One of the weak areas of concern in industrial ecology to date has been detoxification. This is perhaps understandable with the roots of IE in modern business and allied academia. Questions of eco-efficiency and conservation might seem more immediately relevant to the corporate bottom line; and toxic chemicals have become almost ubiquitous in industry. Over 60,000 chemicals are now used in industrial production, with the US EPA estimating that 15,000 nonpolymeric chemicals are produced or imported into the US each year. And each year the materials industries add