The Rise of Chemophobia In the News

eldavojohn writes "American news outlets like The New York Times seem to thrive on chemophobia — consumer fear of the ambiguous concept of 'chemicals.' As a result, Pulitzer-prize winning science writer Deborah Blum has decided to call out New York Times journalist Nicholas Kirstof for his secondary crusade (she notes he is an admirable journalist in other realms) against chemicals. She's quick to point out the absurdity of fearing chemicals like Hydrogen which could be a puzzler considering its integral role played in life-giving water as well as life-destroying hydrogen cyanide. Another example is O2 versus O3. Blum calls upon journalists to be more specific, to avoid the use of vague terms like 'toxin' let alone 'chemical' and instead inform the public with lengthy chemical names like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) instead of omitting the actual culprit altogether. Kristof has, of course, resorted to calling makers of these specific compounds 'Big Chem' and Blum chastises his poorly researched reporting along with chemophobic lingo. Chemists of Slashdot, have you found reporting on 'chemicals' to be as poor as Blum alleges or is this no more erroneous than any scare tactic used to move newspapers and garner eyeballs?"

Comments

frist

[Anonymous Coward]

Chemists of Slashdot, have you found reporting on 'chemicals' to be as poor as Blum alleges or is this no more erroneous than any scare tactic used to move newspapers and garner eyeballs?"

Yes. This is not an either/or question here; both are true.

Re:frist

[mcgrew]

There's nothing new here, reporters screw up all their stories, whether it's a city council meeting, a new scientific discovery, or an engineering breakthrough. I'm pretty sure everyone here has seen a news story reporting about something in their field that they just had to shake their head in wonder at how stupid the reporter must be.

And don't forget, scare tactics and sensationalism bring eyeballs and ad revenue.

Re:frist

[Anonymous Coward]

getting ground under the just-awakening whermacht at the time.

Did you really just Godwin the thread in three moves? That just happened like a blitzkrieg! You're an orator of Churchillian proportions! You bypassed the Maginot line of logic and rationality and annexed the Sudetenland of irrational comparisons!

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

Re:frist

[Anonymous Coward]

No, poison can be painless. Car crashes can be slow and painful. People understand car accidents, they know when they're happening. A car hits another one. Bam. You get crushed or burn up or something. Poison? Maybe you just ate some. Maybe not. Maybe you're slowly dying and you don't know it.

People are afraid of what they don't know/understand. It's natural, why do you think there's such a widespread fear of the dark? You don't know what's there when it's dark.

Re:frist

[Dexter Herbivore]

There's nothing new here, reporters screw up all their stories, whether it's a city council meeting, a new scientific discovery, or an engineering breakthrough. I'm pretty sure everyone here has seen a news story reporting about something in their field that they just had to shake their head in wonder at how stupid the reporter must be.

And don't forget, scare tactics and sensationalism bring eyeballs and ad revenue.

My personal bugbear is the word 'toxin', although 'chemical' and 'toxic waste' qualify as well. Any compound can be toxic, is a chemical, and may be toxic waste. As an example, water is toxic in the wrong place/situation/amount, it is definitely a chemical compound, and it can be a waste product of various chemical processes so effectively could be 'toxic waste'. Toxic waste is ANY excess product from a reaction that *may* be toxic, the term itself is emotional and not truly descriptive.

You know it's coming

[Anonymous Coward]

So when is Kirstof's writing an article about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide?

First bad joke?

Re:You know it's coming

[Beardo the Bearded]

It's no joke man, they've found DiHyMo in 100% of brain tumors. It's used in all sorts of industrial applications including GMO farming and pesticide production. And it's ubiquitous. People will spray it all over their lawns to try and promote growth. It's so bad it's in all the runoff in the streams rivers, and we just dump it right into the ocean.

Re:You know it's coming

[Idaho]

My favorite source for actually scary chemicals is Things I won't work with, a chemists weblog detailing all sorts of stuff that, well, he won't work with. Random quote:

The experimental section of the paper enjoins the reader to wear a face shield, leather suit, and ear plugs, to work behind all sorts of blast shields, and to use Teflon and stainless steel apparatus so as to minimize shrapnel. Hmm. Ranking my equipment in terms of its shrapneliferousness is not something that's ever occurred to me, I have to say. It's safe to assume that any procedure which involves considering which parts of the apparatus I'd prefer to have flying past me will not get much business in my lab, no matter how dashing I might look in a leather suit.

As a former chemist

[Anonymous Coward]

I find much in the popular media to be anti-chemical. Invariably, "Chemical" is used as a perjorative, almost always being prefixed with either toxic or hazardous. Further, it seems that the term "organic" means without "chemicals", which is idiotic, since Every! Single! Thing! is composed of chemicals.

So, anyway, I have a wonderful time with the chemophobes, preferring to use the term "Organic" to refer to a class of covalently-bonded chemicals, primarily composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms, with various other elements occasionally found.

So, most pesticides (with the exception of things like Bordeaux powder) are organic, as artificial sweeteners, etc. Water is never organic, btw.

On the flip side

[joeflies]

I find it somewhat annoying that there seems to be a mainstream association with the "natural" to mean "safe". There are lots of naturally occurring dangerous substances.

Re:Liberal eco freaks

[OzPeter]

Science illiterate, social media sheeps.

That's funny .. I was going to suggest Science illiterate, anti-education Conservative rednecks.
 
It all comes down to ...
 
IGNORANT PEOPLE
 
I say ignorant rather than stupid because of something a colleague told me years ago:

Ignorance can be cured with education. Stupidity can only be cured with a hand gun

So as I am an optimist I am hoping for "ignorant"

Alarmists tend to have names . . .

[InvisibleClergy]

...they're just usually not the right ones. For example, the token anti-vaccine person I know rails first about vaccines. Then, if pressed, he will say that the issue is the mercury. Then, if pressed more, he will say some specific compound involving mercury such as thimerosal.

The point is, people can fixate on names all day. It's people's tribalism that's the problem. If one person has a terrible problem with one doctor, that means that he or she will tell all of his or her friends that doctors are bad, and science is bad, and that home birth is the ONLY WAY. And then he or she will go out in search of anecdotes and outlier studies to support his or her claim.

And yes. There will be studies to support any claim. This is why news sources need to slap their sources' confidence intervals right next to any reporting done on studies, ever.

Re:DHMO

[Mindcontrolled]

Guys, I appreciate the joke, but the nomenclature sucks. Dihydrogenmonoxide is just not IUPAC conform. Or would you call methane with a systematic name of "Tetrahydrogen monocarbide"? Either you go with the Silane, Borane etc. nomenclature and call it Oxiran, or you go the usual way and call it Oxygen hydride.

Stop Being Pedantic

[JLDohm]

Yes, they are using the word "chemicals" wrong. Get over it. Use your brain to substitute something that is correct and listen to what they are saying. Just because they paint all chemicals as evil, and they are wrong, does not mean that all chemicals are safe. With snakes, I assume they are poisonous unless I know otherwise. Why not do the same with things I put in my body?

Both explanations are true

[sam_handelman]

Truth1: Chemistry reporting is as bad as all other science reporting.
Truth2: The Chemical industry is as unconcerned with "externalities" as any other business.

  Reporters will get you to panic even if they don't have a good reason; the reason that reporters are capable of spreading panic easily is because chemical manufacturers will poison you in order to make a buck. So, from a certain standpoint, the response of the general public is rational - they don't trust the chemical industry, and they shouldn't, so why not err on the side of caution when dealing with certified professional liars (marketing, PR and advertising people). Particulates are bad for you; the chemical industry (and domestic manufacturing generally) denies this, but they're lying. Vaccines are not harmful; but they are a big emerging profit center for pharma. If vaccines were harmful (again, they aren't), would pharma lie about it? Damn straight they'd lie through their teeth. So it becomes a double problem - it's difficult to educate the public about what is safe (vaccines are safe), and at the same time it's difficult to get robust action on what isn't safe (airborne particulates are not safe; neither are most chlorinated organics, heavy metals, etc.)