data is found for another alternative, the solvent K. This is also a petroleum-based solvent, and is highly inflammable as well. This hydrocarbon is also uncommonly volatile for a compound of its class, which makes it very efficient for dry-cleaning, but hazardous for human health.
How would our product fit in the market?
To understand how our team could make a positive impact on the dry cleaning industry, we interviewed all the dry cleaners in Paris to gather information about the use of PERC and on the impact that the new rules will have on their businesses. For more detailed information on the questionnaire, visit our human practices page.
Overall, most dry cleaners expressed their concern about the compulsory changes, not only because of the economical impact of renewing their already established methods, but mainly because of their concern over the efficiency of the existing alternatives.
Those dry cleaners that had already made the change to the new alternatives told us that the new methods were highly less efficient than PERC itself, and that therefore they now were required to use pre-washing products specific to each type of stains. They also told us that amongst the most difficult stains to remove, red wine was a specially challenging one, especially on white and light coloured pieces of clothing.
We therefore decided to focus on red wine stains by trying to produce and enzymatic pre-washing product that would help washing the red wine stains away! For more information about the outline of our project, visit our project page!
Questionnaire for Dry Cleaners
To assess the level of awareness of dry cleaners and customers, we created a survey. We submit it to every dry cleaners in Paris, to obtain the best statistics and most global idea on dry cleaners’ opinions we possibly can. We want to know what problems they encounter the most and how we, an iGEM team, can help them.
We went to every dry cleaners in the 20 arrondissements in Paris, which makes it exactly 462 dry cleaners. We asked which stains are the most difficult to remove and/or the more frequent, to confirm that tackling wine stains was on point. We also asked them on which fabrics it is more difficult to remove stains, as depending on the fabrics stains go deeply in it or not and there are also types of fabrics that are very fragile and need to be handle with great care. Then we asked specifically about wine stains, if they are difficult to remove and what products they use, leading to the question of them using PERC or not. Focusing on PERC we investigate their level of awareness on the compound and its effects on health and environment, and the fact that it is now banned in France, if they agree with this measure or not and what impact it will have on them, mostly economically speaking. Finally, we asked about any known alternatives, mostly bio-friendly alternatives, and how they think their customers could perceive such initiatives.
Events
European Experience
We participated in the European Experience, a big gathering for European iGEM teams organized by iGEM Evry and iGEM IONIS. Every team started in the morning by presenting its project, we all had posters and were exchanging with other iGEMers. It was a good opportunity to explain our project Frank&Stain for the first time : we presented our main idea, our workflow, our goals, etc. By exchanging with other iGEMers on our project they gave us feedback and ideas. European Experience was also a great way to meet European teams and learn what kind of projects and ideas they have in mind. Potential collaborations arose, we asked for red wine from teams near vineyards. Last but not least we had to very interesting conferences on Synthetic Biology in the afternoon.
NightScience
Biodesign Nightscience is an event organized by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research-Paris. This event gathers each year researchers, hackers and education innovators to share their approaches and experience on building new ways to achieve better knowledge construction and transmission. Our team was invited to present our project in front of diverse audience. We had 15 minutes to present our idea and work, followed by 10 minutes of questions. We were very glad to hear the views of audience coming from different backgrounds on our synthetic biology approach to tackle wine stains and supplant PERC in dry cleaning. We met iGEM-University of Cambridge and exchanged our views on each other's project and presentation. We met some of the fantastic people and learnt more on DIY, open, frugal, hands-on, collaborative and citizen science! We thank the organizers of the Biodesign Nightscience for giving us the opportunity to present the project and convey synthetic biology approach to more diverse audience .
Meet-up Ile-de-France
On this day teams from Paris had a meeting, organized by Paris Pasteur team, at the Institut Pasteur, and everyone had to do a twenty minutes presentation of its project. It was a very good way to practice for the Jamboree and present a more defined project and first results. iGEM Pasteur, IGEM IONIS, iGEM Savlay, iGEM Evry and iGEM UPMC and us were present. We were the first team to present, at 9:30 in the morning, and ended with an interesting session of questions and answers, the public raised very good questions for us to think about, for our presentation and our project's progress. A jury evaluated presentations and gave us good advice on our to present better and told us what part of our project to better linked with the rest. It was an interesting first test at presenting and sharing results, the only drawbacks being hat at this stage of the project we did not have that much to present.
Teams had lunch together and enjoyed a drone demonstration, a very agreable addition to the Meet-up! We realy enjoyed ourselves this day and enjoyed exchanging with Paris team and learning about each other's project and progress.
Festival du Vivant
The Festival vivant is a event organised to learn about synthetic biology and have an informed debate on the future we wish to build with this technology. This event gathered start ups, iGEM teams, designers and artists who presented their projects and their vision of the future synbio can inspire.
During this event we had a stand in the Village des Initiatives, Initiatives village, in which we presented our project and answered questions on iGEM and synthetic biology. We also pitch our project during a conference held for this event in an amphitheater.
Eventually on the last day, we co-animated a workshop on the future we can imagine with synthetic biology with Frédéric Tournier, Professor at the Université Paris Diderot, and Philippe Deterre, biologist at CNRS. This workshop was attended by 20 people with different backgrounds and of different ages
Collaborations
+33 1 44 41 25 22/25
igem2016parisbettencourt@gmail.com 