Misconception 1: you can lead a chemical-free life

The chemical reality is that you cannot lead a chemical-free life, because everything is made of chemicals. Chemicals are substances and chemistry is the science of substances - their structure, properties and the reactions that change them into other substances. Claims that products are "chemical free" are untrue. There are no alternatives to chemicals, just choices about which chemicals to use and how they are made.

"Did you know that the average person has more than a trillion atoms of uranium in their body and that hundreds of these atoms are radioactively disintegrating every day? (It sounds a lot but in weight terms it is truly tiny.) All is coming from a perfectly natural source: the food we eat. The uranium comes from uranium that is naturally occurring in soil." John Emsley, chemical scientist and author of Nature’s Building Blocks

Chemicals affect us less than they did our grandparents.
The Royal Sanitary Commission of 1871 noted that the water in Bradford Canal was so dirty a dropped lamp could set it alight. Clearly we have come a long way in terms of our understanding and control of pollution. Chemical scientists have been at the forefront of identifying problems and innovating responses to them.

We are often told that we face an unprecedented, new threat from the chemicals in our environment. In fact, unlike today, in former times poisonous chemicals surrounded the population, unrecognised and unregulated. The Romans used various compounds of lead in drinking vessels, water pipes, cosmetics, coins, and as a sweetener and wine preservative. This led to lead-induced gout, sterility and chronic lead poisoning.

In the nineteenth century, arsenic compounds were used in paints: 'Paris Green' was a bright emerald green favoured by painters like Cezanne and Van Gogh, but it was also a potent pesticide used to kill rats in Parisian sewers. 'Scheele's Green' was used in wallpaper, with the drawback that it was degraded by damp conditions to become lethal arsine gas, causing arsenic poisoning in homes. Chemicals used in hat-making gave off mercury vapour, causing muscle tremors ("hatters’ shakes"), distorted vision and slurred speech - the first signs of mercury poisoning. Hence the origin of the phrase "mad as a hatter". All these chemicals, and many more, are now carefully monitored so that exposure to them should be minimal or virtually non-existent.

Everything is made of chemicals... but we usually refer to things by more familiar names. When substances are described as chemicals, it can be alarming:

"If someone came into your house, mixed you a cocktail of unknown chemicals - and offered you a drink - would you take it? Of course not. You wouldn't want untested chemicals in your home, your drink, or your body. You don't want them - but shockingly - they're already there." Chemicals out of Control section, Greenpeace International website

But..."If someone came into your house and offered you a cocktail of butanol, iso amyl alcohol, hexanol, phenyl ethanol, tannin, benzyl alcohol, caffeine, geraniol, quercetin, 3-galloyl epicatchin, 3-galloyl epigallocatchin and inorganic salts, would you take it? It sounds pretty ghastly. If instead you were offered a cup of tea, you would probably take it. Tea is a complex mixture containing the above chemicals in concentrations that vary depending on where it is grown."

Derek Lohmann, research chemist