Chemical: A Definition

We in the modern world depend on the scientific field of chemistry, whether we like it or not.  Yes, there are controversial aspects, such as pesticides and herbicides, use of fossil fuels, preservatives, and the like; but there have also been relatively non-controversial chemicals which have not seen such scrutiny, such as the plates for solar panels, ozonation of water, soaps of all varieties, and the like.  They are what makes our modern world possible, for good or for bad, for better or for worse.

Look at all of those damn chemicals!

In the past few years, the word chemical has been hi-jacked by those who seem to mean well, but who are off the mark due to their poor understanding of the topics of which they speak.  These people want to see people be equipped with the knowledge required to lead healthy life-styles, but need themselves to have an understanding better than their initial emotional response.

To be fair, he thought that baby was kidnapped by those adorable kittens.

With a little thought and reading, they will realize that their initial impression of what they're talking about is nothing like the reality of the situation.  Nothing ever is for any of us.  They need to realize that, since they are more likely than not to be proponents of science, they need to use the scientific definitions of scientific terms instead of the slang definitions.  I can hear them correcting me know; "we're using colloquial definitions, not slang ones!"  To those people, I saw this: the word "slang" is a colloquial term for the word "colloquial".  If you're going to be using coloquialisms, at least go all the way and call them slang terms.

So now that I'm making such a big deal about definitions, I want to get a few cleared up now, so that all of you who want to promote science will be on the same page as us scientists.  For now, I want to clear up the definition of the word "chemical".

In order to do that, we have to go to the basic chemistry course, CHEM 103.  It's textbook gives the following definition of the word "chemical":

From the text book "Basic Chemistry 4th Edition" by Karen Timberlake and William Timberlake, ISBN 978-0-321-80928-5

Since this definition gives an equivalence between the word "chemical" and "substance", the definition from the CHEM 121 textbook will work here as well:

From the text book "Chemistry: The Central Science 11th Edition" by Theodore Brown et. al., ISBN: 978-0-13-600617-6

As we can see, a thing doesn't HAVE to be synthesized by humans or be bad for us in order to be deemed a chemical, as people like the food babe would have us believe; it merely has to be a thing which has at least one atomic nucleus.  Natural examples are water, salt, and silver.  (Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of silver being healthful in any way, unless except as a healthy financial safety net.)  Of course there are also chemicals which are synthesized (the most dangerous one I've worked with being Lithium Hydride).  There are healthy chemicals (look at the list of vitamins, nutrients, proteins, and essential oils for the full list of healthy chemicals), and there are harmful chemicals, such as cyanide, mercury, lead, and the like.

So if you wish to promote science and scientific concepts, you will start using this definition of the word chemical.  To use the Food Babe definition is merely promoting a level of fear mongering Bill O' Reilley would be proud of.

FEAR THE CHEMICALS!