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How to counteract chemophobia

Nature Chemistry volume 5, pages 439–440 (2013)Cite this article

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Michelle Francl ponders ways in which we can talk about chemistry without triggering chemophobia.

If only all such flare-ups could be so cleanly stopped. Personally, when faced with chemical paranoia mixed in with scientific gibberish, I find it tough to resist the temptation to mock — or to pull out my pocket periodic table and start to lecture. On my better days, I sigh in exasperation and recommit myself to ensuring my students have the critical capacity and basic chemical education to be immune to chemophobia — the notion that 'chemical' is synonymous with toxic and unnatural. I am not alone: for decades chemists, individually and through their professional societies, have made efforts to counterbalance the prevailing hermeneutic of suspicion regarding chemicals. The American Chemical Society, for example, sponsors National Chemistry Week — complete with a cuddly mole mascot — during which countless individual chemists wearing safety goggles stand for hours at demonstration tables in shopping malls.

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  1. Michelle Francl is Professor of Chemistry on the Clowes Fund for Science and Public Policy and is in the Department of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010-2899, USA,

    Michelle Francl

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Correspondence to Michelle Francl.

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Francl, M. How to counteract chemophobia. Nature Chem 5, 439–440 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1661

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