Chemicals & Chemistry

The Frank R.

News outlets just love to scare people. Scares get readers. Readers mean money. Most of the time the scares are overblown. Not this time.

The online news arm of the journal Science is a solid source of information. However, recently it made a very strange editorial decision that could potentially harm its reputation.

The Frank R.

As I've written many times before, plants do not exist to serve humans. They exist so they can exist. In order to do so, they become factories for all kinds of toxic chemicals to ward off whatever varmint is in the mood to eat them.

The Frank R.

Last month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which operates under the auspices of the U.N.

When Bruce Ames talks about toxicity, it's time to listen (1). Ames is the inventor of the hugely important Ames test for mutagenicity, which measures the damage done to DNA by a given chemical.

In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron held fast with his environmental allies against science and declared they would ban the herbicide glyphosate despite the overwhelming consensus on its safety and necessity.

It's no secret that when it comes to science that I rank the Environmental Working Group (EWG) somewhere between plankton and pubic lice on the pro-science food chain. But life is not static and sometimes adjustments need be made.