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Chemicals

fuelair said:
Suspected that and tested on hand a short time after writing this - no numbing even in the senitive web areas. She might be allergic to benzalkonium chloride or ethyl alcohol.
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Or she might just have an overactive imagination ... :rolleyes:
 
Maybe we protest too much.
The two words "Chemical " and "Organic", like many words, have different meanings in different contexts.

Sure, everything is chemicals, but the function of words is to make distinctions. Equating "everything" with "chemicals"doesn't tell us much.

Sure, all potatoes are organic to a chemist, but if you think the taste of organic spuds at the shops justifies the higher cost , go ahead and buy them.

All I ask is that you don't preach about it. And I suppose, maybe, some folk feel the same about preaching word pedants.


-oh by the way, ALL my silverware is plutonium. Organic , of course.
 
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That's true Soapy Sam, but the word "chemical" has come to be defined in popular culture, more often than not, to mean "undefined dangerous manmade subtance" that's legally added to everything we touch even though it causes us all to die slow, painful deaths.
While I agree that the argument that everything is made of "chemicals" is overdoing it; I think it's a way to make the point that knee-jerk reactions to everything "chemical" are a bit silly.
 
mumchup said:
That's true Soapy Sam, but the word "chemical" has come to be defined in popular culture, more often than not, to mean "undefined dangerous manmade subtance" that's legally added to everything we touch even though it causes us all to die slow, painful deaths.
While I agree that the argument that everything is made of "chemicals" is overdoing it; I think it's a way to make the point that knee-jerk reactions to everything "chemical" are a bit silly.
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I think you closed the double quotes too early. I think it's fair to say that bit by bit, the meaning of chemicals in everyday language is being narrowed even further to "undefined dangerous manmade subtance that's legally added to everything we touch even though it causes us all to die slow, painful deaths".
 
Soapy Sam said:
Maybe we protest too much.
The two words "Chemical " and "Organic", like many words, have different meanings in different contexts.
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NO! Words can only have one single meaning in all contexts! Now everyone better stop using non-mathematical definition of the words "group", "ring" and "field" because otherwise they're promoting woo! ;)
 
robinson said:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0595_1.html
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Interesting...
From the article about wood dust:
Excess lung cancer in acoustical tile applicators and insulators.
Excess gastrointestinal cancer in pile drivers.
Excess leukemia lymphoma group cancers in millwrights, mill workers, and lumber and sawmill workers.
Excess lung and stomach cancer in construction workers with the greater excesses found in workers in major urban areas
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Funny that most of the above higher instances of cancer have very little to do with wood dust, excepting the leukemia in sawmill workers, and there could be another cause for that.
Acoustic tile and insulation: Glass fibre.
Pile drivers??: Any evironment
Construction workers: Probably more likely the fumes from cuttiing/welding metal, and the chemicals used.

Sorry, not convinced about wood dust from this article.
 
pchams said:
Sorry, not convinced about wood dust from this article.
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I'm just passing on "official" information from Agencies that are supposed to protect workers from toxins and cancer and stuff. It seems some chemicals are indeed bad for you, but nobody worries about the ones that can simply kill you outright. Worries in the sense of "is this bad for me?", because it is obvious that it is.

It cracks me up when somebody claims they never died from something so it must be OK. That was the lame ass logic of the lead industry. Nobody ever died from lead in gas, so why stop using it?

Same for DDT, Mercury, Cobalt, Cadmium, Mercury, even Benzene. Nobody ever died from those chemicals, so why have all these stupid controls on it?
 
PopeTom said:
Since I have no idea I will ask, what would happen to a person who had a spoon full of plutonium?
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Well, I sure wouldn't recommend it. It's a toxic heavy metal and liver damage could be a side effect. But like uranium it's not well absorbed in the gut so most of what would be ingested would pass thru the body. (Uranium was once administered orally to treat diabetes before insulin was discovered, and patients ingested relatively large amounts without evidence of kidney toxicity.) The risks from plutonium's radioactivity would be far less than that from heavy metal poisoning.

Mind you we're talking about eating here. Breathing plutonium particles is something else all together and far more riskier. (That said, there have been a good number of nuclear workers who have accidentally inhaled small quantities of plutonium (and various other trans-uranics as well) with no ill effects. The Health Physics Society has some good data on plutonium/uranium risks under their "Experts Answers" section of their web site.

I'd not want to ingest a spoonful of either plutonium or arsenic, but if forced to pick one I'd go with Beckman's decision and opt for the plutonium.
 
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