WASHINGTON, June 24 -- This year's winners of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards were announced here today. Now in its third year, the awards program is part of President Clinton's Reinventing Environmental Regulations Initiative to promote industrial ecology. "Green chemistry" is chemistry designed to reduce or eliminate the use of generation of hazardous substances.

The award recipients and their achievements are:

• Karen M. Draths and John W. Frost (Michigan State University, East Lansing): genetically engineered microbes that can manufacture starting materials for nylon and other products from nontoxic, readily available glucose.
• Barry M. Trost (Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.): the concept of "atom economy," demonstrated by efficient catalytic reactions with which to make pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals, thereby reducing waste streams and conserving nonrenewable resources.
• Pyrocool Technologies, Inc. (Lynchburg, Va.): a more efficient yet less environmentally damaging agent to extinguish and cool a wide variety of fires.
• Flexsys America L.P. (Akron, Ohio): a new route to make an ingredient of rubber that significantly reduces waste streams and eliminates the need for toxic chlorine, benzene, and xylene.
• Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Ill.): low-cost synthesis of a nontoxic, biodegradable solvent that can economically replace many toxic, petroleum-derived solvents in the manufacture of electronics, paints, textiles, cleaners, and other products.
• Rohm and Haas Co. (Philadelphia, Penn.): a new family of insecticides that are highly selective for destructive caterpillars and beetle grubs, and thus pose little risk to other organisms from honeybees to humans.