When I think about chemicals, I often remember my high school chemistry teacher. To highlight that chemistry is all around us, she would say, “Chemistry is on your head, and you don’t even know what it is.” She was referring to hair dye, which was, and still is, widely used and popular.
It's true, we use chemicals even when we're not aware of it, and they often make our daily lives easier. They can improve our health, contribute to food and drink safety, help us control pests, and protect us from sun exposure. Simply put, chemicals have countless beneficial properties that we want to utilize.
So why have chemicals come under scrutiny?
Besides enhancing our quality of life, chemicals can also have properties that endanger humans and the environment. Poor management of chemicals can have unforeseeable consequences for health, the environment, and the economy.
Large amounts of hazardous chemicals and pollutants are released into the environment, contaminating the food chain and accumulating in our bodies, where they can cause significant harmful health effects.
Worrying chemicals are detected in breast milk (dioxins and furans), urine (phthalates), and blood (heavy metals). Chemical pollutants are found in the air, water, soil, and biota worldwide, even in remote regions where chemicals have never been used. Some organochlorine pesticides, whose production and use were banned long ago, have been found in Himalayan glaciers.
Pollution knows no boundaries. And it takes a long time from the cessation of production and use of a chemical to its disappearance from the environment.
All these are facts and should not be ignored. These issues are widely discussed and are the reason for the legal regulation of the chemical sector.
But back to my chemistry teacher. Chemicals are truly all around us.
You’re familiar with cleaning and disinfecting agents; I often write about them too. Would you give up the benefits they bring? I certainly wouldn’t. We can't give up medicines or electronic devices, which also contain many chemicals. Could we imagine life today without batteries? And they can't exist without chemicals.
We shouldn't avoid chemicals, nor can we. But we should be careful and rational in their use and follow instructions for safe application.
After all, everything around us can be broken down into chemical components. Food is a chemical mixture: water, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and microelements. Even if we don’t treat fruits or vegetables with chemical plant protection agents, the naturally contained compounds are also chemicals.
Some natural chemical compounds can be more toxic than synthetic ones, like mycotoxins. How many of you have removed the moldy part from jam and continued to eat it? We often don’t worry about the generated mycotoxins that remain in the jam even after removing visible mold. We don’t think of them as toxic chemicals.
But we often try to avoid “chemical” cleaning agents at home by preparing our own solutions that clean well and aren’t “chemicals.” Baking soda? Citric acid? Vinegar? These are all chemical substances that we don’t consider “chemicals.”
As a fan of the series Breaking Bad, I’ll end by recalling Walter White before he became Heisenberg. He talked about the chemical composition of the human body: hydrogen 63%, oxygen 26%, carbon 9%, nitrogen 1.25%, calcium 0.25%, chlorine 0.2%, etc.
The human body, like everything around us, is made up of chemicals. We use them every day, even when we’re not aware of it. Keep that in mind the next time you want to avoid “chemicals” and turn to nature.
What’s your opinion on this topic? Write to me at nina.pajovic@bens-consulting.eu.
nina.pajovic@bens-consulting.eu
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