“Chemical Free” – Good? Bad? or meaningless!?
My lessons from a school visit and a chemistry conference.
The term “chemical free” will always make me just a little bit angry. But why? And what is a chemical? And why should you care?
Two things have happened recently, that have finally made me sit at my laptop and write this article. To vent about why this seemingly positive statement is ridiculous, and why we should talk about chemicals.
A school trip
I love to do outreach and public engagement. In particular I like showing people that scientists are, and should, be inspired by the world around them. Both to find problems, and to find solutions. Getting out of the lab and communicating with curious minds is a powerful thing. When I go to a school visit, the package of games, videos, experiments and presentations is well received. However at the last event, I realised that I had failed. And not just a little bit. On the last class of the day, when I was a little more relaxed, I started with a question. I asked:
“How many things have you interacted with today which were completely, or partly, made by a chemist in a lab?“
I expected everyone to shout hundreds, lots, millions. Indeed hands went up. But the answer I kept getting…?
BLEACH
Bleach?! That’s the only chemical you have touched today? Bleach? Anything else, anything at all?
This answer surprised me. Does that mean that to lots of people, a chemical is something nasty, toxic? No wonder companies sell things as ‘chemical free’!
So the school visit massively helped me. From now on, we will always start with what is a chemical? The good, that bad and the essential! If you don’t fully understand what a chemical is, how can you possibly know what chemistry is and therefore what a chemist does?! And more importantly, why would you care and why would you want to be one?!
"It's all a matter of branding"
I have just got back from the 3rd Green and Sustainable chemistry conference. There were a number of pretty impressive scientists, ideas and new business ventures.
What inspired me most?
A statement: It’s on all of us to tell people what a chemical is and what chemistry is.
Simple.
If only I had heard this before my school visits!
Also: Chemists played a part in causing many problems, but they are fundamental to solving them.
If I could add a pearl of wisdom from a business course I attended – “It’s all a matter of branding.” It’s on us (as Chemists) to do better. It’s on us to communicate better. It’s on us to go into the real world and to find solutions to real problems. And then it’s on us to implement it and tell people about it. Not to make money, or to get the credit. But to raise the brand that is chemistry, science, chemicals! This is the only way to attract the best minds to science. And that is essential to tackling some of the biggest problems facing us as a population.
So… what is a chemical anyway?
It’s the material your clothes are made of.
It’s the dye used to colour the material.
It’s the detergent you use to wash them.
It’s plastic, it’s medicines, it’s the screen on your phone, it’s… everything.
Personally, I like the abundance of vitamins that are naturally in my fruit, as well as those made synthetically in a handy pill form for when I don't eat enough fruit or feel a cold coming on. I like my medicines to contain active ingredients. I like whatever is in my conditioner that makes my hair slightly more manageable (a lot of chemicals in cosmetics)! I appreciate having fuel in my car, although I know we need better solutions than petrol and diesel. And so I could continue, pretty much indefinitely.
Chemical free. Ha! Natural chemicals. Man made chemicals. We need them all.
If we look to the dictionary, it depends what definition you use. A simple definition of a chemical is a substance. A gas, a liquid, a solid. According to other definitions a chemical is made during a chemical reaction. So that could be a chemical reaction by a chemist in the lab, sure. But it could also be a chemical reaction in a living thing (inside you even – you are making chemicals inside you all the time), a chemical reaction that happens in sunlight, a chemical reaction that happens in air, a chemical reaction that happens deep underground under intense pressure and temperature. If you go back, pretty much everything is made in a chemical reaction. Everything is made up from whatever exploded out of stars. So really, it’s a more complicated definition of the same thing.
One aspect of chemistry is the science of turning one chemical into another. Hopefully, a cheap and available chemical gets turned into a more useful chemical. Chemists also look to make new chemicals, with new functionality, new applications. And we analyse them, to understand them.
In the future, chemists - together with people from all other disciplines - have a tough challenge. We need to find better, and cleaner, ways of making chemicals. Plastics are a particular focus at the moment. We need to find renewable starting ingredients. Clean processes. And develop useful new plastic materials that are not harmful to the environment, that degrade efficiently or can be easily reused. But this is equally true for all chemicals: fuels, medicines, cosmetics.
Chemists will have a substantial part to play in creating the future that our planet needs, that we need.
That makes me proud to be a chemist.
That encourages me even more to inspire the next generation.