Delicious irony: our friends over at the Natural Defense Resource Council excel at scaring people about (mostly) harmless chemicals. They are also huge fans of solar power. But the solar panels contain the same chemicals that NRDC is always scaring us about. What to do? They haven't a clue.
Chemicals & Chemistry
Research paid for by two manufacturers of neonicotinoids suggest that sub-toxic levels of the agent may affect bee welfare, except it requires the bees to live in Hungary or the UK, and probably already have mites and undersized hives. Bees in Germany were fine. Why claim negative effects?
Manganese metal looks like, uh, nothing special. A shiny metal. But some of the chemical compounds that contain the element are very special. One, potassium permanganate may have been the inspiration for the name rock group Deep Purple.
One headache drug discovery chemists face is a preternaturally annoying problem called crystal polymorphism. It can kill an otherwise promising drug unless it can be fixed, and sometimes it can't. But NYU chemists discovered that DDT exists in two forms, with one better at killing bugs, which could lead to using smaller pesticide amounts.
In Part 1, we looked at some very strange science coming from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Here, we examine some possible reasons for an apparent intentional omission of crucial data, which led to the misclassification of glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen." Looks like IARC knew this, but misclassified it anyway.
Plants produce pesticides to keep insects and other herbivores away. When we eat fruits and vegetables, we eat those pesticides, too. In fact, nearly all of the pesticides we consume in our diet are produced by the plants themselves.
Glyphosate is perpetually in the news. However, last month was especially busy because various agencies concluded that it either did – or did not – cause cancer or kill butterflies. The herbicide has even been implicated as a cause of autism, but the science is terrible. Perhaps the worst science came out of MIT in 2014 — confusing correlation with causation. A big no-no.
Sunscreen is an essential component of a healthy summer. But, the Environmental Working Group is sending the loud message that chemicals found in sunscreen are toxic and that it should be used as a last resort. But, that message is muddying the waters around a proven method of cancer prevention and the recommendations of the American Academy of Dermatology.
There's the unsupported belief that organic farming is better for the environment. While there are many reasons this isn't true, German and Sweden researchers have just found another: While the carbon footprint associated with both conventional and organic diets is roughly equal, an organic diet requires 40% more land.
Several years ago, a survey of professional toxicologists revealed that 79% of them believed that the Environmental Working Group and two other organizations overstate the health risks of chemicals. That's why EWG is beloved by activists but detested by scientists.
A teenager's recent death from caffeine consumption inspired this article, mainly because people may not realize that caffeine, in large amounts, can be toxic. Another inspiration was to highlight some very cool, but little known, research that tests just how toxic caffeine is. Read this – and you'll never look at a spider web the same way again.
A paper claiming an environmental cause for two cancers that have been intensively studied over decades has serious flaws. That's because there's little-to-no evidence that environmental pollution plays a role.