Why “Chemical-Free” is a Lie | Exposing Chemophobia

[00:00:02]in a world driven by science and Innovation our understanding of chemistry has revolutionized every aspect of our lives but have you ever wondered why some people fear chemistry even though it is responsible for so much progress and convenience in a modern world welcome to a video on chemophobia unmasking the fear of chemicals in this eye openening exploration we will delve deep into the reasons behind this prevalent fear and dispel the myths surrounding it open any AD related to ayura or alternate medicine and you will invariably see the word natural natural here is used as an opposite of something made up of chemicals some even use the word chemical free another word often used in the same breath is safe natural is equal to safe is the common Mantra of the people who have this phobia I had done a video on this natural versus chemical debate which you can see once you're done with the video link is in the description so without wasting any more time let's get right into the video and yeah don't forget to share this video if you liked it hi I'm Anan and welcome to pale blue thoughts the channel which debunks Sero science and promotes scientific temper first let us understand understand what is the meaning of the word phobia phobia is an intense yet irrational fear about something The crucial word here is irrational so let us see why do people fear chemicals that has got a lot to do with how we perceive chemicals in the first place for many people chemicals are colored substances or Solutions and they often come with warning labels such as corrosive explosive and so on so this perception tends to leave a fear in the minds of the common man about chemicals and instead of dispelling the fear many individuals companies and the media add fuel to the fear by constantly brainwashing them with the propaganda that chemicals are bad and harmful and on the side promote items as chemical free just see these ads of products which are labeled as chemical free our Babas are not far behind they market products which are labeled chemical free and contains only should go mutra so can we really pass one day of our lives without interacting with or not using chemicals think about how you start your day you wake up you wash your face with dihydrogen monoxide plain water take out your toothbrush made of plastic and other chemical open the tube of toothpaste which again contains many chemicals the soap that you use to take bath the shampoo the conditioner the towel that you dry yourself with all are chemicals by the time you sit for your breakfast you have already interacted with hundreds of chemicals and yet you are alive the food that you eat the air that you breathe each molecule that makes you are chemicals there is nothing in this world which exist which is not made up of chemicals but why do people have this notion that anything that occurs naturally in nature is chemical free and is it safe to eat equate everything natural as safe let us see some examples we all know of snake venom which is naturally occurring but can kill us have you heard of a bacterium called Clum Binum which creates a powerful neurotoxin as its self-defense it can inactivate our ribosomes within our cells the lethal dose value is 1 nanog per kilogram 2 and 1/2 G of it can easily wipe off the entire population of a Metro City like Delhi in a Flash just 2 and 1/2 G one type of this toxin botolinum toxin type A can be used to temporarily reduce the appearance of facial wrinkles by relaxing the muscles responsible for causing them I'm sure you must have heard of Botox injections well it is this poison used in controlled levels there is this plant called taxis Bata or the English UT tree from which a drug for cancer called taxol is made but the same plant also contains another highly toxic chemical called taxine B whose lethal dose is 3 mg per kilog '90s kidss from Kerala would remember this Indian licorice which we used to play with we played with it little knowing that eating just one of the seed would kill us as it contains a deadly poison called abin This is tinospora cilia popularly known as giloy or guchi consumed quite frequently up north it contains a chemical called berberin which is a known carcinogen which can cause lung and liver cancer I could go on about plant-based toxins but I will save it for another video so in front of all these the deadly potassium cyanide is a little baby and all these occur very naturally around us here I'm going to show the chemical content of two products that we commonly see around us can you recognize them if you can't don't worry these are those products on the left is your banana and on the right is the contents of a chicken egg so the people who fear Monger others by crying chemicals chemicals should pay attention to these before crying out loud in today's world of information and artificial intelligence you would need just seconds to search for the chemical constituents of any fruit or vegetable or plant that we consume alternatively you can also check out this website called Dr duk's phyto chemical and ethnobotanical databases which will tell you exactly what is present in almost any plant on this planet I will link it in the description for you very handy website and one for your bookmark for sure we Indians love spices we can't do without them in our kitchen and food so what gives spices their spiciness you guessed it chemicals turmeric contains cumin pepper pepperin chili capsacin cloves yugol Ginger Ginger cumin alide in cumins and cinam alide in cinnamons and the list can go on and on all these chemicals are what gives our spices The Taste and flavor that we cannot do without and yet we fear chemicals what about smells I'm sure you have heard the saying a rose by any name would smell as sweet but a rose with any other chemical would not smell the same a chemical called geraniol is respons responsible for the sweet scent we associate with roses similarly CIS jasmon and other chemical causes are Jasmine to smell the way it does now here is something interesting take this chemical carbon for instance chemically it is the same substance but it is present in cumin and spearmint and gives them the respective smell and flavors one is jira and the other is pudina same chemical just opposite mirror images carbon plus and carbon minus the lovely colors that we see in plants are again chemicals there are various flavonoids carotenoids that gives those wonderful colors to the flowers and yet some people say chemicals are bad coming to taste taste is also due to various chemicals the saltiness of salt the sweetness of sugar the bitterness of bitter God the tanginess of Tamarind the umamin of MSG are all due to various chemicals present in the them we have also artificially created many compounds which create different tastes LL aspan for instance is 200 times sweeter than sugar ldim a synthesized sweetener is around 3 lakh times more sweeter than sugar bitrex another chemical that we have developed is the most bitter chemical compound known dilutions of as little as 10 parts per million are unbearably bitter to most humans hopefully homeopaths won't hear about it and use it in their medicines no amount of sugar pills would be enough to mask its taste now coming to as humans what are we made of one of the earliest notion was that we were all made up of five elements the Punam mahab budhas Sky air fire land and water but today we know better well everyone except the poor aades who are still studying this outdated Concept in their textbooks we are made up of around 4 trillion cells which is around 4 lakh CR atoms combined to form molecules molecules combined to form macro molecules like the DNA proteins Etc they combine to form organel and then finally a cell cells combined to form tissues tissues to organs to organ systems and finally to organisms take a look at the composition of the human body in this picture 65% of our body is made made up of oxygen then comes carbon at 18% and so on we are all made up of chemicals a mood is decided by chemicals if I cracked a joke which made you laugh that means I was able to get your brain to produce a chemical called serotonin if you want it to be happy you need to produce serotonin if you want to love someone you need to produce enough oxytocin in your brain and hope that the other person too produces enough so that you both can fall in love with each other are you heavily stressed just get your brain to release some cortisol in other chemical that helps the body cope with stressful situations you want some pain relief or pleasure release some endorphins the day I reach about 10,000 subscribers I'm going to release some dopamine which would get me motivated even our moods are regulated by chemicals let us take another example take a look at this graph which shows the growth of human population it took Homo sapiens sapiens around 3 lakh years to reach 1 billion which we touched in 1804 it was another 123 years before it reached 2 billion in 1927 but it took only 33 years to reach 3 billion in 1960 thereafter it took 14 years for the global population to reach 4 billion in 1974 13 years to reach 5 billion in 1987 12 years to reach 6 billion in 1999 and the global population reached 8 billion in November 2022 if you see the exponential rise started after we crossed 2 billion in 1900s so what happened there before we go into that let's look at another Statistics I've talked about this before life expectancy demographic research suggests that at the beginning of the 19th century no country in the world had a life expectancy longer than 40 years India was around 25 years for Europe as a whole it was around 33 years today we live on an average 72 to 73 years again we see a steep climb around the 1900s so why is the beginning of the 20th century so critical for the human population the answer is that that was a time when we started to synthesize chemicals chemist had started to master the art of synthesis it all started with wer synthesis of Uria in 1828 a huge milestone in chemistry till then people thought that only organisms could create organic molecules molecules which contained carbon but vaula created an organic compound UA from inorganic molecules glucose was synthesized in 1890 then came the synthesis of antibiotics in 1908 and finally in 1928 discovery of pencin by Alexander Fleming 1933 saw vitamin C being developed in the labs quinine in 1944 and cortisone in 1951 we were able to recreate morphine in 1952 chlorophyll by 1960 vitamin B12 in 1972 and taxol in 1994 chemistry had arrived to save the world and Humanity we started to develop thousands of antibiotics which help humans to survive and live longer today we have over 11,000 modern medicines I had done a video on drug discovery that that most of you have never seen which I will link up in the description please do watch it without fail once you're done with this one another area which greatly enhanced our quality of life was the advancements made in the field of Agriculture from a country that had a regular calendar of famines today we have a surplus of food again thanks to insecticides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers I know there might be lovers of organic farming here and I will debunk that myth very soon in another video even even if you see the graphs on the rise of agricultural yields that two coincides with the 1900s 1909 was when the Haber process was developed two German chemists Fritz habber and Carl Bosch developed ammonia through the process in the first decade of the 20th century this led to a revolution in the field of Agriculture as nitrogen based fertilizers helped increase our yelds manyfold had ammonia not been synthesized only 1/8 of the current population would be alive today that is a billion rather than 8 billion and yet there are many people who eat good food drink clean water and then ask us to say no to chemicals now coming to the area of Clean Water it is estimated that 4 billion people today don't have enough water to last a month or an year 4 billion mind you the next World War that might erupt might be for water but we have a lot of water in our atmosphere the atmosphere has has six times more water than what we have in our Rivers people like Dr K suresan who helped me in the making of this video and many other scientists are concentrated in developing materials which would Aid us to tap into the atmosphere for quenching our thirst in the future and avoid Another World War so why do people fear chemicals when without it we wouldn't be alive today I have kind of listed down what I think are some of the reasons the first one is lack of scientific knowhow you know not everyone is a chemistry expert and that's okay but sometimes because people don't really understand the basics of chemistry or toxicology they can start freaking out about chemicals without much reason it is like being scared of something you don't know much about the media can really overhype stories about chemical health risks it is like they're trying to make everyday chemicals seems way scarier than they actually are just to grab your attention the internet is a treasure throw of information but it's also packed with all sorts of misinformation sometimes folks with a hidden agenda spread rumors or pseud signs about chemicals they might use sketchy evidence or half-baked claims to make you think chemicals are worse than what they really are you will notice how we tend to fear things we can't see or understand chemicals can be pretty complex and because they are invisible they can seem kind of mysterious and spooky to those who don't Ace chemistry class remember those environmental disasters like the Bal gas tragedy or chernobil or Hiroshima and Nagasaki well those kind of events can stick in our minds and make us even more afraid of chemicals it is like a bad experience that keeps you worried for a long time some folks are all about products labeled as natural or organic because they believe these are safer and healthier this can lead to thinking that anything with chemicals and especially synthetic ones is automatically harmful once someone buys into the chemophobia they often start looking for info that supports their fears and conveniently ignore anything that says otherwise it is like wearing blinders to anything that doesn't fit your scary chemical narrative and finally ever notice how you might start thinking like your friends or family well it's the same with chemophobia if the people around you are into chemophobia ideas you might just go along with it because hey it is what everyone else is doing as I conclude our journey into the world of chemophobia I hope this video has shed light on the misconceptions and fears surrounding chemicals that was my intention for making this video chemistry has been a driving force behind our progress making our lives safer healthier and more convenient it's a field of endless possibilities and discoveries chemophobia is irrational and baseless we are what we are because of of chemicals yes indeed stay away from the chemicals which are labeled as dangerous poisonous corrosive or explosive but to hate everything that is chemical and fear among of people in the process is unjustified and please please send this narrative that if it is natural then it is safe it is not and just because you label something as chemical free doesn't make it chemical free boycott those products they are lying to you and are using your phobia for their marketing campaigns unsubscribe or unfollow those instagrammers who fear among our people with the dreaded seaword and say please use this or please buy this because it is natural the opposite of chemical is not natural the opposite of chemical is nothing please subscribe to this channel for more informative videos please support this Channel with your donations through super thanks memberships buy me a coffee or UPI links are in the description your support likes comments ments and shares will help this channel grow and encourage me to make more videos for you I shall be back soon with yet another thought provoking video Until then it's bye-bye from pale blue [Music] thoughts