Living Next To Industrial Manufacturing Should Be Our Goal
Changing the story on how chemistry is percieved in the world
Note: This is mostly my opinion. Some facts sprinkled throughout. Perhaps one might consider this a prospective? Either way, I hope you enjoy reading it.
Whenever I tell someone I am a chemist they usually ask me, “Have you seen Breaking Bad?” and then we have a 2-3 minute conversation about how I do not synthesize drugs. When I try and explain what I do with some accuracy people start looking for a way to get out of the conversation. Lately, I just tell people I make stuff stick to other stuff by making new glue.
I’ve since learned from my mistakes and I try not to introduce myself as a pure chemist, but rather a polymer chemist or polymer scientist. I especially do this when I used to travel internationally (pre-pandemic) and when asked about my occupation I would write down polymer scientist as opposed to chemist. I think that being a chemist occupies the role of a dangerous antagonist for some people. It is something I conciously try and avoid telling people.
Being a chemist is complicated. Or it is complicated when interfacing with the public because the general public has a limited view of how chemistry influences their lives. As a chemist you get a few responses such as the Breaking Bad references, being blamed for pollution and destroying the environment, or someone tells you how bad they were at chemistry in high school or college. People are trying to find common ground and connection with chemists when they say these things and these are the most common ways to for people to connect through their familiarity with the subject.
Chemists, especially academics and professionals need to be better at bringing the nuances and complexity of their profession to a level that the general public can understand. A normal person of the public without a deep knowledge of chemistry will have a few select exposures to chemistry—most of them are not favorable. I will list three here.
The public’s first perception of chemistry outside of school might be through the news such as this recent story on Formosa’s planned plant in the Fifth District of Louisiana’s St. James Parish by Steven Mufson for the Washington Post. The article is fantastic and with some good reporting and the one highlight that stood out to me was the following:
The plant is being fought for its potential harm to health and the environment. It would be located a mile from the local elementary school and two miles downriver from the Sunshine Bridge, part of an 85-mile expanse from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that’s dubbed “Cancer Alley.” Under state environmental regulations, it would be allowed to emit more than 800 tons a year of toxic chemicals, nearly 6,500 tons of pollutants known to cause respiratory ailments, and more than 13.6 million tons of greenhouse gases annually.
The issue is complex. Having chemicals on site requires permitting for air emissions, which is typically done by the local government. Exceeding those permitted emissions can result in hefty fines and legal actions. Opening any bottle, drum, or railcar of a volatile compound will result in emissions of that chemical to the air. This could be ethanol (the stuff that gets people drunk), gasoline (fuel for most cars), nail polish remover (acetone), or formaldehyde (used to make polymers). Typically, in a chemical plant these chemicals are processed and used in closed environments and emissions typically are supposed to get passed through an oxidizer, with the goal of turning those chemicals into smaller ones such as carbon dioxide.
Would I want to live next to a modern chemical plant right now? Definietly not. Would I want to live next to a busy highway or an airport? Also, definitely not. The cars, trucks, trains, container ships, and airplanes that enable our modern lives emit plenty of harmful particulates and emissions that could cause cancer. The production of electricity and the goods and services that we use on a daily basis produce emissions, particulates, and waste. I’ve made this point before and I don’t want to be reptitive. The better question is, What would it take to put a chemical plant directly in a residential neighborhood and have both residents and the chemical plant exist in harmony?
On Sunday, I shared an article from Bloomberg by a science fiction writer who asked a similar question that echoed a proposal that William McDonough and Michael Braungart put forth in their book Cradle to Cradle. Kim Stanley Robinson wrote for Bloomberg:
What we’ll ask of cities in the climate era includes many contradictions, even some double binds. The climate city will need to be compact but with green space. It will have to be energy-efficient but also home to a great deal of industrial production. Instead of being carbon hot spots, belching out emissions, it would be better if cities were carbon-neutral heat sinks, helping to cool the planet. And while a good deal of agriculture and even animal husbandry should take place in cities, to help empty more of the country, our urban spaces should also feel pleasant and parklike for their human inhabitants.
This is a problem that chemist and engineers could figure out together. It’s a grand, ambitious, and societal changing problem to solve. Robinson’s article is worth reading just from an imagination standpoint of envisioning what our future could be and how we might reverse some of the issues of climate change. Having population and industrial production in dense environments without the current adverse environmental impacts would do a lot to reduce global warming.
To my chemist readers imagine riding your bike to the plant and working with some operators on scaling a batch. To my non-chemist readers imagine knowing that what you are consuming in your daily life has minimal or no impact on the environment in its production. Imagine being able to live in a city for a reasonable price, not be required to own a car, and the air is clean. This is an area where I think chemistry can be a tool used for the betterment of humankind.
I do not see our actual materials changing drastically in the future, but I do think that the way the produce the goods that underpin our economy could be improved significantly. Our raw material inputs could be the stuff we don’t want anymore and the energy used to produce them could be whatever is most renewable at the time. We know the solutions to the problem, but they are not easy to implement because it involves disruption to our society’s way of life.
The second place the public might be exposed to chemistry is through movies or television. I’ve already covered the Breaking Bad example, but when I do a quick search on movies involving chemistry I get the following titles suh as Dark Waters (based on a true story), Fight Club, Michael Clayton, or Flubber.
In Dark Water or Michael Clayton chemistry occupies the function of a weapon that Keanue Reeves might use as John Wick or Neo. In Flubber, chemistry is a chaotic actor that is a foil for the professor who is portrayed as a Buffoon. It is hard to write a chemist as a virtuous protagonist in a story perhaps because the history of chemistry is laden with death and destruction. Alfred Nobel was a chemist who did early work on stabilizing nitroglycerin (the stuff used in Fight Club to blow up buildings) with absorbent and inert substances. Nobel’s legacy would be the prizes that would bear his name for distinction and accomplishment in the physical sciences after his death. Alfred Nobel during his life was dubbed “The Merchant of Death,” and perhaps this the genisis of the denigration of chemistry. Another example would be Fritz Haber who along with Bosch discovered how to make fertilizer from air, but then later figured out how to weaponize chlorine gas during World War I and is known as the father of chemical warfare. These are overall negative portraits of chemistry, why would anyone want to be a chemist when the science has been used for such destruction?
Chemistry as an antagonist gets further perpetuated by the use of Agent Orange, the Bhopal disaster, chemical weapons, poisons, dumping waste into rivers, etc. I think these are horrible tragedies, but ask someone in your family or some friends if they know of an instance where chemistry is actually making their lives better. Tragedy makes for great headlines and good stories. Being virtuous and helping others is boring and most superhero movies are boring. Why is WandaVision so much better than the Avengers?
The third interaction the public might receive around chemistry and a somewhat common thing I see is that the sciences often get ranked according to some idea of which one is more fundamental. The reasoning (albiet flawed) goes something like this:
Math: Physics is built on math therefore math is at the top
Physics is the basis for all science thus its at #2
Chemistry’s underlying principles go back to physics and is just a “poor man’s physics.”
Biology is a derivative of chemistry and is at the bottom of the physical sciences
Social sciences = laughter
Show me a mathematician that can set-up and optics table and do experimental physics. Show me a physicist that can do a 12 step synthesis of a small molecule. Show me a chemist that can identify and seperate out some mutated strains of bacteria. Our brains want to rank things and ranking things gets more views on the internet. This thinking spills over to Twitter:
I’ve collaborated with plenty of physicists and biologists and they were great from what I could tell. We never had duels or competitions to see who was better. We all knew that the we brought something unique to the collaboration and collaboration amongst the disciplines is when really cool stuff happens.
I think the story that people believe about physics research is one where if we can figure out some fundamentals in physics it can lead to really amazing and wonderful things like generating power from fusion. Physicists make great protagonists and sometimes antagonists. The Manhattan Project and the development of the nuclear bomb and nuclear reactors is a good example of how understanding funamental science can lead to different outcomes depending on the societal implementation. Neil Degrasse Tyson and the late Stephen Hawking do/did a great job of communicating physics to the masses in that it captures their imaginations and people walk away feeling that they have learned something. I cannot think of a chemist who could take the place of either Tyson or Hawking, maybe Derek Lowe? There is probably a West Wing clip somewhere that would go really well here, maybe from one of the episodes about the big block of cheese, but I won’t go there today.
What are the big problems that the public thinks about when it comes to chemistry? It might have been about synthesizing new drugs to help combat rare diseases, which could eventually lead to nefarious stories of pharmaceutical companies and price gouging—add another point to the chemistry antagonist column. Perhaps chemistry’s best chance right now at having two heroes play the role of protagonist saviors will be accomplished through Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their work on CRISPR.
I view chemistry as a tool to chance to fix some of the world’s biggest problems and we need to dream bigger and communicate better to the public about what those problems are and how we are going to do it. I saw an echo of my sentiment on Twitter this weekend and is in part a motivation to my writing right now. An example is carbon capture which has gotten a lot of attention recently, but activation and use of that carbon as a raw material is where chemistry has a chance to be really useful as I wrote about here.
I try and write about problems and their potential solution here on Tuesdays. It might be about plastic waste, clothing waste, growing enough food to feed the future population, materials for renewable energy, or how to get a job as a chemist. Maybe the solution to the problem I am outlining here is one where writing about science is the solution (I don’t think that classifies as a pun).
The solution to chemistry’s perception problem might be the sequel to Oceans 8 where the plot consists of Sandra Bullock and her crew attempting to heist some Californium from some rich guy in an effort to help a friend’s kid at a National Lab (note: rich guys make great antagonists).
Or maybe a movie where a graduate student develops a catalyst that can produce ammonia without the intense energy inputs from the Haber-Bosch process and then Jason Bourne has to come in and rescue the graduate student from impending doom from some rogue terrorist group. We need big ideas that are accessible to the public where chemistry goes on the hero’s journey to vanquish the dragons (problems) bequeathed on us from our well intentioned ancestors. Where living next to a chemical plant or manufacturing facility does not mean increased risk for cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease due to the byproducts of the manufacturing process.
If anyone wants more details leave a comment.
Talk to you Friday,
"Or maybe a movie where a graduate student develops a catalyst that can produce ammonia without the intense energy inputs from the Haber-Bosch process and then Jason Bourne has to come in and rescue the graduate student from impending doom from some rogue terrorist group."
The plot of "The Saint" (the movie), but different