Jan/Feb 2006

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Does the word "chemical" make you uncomfortable? Do you think of "natural" and "chemical" as opposites? When the tv pitchman promises "Cleans faster with no harsh chemicals" do you give him just a little more attention? If so, you are not alone. Most modern people are afraid of chemicals. Which is too bad. Because elephants, bacteria, humans, mice, trees, and tigers are all chemical factories so efficient that chemical makers wish they could approach even a small fraction of the efficiency of any living organism.

Chemicals and chemistry were not always the subject of fear and dread. In the 19th century, chemicals became the building blocks for effective drugs and for rapid advances in public health. Clean water, anesthesia, and painkillers—things we take for granted today—were and are the result of advances in chemistry.

It's not hard to trace the beginning of the downhill slide in the image of chemistry. On April 22, 1915, Captain Fritz Haber ordered German troops to open the valves on 6,000 pre-positioned cylinders of chlorine. Within minutes, Algerian and French troops in trenches near the Belgian village of Ypres saw a yellowish-green cloud rolling toward them. As the heavier-than-air gas filled their revetments, the troops who could run did; the rest writhed in agony as the gas burned their throats and eyes and finally drowned them in the fluid of their own lungs.

It is doubly sad that Haber selected chlorine for the debut of gas warfare, because chlorine has made billions of lives better across the globe in the last hundred years. The vast majority of drugs use chlorine in some step of their synthesis, and chlorine is still the most widely used and effective disinfectant for public water systems. The beginning ...