Chemistry

Dr. Jane Goodall is in a panic about GMOs and all of modern agriculture. What isn't plagiarized in her screeds about food is a mishmash of conjecture, anti-science mysticism, and lack of a clue about biology. She is not alone in losing her mind a bit with age. Dr. Linus Pauling became obsessed with Vitamin C as he aged, his claim that high doses would cure a cold is still promoted by supplement salespeople today. Dr. Lynn Margulis did vital work for our understanding of symbiosis but the Gaia hypothesis and her belief that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were done by the American…

Environmental trial lawyers are thrilled that the politically friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ordered EPA to ban chlorpyrifos but the science is even less settled than the court case is. And this court case is far from settled, because it should never have been heard. If you are not familiar with American law, the 9th is the most overturned appeals court by the Supreme Court of the United States, because their rulings are often overtly political, and therefore not grounded in evidence. This seems to be another instance of it. It came down along predictable political…

In the 1980s, environmentalists and epidemiologists began to statistically correlate attention problems in children and lower scores on tests with flame retardants used in furniture, chemicals that had become popular because parents and fire departments wanted to prevent "flashover" events during house fires - explosions in closed rooms. And it worked. But as we have seen with polio and other vaccine preventable diseases, as the threat faded began began to believe it never existed. And activists promoting chemophobia successfully promoted the belief that polybrominated diphenyl…

Paracelsus famously noted Sola dosis facit venenum - "Only the dose makes the poison." His wisdom was accepted for centuries, from the least educated to the most. Until conspiracy theory progressives began to get positions of leadership in science academia about 25 years ago, and cheered on environmental activists who decided that there is instead a u-shaped curve for chemicals.(1) At high levels everything can be toxic. Toxicologists, biologists, and chemists all accept that, but at low levels nothing is, so to get around pesky science activists began using proxies and suggesting…

Coffee is the official drink of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), so much so that a new study finds that it's downright Pavlovian. Even the smell of coffee boosts numerical performance.  In their experiment, scholars administered a 10-question Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT - the analytical portion of a computer adaptive test required by many graduate schools) in a computer lab to about 100 undergraduate business students, divided into two groups. One group took the test in the presence of an ambient coffee-like scent, while a control group took the same test -…

Nature is not just out to kill us, it is out to kill itself, in the interest of surviving over the long term. That is why even the most wholesome backyard organic garden is a hotbed of combat between plants and unseen microorganisms in the soil fighting for space to grow. To defeat a plant, a microbe might produce and use toxic chemicals - but then the microbe also needs immunity from its own poisons. The genes that create protective shield in microorganisms could become a new, highly effective weed killer and the first new class of commercial herbicides in more than 30 years. It's…

In Ely, about 250 north of Las Vegas, Nevada is scheduled to hold its first execution in 12 years. Nothing controversial about that, because in 2002 Scott Dozier murdered Jeremiah Miller after he traveled to Las Vegas where Dozier had promised to help him make methamphetamine. Dozier dumped him in a trash bin, three years later killed at least one other person, and has been on "death row" since 2007.  And nothing controversial about Dozier wanting to die rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. The controversy is that drug maker Alvogendoesn't want its sedative midazolam used in…

Several contemporary events scheduled for the European Union are bringing increased focus to the topic of communicating risks about Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs). The first took place on May 16 at the annual meeting of the European Chapter of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) which was held in Rome. The second will be a moderated discussion to be held at the annual Helsinki Chemical Forum on June 14. These separate, but related, events and the continued discussions that may follow, make it timely to explore the topic of risk communication of EDCs in greater…

The American Chemical Society is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. That doesn't keep their editors from lobbying against science and common sense, like when a team of authors in Environmental Science&Technology, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, are allowed to terrify Americans by scaremongering the American barbecue grill the weekend before Memorial Day. They warn that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are going to literally get under your skin, and it sounds scary because it's supposed to - it is nonsense scientifically and…

Last week, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina held a meeting to discuss the results of a 30-million-dollar federal study designed to assess the safety of bisphenol A, or BPA. The study, CLARITY-BPA, has been a collaboration between two camps - scientists and regulatory experts at the FDA, on the one hand, and academic scientists, who are funded by the NIEHS, on the other - that have long been at odds over the safety of BPA. BPA has been used for over 50 years in the epoxy resin linings of food containers (to…