5+ hour, 29+ min ago  (172+ words) The story extends to other types of chemicals as well. Many pesticides are mixtures of mirror-image forms, with only one type exhibiting activity. Dichlorprop is a commonly used herbicide, but only the R form has herbicidal activity, so there is…...

4+ week, 1+ day ago  (189+ words) It is a useful reminder that food risk predates synthetic pesticides. Long before modern chemistry, nature was producing its own toxins. The Other Side of the Dirty Dozen The Plant-Based Risk Ledger The researchers purchased 212 plant-based products from the top…...

1+ mon, 2+ day ago  (918+ words) As I've written before, chemistry has a language problem. "Natural" and "organic" are treated as virtues, "synthetic" as something to be avoided'even though these distinctions are often chemically meaningless. Then there's a word almost no one uses: semisynthetic. Unlike "natural,…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago  (503+ words) Coal Tar's Magic Bullet Methylene blue was first synthesized in the German dye industry, when many synthetic coal-tar dyes were being developed. It had no medical purpose; it was simply a vivid blue textile dye. Its first biological value came…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (458+ words) The Matilda Effect- How Women's Discoveries Are Written Out "The most remarkable invention of the age. the cotton gin- owes its origin to a woman, [the employer and patron of Whitney], Catherine Littlefield Greene, with whom the idea originated." According…...

4+ mon, 1+ day ago  (732+ words) Let's get something straight right away. "For too long, some food producers have been feeding Americans petroleum-based chemicals without their knowledge or consent. These poisonous compounds offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children's health and…...

6+ mon, 5+ hour ago  (509+ words) Formaldehyde is a colorless gas that is found everywhere. It is produced naturally by humans, animals, and plants, and is in car exhaust, furnaces, stoves, and forest fires. It is also released into the air from industries that produce or…...

6+ mon, 4+ week ago  (558+ words) There are many types of ice. And, sticking with the pop music motif, BTO recorded "You ain't seen nothing yet" in 1974. I'm not sure how stutterers thought about this. But scientists keep pushing it harder, colder, and stranger, and a…...

7+ mon, 6+ day ago  (388+ words) One way to think of sodium metal is as an "amusing lethal weapon." Here's why. Despite its extreme reactivity, most chemists find it "fun" to use. It's not like any metal you've encountered. It's so soft that it is easily…...

11+ mon, 3+ day ago  (528+ words) By any measure, plastic waste is a global headache. Whether in the form of microplastics infiltrating the food chain or mountains of discarded water bottles choking shorelines around the world, it poses a nasty problem for which no easy solution…...