Chemical Free Chemistry Kit

A few days ago, @JenLucPiquant mentioned this:

WTF? Dept: Chem set boasts "no chemicals" http://t.co/YI2sgnF "Because if there’s one thing kids hate about chem sets, it’s the chemistry."—
Jennifer Ouellette (@JenLucPiquant) April 26, 2011

The link provided took people to a Chemical Free Chemistry Kit and by the time I saw this, the folks over at the Journal of Are You F***ing Kidding Me had immortalised the chemical free chemistry kit in an eloquent angry blog post.

Chemical Free Chemistry Kit from Chemistry 60

It could be said that the post is being pedantic because what the manufacturer is wanting to produce a chemistry kit that would be safe to use in the home as the website states:

60 + fun activities with home science and kitchen chemistry. Investigate with safe and simple materials – discover basic scientific laws and phenomena.
Grow crystals; Chromatograohy; Optics; Growing Plants; Slime and Gook; Science Tricks;3 Dimensional Bubbles and more!

Quite reasonable especially if parents can’t remember the finer points of chemistry to deal with any mishaps. There is one problem with this though. This is a Chemistry Kit and it does not make any sense to have it labelled chemical free. Never mind that there is no such thing as chemical free. All the items in the kit are made from some sort of chemical and judging by the photo, they are made predominantly from petrochemicals given the plastic nature of the equipment. The bubble solution has at least water in it as well as a detergent and other chemicals in solution.

This is a Chemistry Kit and it should not be adding to the confusion of what is and isn’t a chemical. The advertising phrase “chemical free” is one that suggests industrial chemicals are harmful. This isn’t even close to the truth. Don’t believe me? Take a look in the medicine cabinet in your home. Yes, you can overdose on them and cause yourself harm but if taken correctly at the right doses, they alleviate your ailments do they not? And if not, stop reading this blog post and go make an appointment with a doctor.

As @deborahblum states, this isn’t selling organic grapefruit. This is a Chemistry Kit that is designed to educate children of 10 years of age and up on introductory chemistry. How can you do this with no chemicals? The kit claims to introduce users to chromatography, optics, growing plants, slime and gook, bubbles and many more ideas. All these things involve chemistry. I don’t know how anyone can perform chromatography, (a process to separate mixtures), without any chemicals. Growing plants involves using water, (a chemical), and the nutrients in the soil which are chemicals. And slime, well I covered that a couple days ago, and that definitely involves chemicals found around the home. One of them is even edible.

You just have to wonder what was going through the minds of the marketers of this chemistry kit. It is something that is aiming to teach children chemistry and that means chemicals. Nothing we interact with is chemical free. Nothing. It is time to stop using the phrase chemical free especially in education. It is misleading and adds confusion to a much maligned subject.

Related Articles

• The Chemical-Free Chemistry Kit (news.slashdot.org)
• Chemistry kit with no chemicals (boingboing.net)
• Chemistry 60: The Chemistry Set Without Chemicals (crunchgear.com)
• Now With Less (Literally Zero) Chemicals: The World’s Crappiest Kids’ Chemistry Kit (geekologie.com)

The Definition of Chemical-Free

This blog post is inspired by Deborah Blum’s A Chemical-Free Resolution from her Speakeasy Science blog. She writes,

“Let’s resolve to give up the ridiculous, the misleading, the this-is-simply-not-possible-so-just-let-it-go phrase “chemical-free”.”

I couldn’t agree more. In fact there’s nothing she wrote that I don’t agree with. As a Chemist I have a nervous twitch upon sighting labels when braving the gauntlet that is the shopping centre boldly stating “CHEMICAL FREE” in letters larger. I fight the urge to start yelling at inanimate bags, bottles and produce that they are not chemical free. And when a lovely representative from any cosmetics company starts to tell me how their manufactured products are natural and chemical free I need to resist the urge to roll up one of their catalogues giving them a whap over the head for lying to me.

There is nothing that you come in contact with that is chemical free. Nothing. Everything is made up of a chemicals, even natural things like rocks, minerals, plants, organic grain fed free-range animals served at dinner, the air that you breathe and even you, (yes, YOU!), are made of chemicals.

A chemical substance is any material with a chemical composition. This means that the chemical substance can be defined by its molecules and atoms that it is made up of. It also means that physical properties like density, electric conductivity and melting point, to name a few, are also characteristic of that chemical.

A chemical can include pure chemical elements like gold and iron and also chemical compounds like water . Water for instance with its structure of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom is a chemical. Complex biological structures like deoxyribonucleic acid, also known as DNA are also chemicals. Yes, that’s right, the DNA that makes you, well, you is a chemical too. Have a look at the what makes up DNA.

Adenine and Thymine, Source: Wikimedia Commons

Guanine and Cytosine, Source Wikimedia Commons

They look like chemical structures because they are chemical compounds. I cannot stress enough that this is not a new development. This has been the case for a while now. In fact chemicals have been around for much longer than us mere humans. We just happened to put a name to them.

What then, is meant by “chemical free”? From the packaging these days and relentless advertising, it seems that chemical free means no synthetic man-made chemicals. It also seems to imply that very little Chemistry has occurred to create, say the facial cleanser you might use. This is especially the case when statements like “calming lavender” and “witch hazel extract” adorn a bottle but what they don’t tell you is that chemical processes have been used to extract the plants’ extracts and concentrate them before being added to the gloop you use on your face. That goes for every face product out of a jar bought from the supermarket.

And when it comes to natural chemical substances. Not all of them are safe. Carbon dioxide is produced from plants from photosynthesis except that it is a deadly gas that can starve people of oxygen. Natural events like that of the 1986 incident at Lake Nyos where 1700 people died as they slept as well as thousands of animals. What about naturally occurring lead and arsenic? You would not want to decrease the level of safety in handling them any more than you would if they had been chemically extracted from ore.

The ludicrous term chemical free is a marketing ploy that serves to complicate the understanding of Chemistry. It also makes naturally occurring substances seem safer. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard, “It’s safe. It’s 100% natural.” which makes no sense in a time where schools ban peanut butter sandwiches due to acute peanut allergies. Peanuts are natural.

If you honestly believe that you have a 100% chemical-free substance, by all means leave a comment or even perhaps a better idea is to contact the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK. They are offering a £1 million prize to the first person that can create a 100% chemical-free substance.

The Dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide

In my research for my previous post in chemistry365 on water, I discovered that there were many chemical names for the H₂O molecule including oxidane which is IUPAC’s other accepted name, (Table 4.2, page 34). Another chemical name for water is dihydrogen monoxide which can be abbreviated to DHMO. This is consistent with the molecular formula of water as dihydrogen monoxide literally means two hydrogen, one oxygen, (the prefix di- in dihydrogen means two and mono- in monoxide means one). More on how chemicals are named later in chemistry365, at the moment there is a hoax to be explained.

The year is 1990 where the Internet was a collection of message boards and websites, some even had flashing text. At the Sata Cruz campus of the University of California, two university students, Eric Lechner and Lars Norpchen let the public know of the dangers of DHMO on a Usenet message board. It sat there undisturbed slowly gaining notoriety as it was passed around in emails as a chemistry joke and also in messages of concern of this deadly chemical.

By 1994, another University of California student at Santa Cruz, Craig Jackson, revised the original edition and placed the revision on his website, The Coalition to Ban DHMO. By this time many more people had started to use the Internet.

In 1997, 14 year old science student, Nathan Zohner at Eagle Rock Junior High School in Idaho Falls wins a science project by gathering petitions calling for the banning of DHMO. He had told a group of 50 Year 9 students about the dangers of DHMO, some of them being that it causes the erosion of our landscape and increases the rate of corrosion. This is factually correct about DHMO, none of these are false and 43 Year 9 students were in favour of banning DHMO, 6 were undecided and only one student identified DHMO as water. Nathan Zohner’s science project was titled, How Gullible Are We?

This hoax is designed to drive the point home about the lack of science literacy and not anything else. All of the dangers listed at sites like http://www.dhmo.org/ are real but place them under an unfamiliar name, and there is suddenly cause for alarm. I remember a science teacher printed something similar to this for us to read and discuss in class. I identified it as water and didn’t support its banning which contradicted a very vocal minority who were allowed more time to deliver their argument. The class was in an upheaval especially for the people who were unsure. When it was revealed that DHMO was water there was disbelief and further confusion. It is an exercise that has stuck in my mind to this day.

The DHMO hoax as it is called has also claimed the scalp of politicians including Jacqui Dean an MP in New Zealand in 2007 and that was after a similar incident in the same country in 2001. Californian officials nearly fell for the hoax in 2004 when they learned that DHMO was used in styrofoam production and was deadly if accidentally inhaled. It just takes a little Chemistry knowledge the equivalent of a Google search to gather all the facts on DHMO and other substances. I do not expect everyone to be knowledgeable about everything but I would hope that people have enough sense to question what they read.

The danger in the DHMO hoax is the lack of science literacy in the community. It is something that I hope to combat in a small way with chemistry365.

I have exceeded my word limit today and I didn’t include a visual today. I am sorry but I strongly feel about what I have just written. It’s important. The lack of science literacy in the community sometimes overwhelms me with terror.

Disturbing Ignorance of Science Literacy

There’s a disturbing trend in Australia where science literacy is seen as the ability to recall scientific facts. Don’t believe me? Have a read of the article, Science literacy at risk of extinction, over at ABC News Online that appeared last week  and a listen of the radio interview of Dr Cathy Foley with Simon Santow on AM. I have been involved in conversations about the results of the survey, (PDF).

I felt despair upon finding out that 30% of Australians believed that earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. It seemed that I had joined a futile fight for science literacy. What was the point in a science communication degree when people are failing to recall simple scientific facts? It’s probably better to quit now while I’m slightly ahead.

This was when I realised that I had accepted the news coverage on face value. Worse still, I had just made a sham of my entire scientific training. I did not stop to question what was being portrayed as scientific literacy. Scientific literacy is not about recalling facts and in particular, these six facts:

1. How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun?
2. Is the following statement true or false? The earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
3. What percentage of the Earth’s surface is covered by water?
4. What percentage of the Earth’s water is fresh water?
5. Do you think that evolution is occurring?
6. Do you think that humans are influencing the evolution of other species?

Between 3-4% of the 1515 people surveyed answered all six of these questions correctly. As a scientist, I struggle to recall an answer to one of these questions off the top of my head. You may notice that not all areas of science has been addressed in this survey.

My faith was restored by comments left by readers who left critical remarks on the article in relation to the definition of science literacy used.

30 Jul 2010 12:27:59pm
Dane:
I am FAR more disturbed at the very poor unscientific survey done to tell us this. Those questions are barely trivia. If anything we need more critical thinking skills taught and fundamentals of scientific inquiry. When you seed the desire to learn and the framework to do so, you don’t NEED to teach so much; a lot of the learning will come by itself.

30 Jul 2010 1:08:33pm
RowanC:
I completely agree, science is about methodology, and constant curiosity – general knowledge on scientific information should be, but isn’t necessarily an outcome of these – particularly in consideration there is such a large degree of specialisation in science, and (generic) facts that you’re taught in primary school can be incomplete or out of date by the time somebody surveys you 20-60 years later.

Engaging our children, and teaching them to be curious (and how to satisfy that curiosity) is far more important than filling their heads with trivia

These comments are close to what scientific literacy is about. It’s a shame that those creating the headlines didn’t consider these points.

Cross posted to Science and the Media 2010 Blog.