The Right Chemistry: Can you get cancer from kissing a smoker and other questions with definitive answers
The newspaper article described a chemistry show that a couple of colleagues and I had been putting on at Montreal's Man and His World exhibition, a spinoff of Expo 67. At the time, there was concern about urea-formaldehyde, a popular insulating agent that was accused of releasing toxic formaldehyde into the air.
The columnist wondered why we were entertaining the public with a demonstration that presented this substance in a positive light. I quickly responded, explaining that we were demonstrating the formation of polyurethane, a totally different substance, and that the only similarity with urea-formaldehyde was that both could be produced as foams. I agreed to come on with Helen to discuss this 'controversy,' and I guess she liked my approach because I was invited back to answer some listener questions, which I have been doing on the Dr. Joe Show ever since.
I thought that after four and a half decades, it would be fun to reflect on some of these questions, the nature of which has certainly changed since the early days. There was of course no Internet back then and no social media spewing out scares and miraculous remedies on a daily basis.
Callers wanted to know how best to clean silverware (wrap in aluminum foil and immerse in hot sodium bicarbonate solution), remove rust stains from the bathtub (oxalic acid) or get rid of bedbugs. When I began my answer to the latter by saying this generally is very difficult, I was told by the questioner that she knows that because she had found no way to get rid of the giant bedbug who was snoring away beside her.
Today, the majority of questions are triggered by something that has been encountered online, usually related to some chemical supposedly impairing health. These may be perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in underwear, siloxanes in cosmetics, phthalates in toys, bisphenol A in canned food, arsenic in rice, aluminum in vaccines, parabens in antiperspirants or microplastics in bottled water. There was no worry about such things when I started because we were generally unaware of their presence.
Now that my colleagues, the analytical chemists, can detect contaminants in the part-per-trillion range — roughly one drop in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools — we find that we are exposed to all sorts of chemicals everywhere. There is no simple answer as to how exposure may affect us, and I often end up invoking the 'only the dose makes the poison' principle with the addendum that sometimes, as in the case of endocrine disruptors, that dose can be vanishingly small.
Let me, though, give a few examples of questions to which I was able to give a 'yes' or 'no' answer.
No.
No.
No.
Is it safe to eat a banana peel?
Yes, but why would one want to?
Can eating banana and a fried egg at the same time kill you?
No.
Can wearing a Fitbit cause cancer?
No.
Is the tin foil wrapping around a Lindt chocolate bar bad for our health?
No, and it isn't tin, it's aluminum.
Is it true that KFC chicken is made from mutant lab grown chickens?
No.
Can decorating your house with crystals combat bad energy and attract positive energy?
No.
Is it true that the glycine I'm taking to combat insomnia is made from a pernicious chemical, monochloro acetic acid, that is used to make herbicides?
Yes, but this needs a qualifier. The fact that glycine is made from the same chemical as is used to make the herbicide 2,4-D has no bearing on its toxicity.
I've always enjoyed questions that are prompted by someone making an observation: 'Why did my purple cabbage turn blue when I washed it?' Purple cabbage contains a compound in the anthocyanin family that is a natural indicator meaning that it changes colour depending on whether it is present in an acidic or basic medium. In a neutral solution, it is purple, but the colour changes to blue in an alkaline solution. Tap water can be slightly alkaline because of naturally occurring calcium and magnesium carbonates, but sometimes calcium hydroxide is added during water treatment to reduce acidity and protect water pipes.
Then there was, 'Why did the skim milk I used to make my oatmeal turn almost solid when I didn't have blueberries and added fresh sliced pineapple instead?' Pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that cleaves some bonds in the milk protein casein, resulting in the protein forming clumps. Essentially, the milk has turned into cheese. That would not have happened with canned pineapple because heat destroys bromelain.
Then there are questions that sent me scurrying for answers that I would provide the next week. These days it means hunting online, but back in the 1980s it meant trips to the library.
'Where does the carbon dioxide in beverages comes from?' My first guess was that it is generated by heating limestone (calcium carbonate), but actually the source of carbon dioxide is the Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia, one of the most important industrial processes because ammonia is needed to make fertilizer. The hydrogen used in this process is made by reacting natural gas, methane, with steam. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct.
Some questions defied my research. I could not find a place where my caller could go to analyze a bowler hat for toxic chemicals, but I did give the general advice that making a meal of the hat was probably not a good idea.
Now for the really strange.
An individual had made an unusual observation. He related how once, as he had been getting dressed, he buttoned his pants and proceeded to pull up his fly. But it was already up! He was mystified. It had now happened again! He assured me that he had not absent-mindedly closed the fly and wondered if spirits were involved. He opined that this raises questions about the nature of our universe. Not having observed this particular phenomenon, I could only comment that it was a lucky thing that the spirits were mindful and that the zipper had not encountered any obstacles on its upward journey.
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