The Spectrum of Toxicity 2: Toxin Threat Levels

 

My main goal for my outreach is to improve general understanding of practical chemistry, and to put the relative hazard of various toxins into perspective for the average person. Sometimes if I clarify that a particular chemical is not as hazardous as a person might think, people get the impression that I'm saying that chemical is totally safe. That is not my intention, so I want to make it absolutely clear that the vast majority of synthetic chemicals are harmful to human health.

As an analogy, imagine a spectrum of dangerous objects ranging from a pocket knife to a nuclear bomb. Most people don't have enough chemical literacy to put the relative hazard of a given chemical in context, so out of an abundance of caution they treat every chemical like a nuclear bomb-level threat. A big part of what I'm trying to do is to help people understand the actual threat level of the chemicals they're asking about. If someone comes to me asking whether a chemical they saw in the news is a nuclear bomb-level threat and I say, "You don't need to be so worried, that chemical is more of an axe-level threat" I am not trying to say that axes are totally safe. Axes can be very dangerous, but the average person doesn't need to live in constant fear of axe-related injury. I am also not saying that low, pocket knife-level threats should be ignored by society. A huge part of my career has been to invent totally safe and nontoxic replacements for pocket knife and kitchen knife level threats, because when you're trying to make the world safer every little bit counts.

How you choose to think about and behave around chemicals after receiving information from me is up to you, I am not trying to tell you how to feel. You might say something like, "I understand that this chemical is a machete-level threat, but knives make me nervous too, so I treat everything from a pocket knife to a machete like it's as dangerous as a chainsaw, just to be extra safe." That's totally reasonable and I support that decision. Alternatively you might say something like, "I feel comfortable around chemicals, so I have some shotgun-level threat chemicals that I keep around my house for my leather tanning hobby." To that I would say that I hope you store those chemicals safely and use them carefully. How you choose to behave around chemicals is up to your personal comfort level and risk tolerance. In my laboratory work I treat any chemical I'm working with like it's one level more dangerous than it actually is, just to keep myself safe. That said though, I have my limits too. I used to work at a lab where I was working with flamethrower-level threat chemicals all day every day, and you better believe I treated all of those like they were actually nuclear bomb-level threats. Spending so much time around such dangerous chemicals was too stressful for me, so I eventually left that job for one with safer chemicals.

I'd also like to highlight that there are many toxic natural chemicals that people are exposed to regularly, and I also find those to be useful tools for putting chemical toxicity in context. Alcohol is a known neurotoxin and carcinogen, but most people still drink. All forms of smoke are also toxic, but people love sitting around a campfire. It's impossible to go through life without being exposed to toxic materials, and I think people deserve to understand the toxins they're exposed to in the proper context so they can make informed decisions about how to manage the risks they face. 

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