Kozlowski: Debunking common chemistry myths

As a chemist, I have a healthy respect for the chemicals I work with.

Some of these are… As a chemist, I have a healthy respect for the chemicals I work with.

Some of these are toxic, others are corrosive, many are flammable, and a few will burst into flame if they come into contact with air. Handling them with informed caution is imperative.

Unfortunately, whenever the public hears “chemicals,” the word “dangerous” is often rolled in, and instead of informed caution we end up with ignorant terror. Take the case of a Philadelphia affiliate of Fox News, which recently aired a breathless report about how terrorists could snatch all kinds of dangerous chemicals from university laboratories. Why, the investigators even found cabinets marked “flammable” and “acid”! They were able to walk right up to tanks of liquid nitrogen! They found, in a fume hood of all places, hydrochloric acid and diethyl ether!

Frankly, I would be stunned if any lab lacked those particular chemicals.

Of course, all of this is causing much mirth up at Chevron. For one thing, terrorists wouldn’t have to infiltrate a chemistry building to find the materials needed to build a deadly weapon — they could buy something just as dangerous at Lowe’s or make poisonous gases using the contents of almost any American’s cleaning cabinet. The Oklahoma City bombing was carried out using fertilizer, which is why the Feds keep an eye on large fertilizer purchases. And quite a few chemicals can be bought online. In any case, locking down school labs would make conducting experiments even more difficult.

This report — which prompted Sen. Bob Casey to call for increased lab security — is a prime example of fear-mongering at its worst, but it’s not the first example of mindless fears about chemicals. What struck me most was that reporters probably didn’t pick what were actually the scariest chemicals in the lab, settling instead on the vaguely familiar and ominous-sounding ones that would most alarm an audience. The bit about nitrogen was, I suspect, a way of freaking out a viewership whose only experience with liquid nitrogen came from watching “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

Misunderstandings about health hazards aren’t limited to just one particular incident and one particular chemical. For example, “preservatives” has become something of a dirty word. Many products proudly display the fact that they don’t contain any, and many activist groups warn us of their evils. But many preservatives are quite harmless. By preventing putrefaction, they reduce the risk of food poisoning and make food last longer, ensuring that people only have to go grocery shopping once a week. Some work specifically to quell the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that produces botulinum toxin.

Many preservatives are all-natural anyway: Propionic acid occurs in fruits and is used as an anti-fungal agent. Citric acid and vitamin C, by altering food acidity, can also help preserve food. Two of the oldest and most common preservatives are none other than common table salt and sugar. Shunning something because it’s “full of preservatives” or “full of chemicals” bespeaks a naive fear.

While I’m on it, I should also address another one of my chemical pet peeves, the “all-natural equals healthy” fallacy. The deadliest known neurotoxin is botulinum toxin, which, as I mentioned before, is made by a bacterium. Tobacco is all-natural. Wandering around a forest eating random mushrooms is foolish in the extreme. Even nutmeg, if eaten in sufficient quantity, produces heart fibrillations and other nasty effects that require hospitalization. Meanwhile, many lifesaving drugs are not natural — nor, if we enjoy polyester and nylon, are the clothes we’re wearing at this very moment.

And then there’s the biggest bugbear of them all, the carcinogen studies. Now, I’m not saying that carcinogens don’t exist or that we shouldn’t be concerned about them. I’m not saying that all additives are absolutely safe in any amount. But the thing to realize is that, especially when it comes to food, the standards of testing are very strict. According to the National Cancer Institute, for example, the reports that triggered fears about aspartame as a carcinogen in 2005 involved rats that were fed aspartame in amounts equivalent to a human drinking between 8 and 2,083 cans of diet soda every day. Other results have proved inconclusive, and in science, before you run around talking about how this one result caused something bad to happen, you had better damn well be able to repeat it.

Let me re-emphasize that there are hazardous chemicals out there — even some of the things we use every day can be dangerous. But the notion that a chemical with a long, unpronounceable  name is deadly should be discarded, as it leads to unnecessary fear and calls for action where either none is needed or appropriate action is already being taken. It can also lead to the establishment of “solutions” that cause even larger problems.

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