Dihydrogen Monoxide is a dangerous chemical and is found in
excised tumors of cancer patients, in by-products of hydrocarbon combustion,
as solvent in pesticides, and gaseous DHMO even causes serious burns and visual
problems, and its liquid form is even the prime cause of drowning!
Welcome to the world of chemophobia, which is the irrational
fear of “anything chemical” or chemical names. The chemical compound that I
mentioned in the beginning is nothing but water! There is even a whole website
that is devoted to DHMO hoax!
It cannot be known for sure when a person develops
chemophobia. I think it all starts when they are introduced to “toxic
chemicals” in the school laboratory right from childhood or, is it from the
constant fear of failing in chemistry subject for not remembering chemical
names? In chemophobia the person develops this illogical fear whenever they see
something written in chemical names.
Take the case of this director of Waterfront Park in
Louisville who placed signs around fountains warning them about the high amount
of hydrogen it contained (it’s H2O) as he was sick of telling people
all the time not use it for washing their face or something. The prank worked.
Many of us have seen those dumb Facebook shared posts that say something like,
“coca cola melts your stomach because it contains acid!!!” Yes it is acidic but
the dumbo didn’t seem to know that our stomach also handles a much stronger one
called hydrochloric acid. Hell, some Internet literati may start feeling sympathy
for that guy who posted and the people who actively shared that. Or maybe, it was
fronted by Pepsi who wanted to devalue Coke while they already knew how
gullible their consumers were. Fruit juice companies are made to use corrosive
acid warnings in their tanker trucks carrying fruit juices because they do
contain naturally dilute acids (like citric acid, malic acid etc) which damage
metals with corrosion, but our stomachs handle them differently.
I know a friend of mom who stopped using talcum powder
because she found it contained zinc oxide. This is another kind of chemophobia
where the person finds out that such a substance have not been used
traditionally. Yes, but we know that consumer goods regulatory authorities are
not fools to let these “chemicals” run loose into daily products and there are safe
limits applied to them. I think she may not touch any food here after if she is
taught all foods contain dihydrogen monoxide and sodium chloride in them!
We all are familiar with the hullabaloo that was set loose
when India banned Maggi noodles as some lab found excessive amounts of lead and
MSG in them somewhere. Meanwhile it is also surprising that Chinese and the
southwest people didn’t go extinct despite centuries of MSG consumption in
their foods on a daily basis. Maybe the lab staffs just got scared when they
figured out MSG, nastily, reads Monosodium glutamate or something. Plus, there
was a time when Canada banned 14 ayurvedic drugs from India since it
contained detectable levels of heavy metals and India government didn’t raise
an eyebrow on it.
Now, coming out of
examples, another stuff, which I can think of, that is related to chemophobia
is the buzz word “Radiation”. The whole “radiation is bad for you” mantra
evolved among common people sometime during the cold war era when the threat of
a random nuclear bomb randomly falling out of a random aircraft in the sky, at
some random point in US or USSR, was imminent. In the meantime, some unwise guy
found the same word being used in radio communication and, bingo, history was
born!
Let me try to explain you why it is a misconception.
Radiation from a radioactive substance (like you get in a nuclear explosion) is
chiefly gamma radiation. They are free flying photons with such a tiny a wavelength and high energy that it can penetrate nucleus of atoms and de-stabilize them. The
wavelength of UV-A radiation is slightly larger and able to penetrate DNA and corrupt it.
Hence, a cell containing such a compromised DNA looses
valuable data regarding the former’s function and starts to go crazy. If it is
the cell division data that has been corrupted, then the cell multiplies
wildly, copying the wrong data in newly formed DNA’s along with it. They
continue with this process and a cancerous tumor is, sadly, formed.
Do you know that we are not essentially free from nuclear
radiation anywhere in the world? In reality it is something known as
background radiation. This is because radiation producing isotopes are present fundamentally
everywhere in the world, including bananas! Yet they are so weak that our
bodies can easily block them.
Visible light, infra reds, microwaves, radio waves and so on
are the magic we witness when the photonic wavelengths goes on increasing, at
the same time losing its energy. Yes, you are currently being bombarded with
radiation from your PC monitor and room lighting, but the wavelengths are so
large when compared to gamma and UV-A that they have essentially lost its
penetration power to cause any damage. Infra reds just heats things up and so
are microwaves. Wait a minute, isn’t it true that leaked microwaves from a
microwave oven causes cancers? Absolutely not!!! It just heats up your body
surface where it is incident and you would instantly avoid it as an instinct.
There is a reason why a metallic mesh is placed inside your microwave oven
door. The wavelength of the microwave is so large that (under a centimetre) the
poor thing cannot even escape through it, let alone penetrating your DNA!
Visible light spectrum can easily pass through it hence you see the food
cooking (burning?) inside.
Coming back to my cola paragraph, I would still recommend
avoiding them. It is not due to the acid content but its sugar! At 11g/100g,
and in large amounts of consumption, it is enough to cause type-2 diabetes,
obesity, tooth decay and, not surprisingly, dim wittedness!
Sugar, chiefly sucrose, has this magical IUPAC name:
(2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol
Yet we see an anti-chemophobia trend there!
Consequently, if abiogenesis of life (life originated through
complex chemical reactions) is true, then we all are, like, self sustaining,
super large, super complex chemical molecules!
I consumed exactly 524g of dihydrogen monoxide while writing
this article!
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