Chemistry

If you have been in science media for any period of time, you have seen a predictable pattern; epidemiologists look through columns and rows of foods people claim they eat and diseases or lack thereof and if they get enough to declare "statistical significance" they write a paper noting down at the bottom that they can't show a causal relationship but then send press releases to New York Times journalists who believe in acupuncture absolutely suggesting causation. If it becomes a popular article, a bunch of other epidemiologists will rush to "replicate" it. Low sodium diets, low fat diets,…

The International Agency for Research on Cancer(IARC) was once so heralded in a field so rigorous and methodologically conservative that epidemiologists were last to accept a hereditary aspect of cancer. That's right, they didn't see enough evidence to think family history of cancer mattered, and only agreed when overwhelming data were found. They were so thorough that when they declared smoking caused cancer, Big Tobacco was doomed. Yet today, IARC epidemiologists claim bacon is as bad for you as plutonium, that plants are little people, and sugar-free gum will give you cancer. Not only have…

The world is in a tough spot with antibiotics. Because they came into use in 1928, to the public they seem like they should all be generic and cost a dollar.  Yet due to expensive new regulations passed this century pharmaceutical companies don't have much interest in new ones.(1)  Regulations and costs have doubled with no improvement in consumer safety - they were already safe - helps keep new antibiotics from being worth spending time and money on. Yet we need ones because nature is out to kill us, and she mutates pathogens to survive medicines. To prevent needless deaths from…

Espresso is a coffee extraction process where hot water is forced through finely ground coffee at a barometric pressure of nine - which means nine times the usual pressure you feel at sea level, which translates to about 130 pounds per square inch, about 400 percent of your car tires. Some people drink it diluted with water, an Americano, or with milk, as a latte. In modern times, some people even drink it cold. If an in vitro (cell culture) study holds up, people may even drink it to help ward off Alzheimer's disease.  Coffee has been linked to some health benefits (1) and the…

A new case study sounds the alarm that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are detectable in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The authors say the levels are alarmingly high. What does that mean? No studies have shown health issues related to PFAS yet and if they were a health concern, it would be known after 100 years. Yet cancer is not up, no environmental or lifestyle health issues are up except obesity, and that is due to an abundance of affordable food even for the world's poor. PFAS are so ubiquitous they are detectable in the Ittoqqortoormiit villagers of East Greenland, which…

Most of the world relies on a 113-year-old chemical reaction used every day. It is the Haber (or Haber-Bosch) process and while its contribution to energy usage and emissions is negligible compared to its benefits, the private sector is always looking for ways to keep things affordable. That means trying to come up with a fundamentally better way to fix nitrogen than the one invented before The Great War. The Haber process itself was invented for the same affordability reason. Ammonia production using older methods, like cyanamide, are the chemistry equivalent of organic food. It kept…

After spending thousands of years converging on the perfect beers, this century culture went crazy and overdid hops, tinkered with grains, and generally made niche beers at high cost. Yet there is no question craft beers are big business, a growing segment when balanced lagers are in decline. So many new choices means a lot can go wrong pairing beer and food. Dr. Ann Sandbrook,  Certified Beer Server and food chemistry lab manager at Virginia Tech, is here to save your Independence Day.  Sandbrook says if you are a traditionalist, burgers and dogs, go with a helles because it is…

In 2016, The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and created a mandatory requirement for EPA to evaluate existing chemicals using transparent methodology and risk-based assessment. Not simplistic epidemiology. This was actually a good thing. We want to make sure people are still safe as new data arrive and since they were using science and not statistical correlation, we could have confidence in the results. Among the first 10 chosen to be re-examined was Dichloromethane, commonly called Methylene chloride, a common…

A new paper notes that they can detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances - deemed by environmental activists as "forever" chemicals because they persist from to eight years - in 42 samples of food packaging. Like food bowls that are compostable and sustainable and better for the environment than plastic. Ironically, this new detection, and resulting scare, happened because consumers demanded alternatives to plastic after environmental public relations campaigns saying all the fish were dying. Most foods will not be safe in paper(1) unless you eat them right away. And yet the alternative is…

For as long as wheat flour has been used for food, a small number of people have been allergic to the gluten in it. These celiac disease sufferers experience stomach pain, nausea and even intestinal damage. More recently, gluten-free food became a new diet craze and while it was ridiculous biologically, it turned gluten-free food into a diverse $4 billion market, which was good for the celiac community. Flour can now be made from banana peels, almonds and various grains and new work adds sweet potatoes into the mix. Recent work prepared samples of orange sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) dried…