Jack Dini
Livermore, CA
(From a series on unintended consequences)
Aniline dyes are perhaps some of the best examples showing how many divergent paths can lead to unintended consequences. Painting a wooden fence with coal tar to keep dogs from a yard led to what was the first of a multitude of unexpected discoveries. In another case, instead of finding quinine, one researcher essentially founded the synthetic dye industry. Another dye, indigo, was synthesized because a thermometer broke and the spilled mercury catalyzed a reaction that caused collapse of the Indian indigo industry. (1) In another example, some dye accidentally spilled on a bacteria culture dish led to the new science of bacteriology. (2) Noting that some dyes killed certain parasites, one scientist developed the concept of chemotherapy. (3) Work on distilling fractions of coal tar also led to the discovery of carbolic acid, used first in antisepsis by surgeons like Lister in Edinburgh, who developed methods of spraying the liquid. (2) The study of dyes also helped launch the “French Impressionist” painting movement.
One could also argue the case that dyes were responsible for Germany developing into a power that could dominate World War I. By the time the war came along, some leading German companies had made such profits from the dye industry that they were able to branch out into pharmaceuticals and explosives. (4) In the United States prior to World War I, job opportunities for chemists were extremely limited since dyes and drugs were imported from Germany. As a result, the typical American research chemist, among the lower paid professions in the country, studied soils for the US Department of Agriculture. (5)
James Burke sums all this up well, “Aniline dyes are a particularly good example of the interactive and unforseen way scientific and technological discovery is triggered.” (2) In this essay we’ll concentrate on the early beginnings of the synthetic dye industry; some others dye-related activities are covered in subsequent articles. First, an answer to the question—what are aniline dyes? They are artificial dyes derived from coal tar, which was the messy residue left after lighting gas from coal or after obtaining coke (for iron making) from coal. Since there was so much of the stuff around, folks were trying to find uses for it. Most likely, the earliest event came when Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge (1794-1867) tried to keep the neighborhood dogs out of his garden. He erected a wooden fence which he painted with coal tar (creosote) as a preservative. As an added inducement to keep the dogs from lifting their legs against his fence he scattered calcium hypochlorite all around to present a chlorine odor. When he inspected the fence the next day there were blue streaks on the white powder, obviously from the trajectories from dog urine jets. Runge discovered that the blue color was the result of oxidation of the hypochlorite by some constituent of the coal tar. He called the blue substance Kymol. Years later, Professor August Wilhelm Hofmann showed that the parent compound in the coal tar was aminobenzene, or aniline, and Kymol was the first synthetic prototype of a dye. (1)
However, the really pioneering event in this field is attributed to William Henry Perkin (1838-1907), a student at the royal College of Chemistry in London. At age seventeen he was trying to derive quinine from coal tar chemicals. The reason for this was that many English in the tropics were dying from malaria and the curative, quinine, wasn’t available in England’s colonies. (2) Perkin’s professor, August Wilhelm Hofmann, a German chemist who came to London at the personal invitation of Queen Victoria (the same Hoffmann mentioned above when discussing Runge), suspected that perhaps quinine could be derived form coal tar. (6)
An ambitious sort, Perkin had his own laboratory at home. During an Easter, break he mixed some aniline with potassium bichromate and ended up with a messy substance. Perkin noted, however, that this material had a purple tinge. He added alcohol to this concoction and a beautiful purple color appeared. It was a synthetic dye. He called it Tyrain purple, later it was called mauve. He realized that this would be a good dye for textiles. (7)
Perkin patented his process for the preparation of the dye and financed by his father, started a dye factory near London. This was the beginning of the synthetic dye industry. It was monumental in that it rescued the poor and middle classes from the age old austerity of hues. For the first time in history, inexpensive dyes became available and people, other than the rich, no longer had to live their lives in untreated drab and dingy fibers. (8) Although the new industry had started in Britain, it operated mainly in Germany up to World War I.
But Perkin did more than just find a synthetic dye. He essentially was responsible for a new way of doing scientific research. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes, “Perkin’s mauve spawned the world’s dye and pharmaceutical industries. His synthetic dye was the first in a cascade of colors that institutionalized scientific research, professionalized chemists, changed the economies of vast regions, and helped make turn of the century Germany the world’s leading industrial power. Perkin was an adolescent college dropout, but his work dramatized the technological power of science and ushered in our uniquely science-oriented epoch. The discovery of mauve by Perkin has been credited with starting the tremendous development of organic chemistry in the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially in Germany. With the possible exception of Apple creators Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak, college dropouts who developed the first ready-made computer in their teens and twenties, it is difficult to imagine a young person’s invention that has started such an enormous revolution.” (9)
There’s more as James Burke notes, “German expertise with color lead to discoveries in apparently unrelated fields, such as that of medicine: the investigation of the chemistry of color led to systematic thinking about the structure and effects of chemicals, and this led directly to drugs like aspirin and to techniques for staining tissue for diagnosis. It was this use of tissue staining to identify potential sufferers from syphilis that led to the disease being treated successfully with the stain chemical itself. The new drug was called Salvarsan.” (10)
While on the subject of color, here’s one last item of note. French chemist M. E. Chevreul, working with dyes, invented an extraordinary new color tool. By taking the three primary colors, red, blue and green and interspersing them with twenty-three color mixtures, he got a chromatic circle of seventy-two colors, his ‘law of simultaneous contrast.’ Then he toned each color by adding a black or white, thereby creating 15,000, the tone-chromatic circle used by all dyers ever since. (11) In addition, as Burke also points out, “Chevreuls’s placement of color for effect did much more then help the textile industry. It also changed the world of art by triggering the French ‘scientific’ impressionist movement. Painters like Seurat, Signac, and Pissaro used Chevreul’s new law of contrast in their work. They placed spots of different colors next to each other to create the impression of a third color, and in doing so achieved the distinctive shimmering effect for which impressionism is famous. (11)
So Perkin, in looking for a cure for quinine, started us down the road to many and varied unintended consequences. And concluding with Perkin, by the age of twenty-three he was rich and famous and by age 35, already a millionaire, he left manufacturing to return to the scientific research he had loved in his youth. In his private laboratory he synthesized coumarin, the first perfume from coal tar, and prepared cinnamic acid by a method so generally useful that it became known as the Perkin reaction. (12)
References
1.Walter Gratzer, Eurekas and Euphorias, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), 45
2.James Burke and Robert Ornstein, Axemaker’s Gift, (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Son’s, 1995), 197
3.James Burke, The Pinball Effect, (New York, Little, Brown and Company, 1996), 155
4.Stephen Van Dulken, Inventing The 19th Century, (Washington Square, New York, New York University Press, 2000), 188
5.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 2001), 111
6.Sharon Bertsch MeGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, 15
7.Alexander Kohn, Fortune or Failure, (Cambridge, MA, Basil Blackwell, 1989), 46
8.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, 9
9.Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab, 10
10.James Burke, Connections, (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1978), 204
11.James Burke, The Pinball Effect, 93
12.Royston M. Roberts, Serendipity, (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1989), 70
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Pesticides and Fear
Jack Dini
Livermore, CA
“Pesticides have one indisputable effect: they cause emotions to boil over. That’s just what happened when a group of golfers noticed that a chemical sprayer was out on the course as they were completing their round. By the time they got into the clubhouse, several were complaining of headaches, rashes, and general malaise and angrily approached the superintendent to protest what they believed was an irresponsible activity. The golfers linked their symptoms with the chemicals being sprayed on the grounds because they were convinced that the use of pesticides is inherently unsafe.” Joe Schwarcz asks, were they right? (1)
If you believe the health and environmental claims devised by scaremongers you could understand the golfers’ reactions. As Terence Corcoran of Canada notes, “It’s easy to generate a junk science scare. You make stuff up, exaggerate the risks, politicize the subject and spin it into a corporate and ideological battle. And, above all, you ignore the facts. For more than a decades the likes of Greenpeace, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, The Globe and Mail and scores of activists and city politicians have waged a relentless campaign against pesticide use. (2)
Here’s one example. The Audubon Magazine showed a large colored picture of a belching smokestack and reported the following: “Pesticides have become more toxic and their use more widespread. Since 1945 global use of pesticides has risen 50-fold. In the US, more than 220,000 people die each year as a result of pesticide exposure.” (3)
Wow! That’s half as many as the number of deaths from automobile accidents each year. Is there something wrong with this picture? You bet. In the following Audubon issue, a correction was made in an obscure spot not highlighted with a belching smokestack: “In ‘Death by Breath,’ we reported that 220,000 people in the United States die each year as a result of pesticide exposure. In fact, the figure is a worldwide estimate.”
With further digging one finds that more than 90 percent of these deaths are suicides, but this wasn’t reported by Audubon. Joe Schwarcz observes, “Believe it or not, about a million people in the world do away with themselves every year. More than three-quarters of these are in Third World countries, where life can be so miserable that the alternative seems more attractive.” (4) So, yes pesticides can kill, but not at the levels approved for routine usage.
By the way, just what was that dastardly chemical being sprayed on the golf course, the one that caused such severe reactions in the golfers? Good old water! “Fear itself can sometimes be hazardous,” notes Schwarcz. (1)
Now, here’s a story on pesticides that wasn’t picked up by the media. On May 16, 2008Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PEMA) released its final re-evaluation of 2,4-D, the leading pesticide in use in Canada. It was one of the most comprehensive science reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists. The conclusion; 2,4-D is safe when used as directed. The decision on 2,4-D was consistent with that of regulators in other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, including the United States, New Zealand and countries of the European Union, as well as the World Health Organization. (5)
Terence Corcoran notes, “No major media—not one—picked up the story, even though it systematically demolished every health and environmental claim the scaremongers had dumped onto a gullible community of journalists. Almost two weeks later, the Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner wrote a column on how the media missed the story. Still no reaction.” Think of how the reaction would have been if Health Canada had concluded that 2,4-D was harmful. The media and environmentalists would have had a field day. Corcoran adds, “The limited fallout from Mr. Gardner’s report is instructive. A Global News reporter picked it up and raised the Health Canada report with officials in Toronto. Health Canada’s conclusions were dismissed by a city council member, and the views of an activist with the Toronto Environmental Alliance were repeated; ‘Many studies have linked 2,4-D to some serious health concerns such as cancer reproductive developments in our children and even birth defects.’ One of the most comprehensive scientific reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists and reviewed by independent government and university researchers trashed in 30 seconds by an activist repeating claims rejected by the review. All that work and the last media report ends with repetition of the junk science Health Canada had spent millions disproving.” (2)
In commenting on why the Health Canada report wasn’t taken up by the media, Dan Gardner states that this is a typical reaction. He notes, “The media routinely gives prominent play to research that comes to very scary conclusions while downplaying or ignoring studies that find there’s nothing to worry about. It’s frightening to watch a major debate involving a scientific question move from stories in newspapers to politicians’ speeches to legislative action—all with little or no connection to the best science as interpreted by the best scientists.” (6)
In another column Garner reported, “Some folks objected to the reports conclusion that 2,4-D is safe ‘when used as directed.’ People may misuse it, they said, and then it would be harmful. That potential is reason enough to ban it. This ignores two things. First, literally any substance is potentially harmful. Oxygen can, in some circumstances, cause blindness. Drink too much water and the body’s sodium and potassium levels will be thrown off, leading to seizures, coma and even death. And don’t get me started on what coffee can do the human body.” He adds, “Of course, we have to drink huge quantities of water to be harmed by it so water is quite safe. Obviously, pesticides—and lots of other substances—are not so safe. But what most people don’t realize is that regulators build a wide safety margin into their standards. In the case of pesticides, the potential level of exposure can be no more than 1/100 of the dose that showed no effect in animals.” (7)
A final note on pesticides. If you worry about these types of things, this will really set you off. We get much more natural pesticides than synthetic pesticides in our diet. Bruce Ames and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, report that about 99.99 percent of all pesticides in the human diet are natural pesticides from plants. All plants produce toxins to protect themselves against fungi, insects and animal predators, such as man. Tens of thousands of these natural pesticides have been discovered, and every species of plant contains its own set of different toxins, usually a few dozen. When plants are stressed or damaged (such as during a pest attack), they increase their levels of natural pesticides manifold, occasionally to levels that are acutely toxic to humans. Ames estimates that Americans eat about 1,500 mg per person per day of natural pesticides, which is 10,000 times more than we eat of synthetic pesticides. He also estimates that a person ingests annually about 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides and their breakdown products. (8)
References
1.Joe Schwarcz, The Fly in the Ointment, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2004), 39
2.Terence Corcoran, “The pesticide report that nobody read,” nationalpost.com, June 16, 2008
3.Gretel H. Schueller, “Death by Breath,” Audubon Magazine, 101, 16, January-February 1999
4.Joe Schwarcz, Let Them Eat Flax, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2005), 80
5.“Health Canada Releases Final Re-evaluation Decision on 2,4-D,” Pest Management Regulatory Agency Information Note, May 16, 2008
6.Dan Gardner, “On Pesticides, Science and Fear,” The Ottawa Citizen, May 28, 2008
7.Dan Gardner, “The Science of Uncertainty,” The Ottawa Citizen, June 7, 2008
8.B. N. Ames and L. S. Gold, “Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction,” Mutation Research, 447, 3, 2000
Livermore, CA
“Pesticides have one indisputable effect: they cause emotions to boil over. That’s just what happened when a group of golfers noticed that a chemical sprayer was out on the course as they were completing their round. By the time they got into the clubhouse, several were complaining of headaches, rashes, and general malaise and angrily approached the superintendent to protest what they believed was an irresponsible activity. The golfers linked their symptoms with the chemicals being sprayed on the grounds because they were convinced that the use of pesticides is inherently unsafe.” Joe Schwarcz asks, were they right? (1)
If you believe the health and environmental claims devised by scaremongers you could understand the golfers’ reactions. As Terence Corcoran of Canada notes, “It’s easy to generate a junk science scare. You make stuff up, exaggerate the risks, politicize the subject and spin it into a corporate and ideological battle. And, above all, you ignore the facts. For more than a decades the likes of Greenpeace, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, The Globe and Mail and scores of activists and city politicians have waged a relentless campaign against pesticide use. (2)
Here’s one example. The Audubon Magazine showed a large colored picture of a belching smokestack and reported the following: “Pesticides have become more toxic and their use more widespread. Since 1945 global use of pesticides has risen 50-fold. In the US, more than 220,000 people die each year as a result of pesticide exposure.” (3)
Wow! That’s half as many as the number of deaths from automobile accidents each year. Is there something wrong with this picture? You bet. In the following Audubon issue, a correction was made in an obscure spot not highlighted with a belching smokestack: “In ‘Death by Breath,’ we reported that 220,000 people in the United States die each year as a result of pesticide exposure. In fact, the figure is a worldwide estimate.”
With further digging one finds that more than 90 percent of these deaths are suicides, but this wasn’t reported by Audubon. Joe Schwarcz observes, “Believe it or not, about a million people in the world do away with themselves every year. More than three-quarters of these are in Third World countries, where life can be so miserable that the alternative seems more attractive.” (4) So, yes pesticides can kill, but not at the levels approved for routine usage.
By the way, just what was that dastardly chemical being sprayed on the golf course, the one that caused such severe reactions in the golfers? Good old water! “Fear itself can sometimes be hazardous,” notes Schwarcz. (1)
Now, here’s a story on pesticides that wasn’t picked up by the media. On May 16, 2008Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PEMA) released its final re-evaluation of 2,4-D, the leading pesticide in use in Canada. It was one of the most comprehensive science reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists. The conclusion; 2,4-D is safe when used as directed. The decision on 2,4-D was consistent with that of regulators in other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, including the United States, New Zealand and countries of the European Union, as well as the World Health Organization. (5)
Terence Corcoran notes, “No major media—not one—picked up the story, even though it systematically demolished every health and environmental claim the scaremongers had dumped onto a gullible community of journalists. Almost two weeks later, the Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner wrote a column on how the media missed the story. Still no reaction.” Think of how the reaction would have been if Health Canada had concluded that 2,4-D was harmful. The media and environmentalists would have had a field day. Corcoran adds, “The limited fallout from Mr. Gardner’s report is instructive. A Global News reporter picked it up and raised the Health Canada report with officials in Toronto. Health Canada’s conclusions were dismissed by a city council member, and the views of an activist with the Toronto Environmental Alliance were repeated; ‘Many studies have linked 2,4-D to some serious health concerns such as cancer reproductive developments in our children and even birth defects.’ One of the most comprehensive scientific reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists and reviewed by independent government and university researchers trashed in 30 seconds by an activist repeating claims rejected by the review. All that work and the last media report ends with repetition of the junk science Health Canada had spent millions disproving.” (2)
In commenting on why the Health Canada report wasn’t taken up by the media, Dan Gardner states that this is a typical reaction. He notes, “The media routinely gives prominent play to research that comes to very scary conclusions while downplaying or ignoring studies that find there’s nothing to worry about. It’s frightening to watch a major debate involving a scientific question move from stories in newspapers to politicians’ speeches to legislative action—all with little or no connection to the best science as interpreted by the best scientists.” (6)
In another column Garner reported, “Some folks objected to the reports conclusion that 2,4-D is safe ‘when used as directed.’ People may misuse it, they said, and then it would be harmful. That potential is reason enough to ban it. This ignores two things. First, literally any substance is potentially harmful. Oxygen can, in some circumstances, cause blindness. Drink too much water and the body’s sodium and potassium levels will be thrown off, leading to seizures, coma and even death. And don’t get me started on what coffee can do the human body.” He adds, “Of course, we have to drink huge quantities of water to be harmed by it so water is quite safe. Obviously, pesticides—and lots of other substances—are not so safe. But what most people don’t realize is that regulators build a wide safety margin into their standards. In the case of pesticides, the potential level of exposure can be no more than 1/100 of the dose that showed no effect in animals.” (7)
A final note on pesticides. If you worry about these types of things, this will really set you off. We get much more natural pesticides than synthetic pesticides in our diet. Bruce Ames and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, report that about 99.99 percent of all pesticides in the human diet are natural pesticides from plants. All plants produce toxins to protect themselves against fungi, insects and animal predators, such as man. Tens of thousands of these natural pesticides have been discovered, and every species of plant contains its own set of different toxins, usually a few dozen. When plants are stressed or damaged (such as during a pest attack), they increase their levels of natural pesticides manifold, occasionally to levels that are acutely toxic to humans. Ames estimates that Americans eat about 1,500 mg per person per day of natural pesticides, which is 10,000 times more than we eat of synthetic pesticides. He also estimates that a person ingests annually about 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides and their breakdown products. (8)
References
1.Joe Schwarcz, The Fly in the Ointment, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2004), 39
2.Terence Corcoran, “The pesticide report that nobody read,” nationalpost.com, June 16, 2008
3.Gretel H. Schueller, “Death by Breath,” Audubon Magazine, 101, 16, January-February 1999
4.Joe Schwarcz, Let Them Eat Flax, (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press, 2005), 80
5.“Health Canada Releases Final Re-evaluation Decision on 2,4-D,” Pest Management Regulatory Agency Information Note, May 16, 2008
6.Dan Gardner, “On Pesticides, Science and Fear,” The Ottawa Citizen, May 28, 2008
7.Dan Gardner, “The Science of Uncertainty,” The Ottawa Citizen, June 7, 2008
8.B. N. Ames and L. S. Gold, “Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction,” Mutation Research, 447, 3, 2000
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