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December 2000
Vol. 30, No. 12, 64.
The Industrial Chymist

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The good, the bad, and the chemical

Last month, I reported on the dedication of the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s new headquarters in Philadelphia. I got as far as critiquing the panel discussion that accompanied the dedication.

The reception that followed the panel discussion could define “lavish”. During it, I ate, viewed the Fisher collection of alchemical art (lovely, except I hope that the public appreciates that modern chemists have nothing in common with these chaps), ate, browsed the wondrous collection of books (including a big tome devoted to Jewish alchemists [1]), ate, renewed old friendships, and ate.

That’s when Phil Rakita (of Elf Atochem North America and recent Chemical Innovation contributor [2]) opined, “It’s all because of you journalists. I bet if you searched The New York Times Web site for ‘chemical’ you’d find that it’s preceded by ‘toxic’ 80% of the time.”

So I did. And that’s the subject of this month’s column.

Instead of restricting my study to the Times, I explored “everything” with the Google search engine (3). It has the capability of searching exact phrases. Here’s what I found:

“Chemical” appeared in 1.07 million documents; “chemicals” in 0.80 million (4). I’m sure there was some duplication. I next asked for a search of “toxic chemical” and “toxic chemicals”. I got 29,000 and 86,000 hits, respectively. I continued with a bunch of other adjectives, both “good” and “bad”, and found that trends were parallel for singular and plural searches (plural always higher). So I combined them to develop the data in the following table, which shows the frequency with which certain adjectives preceded “chemical(s)”:

Adjective preceding “chemical” Frequency, %
Toxic 6.1
Hazardous 3.4
Dangerous 0.8
Lethal, poisonous, noxious 0.1 each
Unsafe, risky, deadly <0.1 each
Excellent, good, quality 0.2 each
Useful, safe, superior 0.1 each
Beneficial, valuable, wholesome, practical, healthful, helpful <0.1 each

Ah, but these are only the adjectives that modify “chemical(s)”; how about when “chemical” is the adjective? What sort of nouns is it associated with? The next table tells all.

Nouns modified by “chemical” Frequency, %
Treatment 1.0
Waste 0.9
(Chemical)-free 0.8
Hazard 0.6
Weapon 0.3
Risk(s) 0.2
Threat, disaster <0.1 each
Material(s) 0.4
Solvent(s) 0.2
Medicine, medication, success, accomplishment <0.1 each

The big surprise (and it should be a caveat in interpreting all of this) came when I searched for “chemical breakthrough”. I expected to uncover loads of brilliant discoveries. Instead, what turned up was mostly (~90%) about stuff leaking out of separations devices!

Bottom line: Although only 16% of the mentions of “chemical(s)” had an associated modifier among the ones I identified; 90% of the mentions were negative. Phil, old buddy, your 80% was way too low!

References

  1. Patai, R. The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1995.
  2. Rakita, P. E. Chem. Innov. 2000, 30 (8), IBC.
  3. www.google.com
  4. Things are changing rapidly. I don’t know on what date Ben did his search, but on October 24, 2000, the same search produced 5.15 million hits for “chemical” and 2.08 million for “chemicals”.—Ed.

Ben Luberoff (bjlphd@aol.com) is the Founding Editor of CHEMTECH, predecessor to Chemical Innovation.

Ben on the mend
Ben Luberoff wrote this column before his diagnosis of and subsequent surgery for cancer. Please see "Chemist at Large" for an account of his illness to date.

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