s there really
better living through chemistry? For Janet Hickman, the answer
is “yes.” She was recognized recently by her
peers for her ongoing work as the product steward for
perchloroethylene at the Dow Chemical Company when she received
the prestigious Young Timers L. Frank Wright Award from the
Textile Care Allied Trades Association at its annual
convention.
“It was a real surprise and a
humbling experience,” Janet said. “To me,
it‘s such an honor because I so enjoy working with all of
the people that belong to TCATA. I always learn so much when I
attend their educational sessions. I learn a different
perspective by listening to people. If I didn’t
participate, I’d never gain that perspective.”
Janet first joined Dow in Midland,
MI, in 1974. Dow interviewed Janet that year while she
was graduating from the University of Kansas with a B.S. in
Chemistry.
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Knowing a company as large as Dow
— it currently records annual sales in the billions and
has employees numbering near 50,000 — could offer many
product areas in which to specialize and various job functions
to perform, Janet felt she would always have enough challenges
there to stimulate her intellectual curiosity.
Since she began her career with Dow,
Janet has spent a lot of her time impacting the drycleaning
industry by pursuing two of her interests passionately:
researching chemicals and exchanging information with others.
“I like to have something that
challenges me,” she explained. “I guess the thing
that really drives me is the whole idea about learning, and,
when you learn something, share what you know with someone else
and use the opportunities that you have to learn from other
people. That was part of why I came to Dow in the first
place.”
When Janet first enrolled at the
University of Kansas, her initial inclination was to be a
history major. However, she changed her direction when she was
required to take a science course to earn enough credits for
her degree.
“I picked a chemistry course,”
she recalled. “The professor who taught the course
— his name was Carl Bricker — was so dynamic and
passionate about teaching and sharing a love of science. It
really got me excited and interested.”
Soon after, she worked with another
chemistry department professor, Richard Givens, who taught her
the importanct art of research. He helped her hone her ability
to investigate information. “He was my mentor,” she
said.
When Janet first started with Dow, she was
assigned a job, appropriately enough, in a research group.
“We did what we call process support, which was in
support of one of the production facilities,” she said.
“So, if a production facility was having a problem, then
the research people in the group were expected to figure out
what was going on and fix it.”
Some of the research she performed kept
Janet busy in a laboratory at Dow. In 1976, it was there that
she discovered some chemistry with Andy, her husband of 26
years. The couple have two daughters: Patty, a sous chef at a
gourmet restaurant named Hattie’s in Sutton Bay, MI; and
Kathy, a junior at Grand Valley State University in Grand
Rapids, MI, who studies physical therapy for athletes.
“I’m just so proud of
them,” Janet said. “They’ve both figured out
things that interest them and they have a passion for.
That’s so important, to really love what you
do.”
er own passion has kept Janet busy at Dow over
the years. She has held various positions, including marketing
and technical service and development. During one stint, Janet
worked on a project with reverse osmosis membranes, which are
used to desalt water.
“I really enjoyed that,” she
recalled. “I worked with individuals from engineering
firms to municipalities that were looking at using the
technology for their public drinking water to corporations that
had to purify water that they were going to use in their
processes.”
In 1988, Janet moved into the area
of chlorinated organics, which includes perc, methylene
chloride and trichloroethylene. Not only does Janet’s
work influence the drycleaning industry, but the solvents she
works with have applications in metal degreasing, industrial
adhesives and the pharmaceutical industry.
Solvent use was significantly
different back in the late 1980s. “Whether it was vapor
degreasing for industrial metal parts or drycleaning with perc,
back in 1988 the equipment wasn’t nearly as sophisticated
as it is today. One of our biggest activities was putting
the information together to help people use the products more
efficiently, which, when you’re dealing with chemicals,
also means more safely.”
Because she didn’t have enough
time or resources to call drycleaners individually, Janet
worked directly with distributors, who in turn would promote
more efficient solvent use from all of their customers.
“You really have to work at
bringing value to your customer so that your customer can be
successful,” she explained. “If you teach a
customer how to use less, and be more efficient, in what they
do and do a better job and run their operations in a way that
is safer for the environment, that means they’re going to
be in business longer. So, they’ll be buying products
from you longer.”
ome of Janet’s job functions have changed
as regulations on chlorinated solvents have increased. In
addition to working with solvent distributors, she spends a lot
of time talking to regulators.
“The unfortunate thing is, you have
to maintain perspective. When somebody in a regulatory agency
first starts working with a regulatory agency regulation,
it’s another project, just different from the last one.
The first thing they do is look up how it used to be done the
last time their agency addressed the issue. That may have been
several years ago and can lead to some unfortunate
assumptions,” Janet said.
“If you look at the latest TCATA
figures, perc use has gone down 72% over the last ten years.
Consumption has gone down dramatically,” she said.
“Basically, improvements in the safety and handling of
products caused this decline. I try to make sure that people
understand how perc drycleaning is done today versus how it was
done ten or fifteen years ago because it’s so
different.”
In order to keep others updated on the
latest information, Janet constantly researches data. She works
with several organizations, including the International
Fabricare Institute and the State Coalition for the Remediation
of Dry Cleaners. She chairs the Regulatory Affairs Committee at
the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance; the committee on
chlorinated solvents for the American Society for Testing
Materials; and the Government Affairs Committee for TCATA,
where she also serves on their H.E.L.P. Committee and their
board of directors.
“I spend a lot of time just trying
to keep up on different kinds of information,” she said.
“Everybody has regulations to deal with, so you not only
have to keep up on what the regulations are, but interact with
people on what future regulations might look like. It’s a
lot of reading just to keep up to speed.”
Of course, Janet’s scientific mind
realizes predicting the future is almost impossible.
“You never know what any particular
state regulatory agency is going to do, or even a local agency
like South Coast Air Quality Management District,” she
said, referring to the group’s proposal for a ban of perc
in a four county area of California by 2020.
“I don’t see perc being
banned,” she added. “I think there are going to be
regulations on how you use perc and they’re probably
going to get tighter because all regulations are getting
tighter. But, I think with the technology that exists,
it’s going to be very manageable to deal with those
regulations as they come in the future.”
In terms of the drycleaning industry,
Janet predicts that perc is going to continue to be the
standard against which alternative solvents are measured,
although she cannot say how long that will be.
“I’m a scientist,” she
said. “I’m a chemist by training, so I know that
eventually somebody’s going to come up with something
that’s better than perc, but I don’t have a crystal
ball to say when that’s going to be.”
Ironically, Janet points to how
perc’s reduction of usage in past years suggests that it
will be around for a while.
“I think that the thing we have to
be careful of when we look at perc in drycleaning, as an
example, is to not equate reduction in consumption volume with
getting toward the end of the product’s life cycle
because it is precisely that reduction in consumption volume
that helps extend the life of its product,” she noted.
“Every product has a life
cycle,” Janet continued. “There are a lot of things
you can do to change or extend the life cycle of a product. I
think what we’ve seen in the last few years are the
things that have extended perc’s life cycle — and
that’s the equipment improvements and the pollution
prevention practices used today. I think those are the kinds of
things that are going to continue to extend the lifetime of
perc.”
