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Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 13:17:58 :
In Reply to: Re: Acetone is fine... posted by Gordon Maney [208.126.138.206] on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 03:12:02 :
Water? Oxygen? Salt? Iron? Protein? Granite? Rust? Oil? Cellulose? Your body? The fact is, they're all chemicals. So when someone says exposure to chemicals is bad for you, I have to wonder what they're smoking. More chemicals?
Saying that chemicals cause cancer is like saying people cause murder. Yes, a few of them do, but until you know which ones, it's a pretty useless statement.
I suspect that when most people say "chemicals cause cancer", they have in mind strong smelling things that come in bottles with warnings on them and were made in a factory somewhere. That's still not a terribly useful definition, though. Vinegar, for example, perfectly fits that definition.
Personally, I'm suspicious of any chemical that never existed on Earth in any quantity until people made it, since our biochemistry hasn't figured out how to deal with it yet. That includes the chlorinated hydrocarbon and the organophosphates. The first act as endocrine disruptors (mess up your hormones) and the second are acute nerve toxins. If you don't know what those words mean, suffice to say they're a lot more specific than just "chemicals are bad for you".
On the other hand, people have been exposed to heavy metals, which everyone seems so terrified of these days, every since our ancestors crawled out of the primordial slime (or God made them in the Garden of Eden, whichever you believe). Our bodies can deal with a fair amount of heavy metals, especially in their naturally-occurring forms, which are usually pure metals or sulfides. Sure a spoonful of lead arsenate will probably kill you just like it kills bugs, but having lead paint on your window frames, or drinking water out of pipes soldered with 50/50 solder won't. The dose makes the poison, and aside from exotic man-made organometallic compounds that don't occur in nature, like methyl mercury and tetraethyl lead, even lead and mercury are fairly benign.
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