Comment by MyOutfitIsVague 2 days ago
I hate all that stuff too, but I have to nit-pick the last sentence. Everything you breathe is chemicals. Everything that is good for you and bad for you is chemicals.
This in particular bothers me because I end up having this discussion with family members all the time who are convinced that "chemicals" are bad for you, and they only eat food without "chemicals".
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s still bad. It’s the kind of woolly definition that lets charlatans get away with blatant lies in advertising.
Let's not be overly dramatic. Charlatans are already lying, and they can easily switch verbiage.
If you can suggest a pithy replacement terminology for "what we really mean" here, I'm sure we'll all adopt it whole-heartedly. Until then, people are going to use the same (easily deciphered) shorthand. Tilting at this particular windmill doesn't actually improve anything or protect anybody.
That’s the thing. The reason why there’s no concise term is because it’s not really a meaningful concept. Does hemlock contain chemicals? Is botulin a chemical? They’re both 100% natural. The colloquial sense is totally meaningless, so by insisting on the scientific definition, you’re stopping marketers from saying nothing while looking like they’re saying something.
Also, ‘things are bad for other reasons’ isn’t an argument for trying to eliminate this particular reason.
Science communication is a challenge and this particular discussion is a key part of that challenge. The goal is to be able to get a child to understand the issue at hand while not harming their ability to continue to learn further. The words 'chemical' when referring to 'bad' and 'natural' when referring to 'good', I think, have been abused because of exactly your points. These words have been used to get a quick win on understanding a point, usually about some form of pollution, but generally lead to long term harm in deeper understanding later.
Having said all that, arguing these terms are bad just tells people they are wrong without giving clear direction to improve. The question that matters is what should be said instead? I think pollution is closer to a good word but when it is used the right meaning should be emphasized. The argument is not that chemicals are bad, the argument is that compounds not native to an environment have untested effects and therefore should be carefully studied especially if they are rapidly becoming abundant. Articles like this skip right to 'pollution = bad' instead of 'pollution = we should try to understand the effects quickly to make informed decisions'
I'd say that it needs a qualifier in general. I'm not against the word "chemicals", but unqualified, it means little more than the word "stuff". It really just needs an adjective, or to be about how many chemicals you're breathing in all day, rather than it being "straight chemicals", which implies that there is another way of existing, without breathing chemicals.
No, it just means harmful chemicals. We're talking about perfumes. Plenty of this stuff has been well-tested and it's toxic, a lot of it is probably toxic if you inhale it in aerosolized/partially burnt form.
Of course, but many people don't. I wouldn't bother if it was just pedantry. It's a discussion I've had many times and it's actually hard to make some people understand that "chemicals" doesn't just mean "synthetic dangerous things made in a lab", or that some labels have ingredients that are difficult to pronounce and unrecognizable that are still safe and natural.
There are a lot of these people. It's the same kind of people who buy their dogs "Taste of the Wild" grain free high-protein dog food because it sounds natural and therefore better than WSAVA-approved dog food, against the advice of any seasoned veterinarian.
I don't want to breathe natural pollen or natural smoke byproducts from natural wildfires or natural dandruff or fur/hair either.
I want to mostly breathe nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and a bit of water for comfortable humidity. I don't need anything more.
Of course this is technically correct (almost a cliche really), but I think we all realize that "chemicals" in this context means "novel untested synthetic chemicals." That's a mouthful, so we use shorthand.