5 ms·

Never heard the term "chemophobic" before, but now that I think about it I have some chemophobic friends. Their argument is always something like this: "Humans

Never heard the term "chemophobic" before, but now that I think about it I have some chemophobic friends. Their argument is always something like this: "Humans evolved consuming only organic material from their very beginnings up until about 100 years ago. Humans just haven't evolved to tolerate synthesised chemicals in a mere 100 years." (that's obviously paraphrased but you get the point) But when it's said like that, I tend to agree with them. When they're called "chemophobic" in articles like this, I tend not to agree with them. I've no clue which to agree with.

e2e8 14y ago
You have to keep in mind that humans evolved to live as hunter gathers in the savanna of Africa. Most of the things that come after that we were not evolved for. For example humans were not evolved to sleep in beds in air conditioned houses, etc. So evolution is not necessarily the most important factor. Life is a very complicated chemical process.
sliverstorm 14y ago
Considering you can synthesize organic material, life can produce inorganic compounds, and plenty of organic material is toxic as shit, I'm not sure I agree with that line of thinking. I can't speak for everyone, but I am of the opinion that glucose synthesized in a lab requires no special evolution on the part of humans to process.
- megablast 14y ago
  What you are saying is disingenuous. Clearly the pills made for pharmaceutical are incredibly dangerous, even when taken as per the instructions. That is why they are prescribed. Avoiding taking prescription drugs unless you really have to (ie are going to die), as I do, is not a bad way to live. Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things. So I do not take pills for headaches, for sleeping, etc... You thinking is because you can die by a bear, you should not look before crossing the road.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things. But consider the flip side; just because some man made things can kill you, does not mean we should avoid man made things. You thinking is because you can die by a bear, you should not look before crossing the road. You are really reaching.
  - MDS100 14y ago
    Depends on the pills. Melatonin for sleeping is great for example: http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/ http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/ http://examine.com/blog/better-sleep-probably-no-caveats/ http://examine.com/blog/better-sleep-probably-no-caveats/
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is a very safe drug if you do not take too much. Being in pain when there is a simple, cheap, safe, effective medication is a bad way to live.
    - megablast 14y ago
      The problem I have with it is that it lowers the bodies natural ways of dealing with pain. You become more reliant on it, rather than just handling the pain yourself. This works for non extreme pain, of course.
      - carbocation 14y ago
        You are describing the phenomenon of chemical dependence. Can you point to a trial, cohort study, or even case series showing evidence that acetaminophen is a compound on which people develop dependence?
      - DanBC 14y ago
        People in pain tense their muscles, they walk in a different way, they stop exercising, they stop moving around so much. All of these things help keep pain going on longer. For long term pain with no worrying cause you should carefully take pain killers and keep moving. Things like lower back pain (which can have serious causes, so get it checked) get much worse if you stop exercising, but get better if you get appropriate exercise.
- drostie 14y ago
  Your opinion is in fact wrong. Or, at least, it's phrased in a way that is just-barely not true. Glucose is a catch-all term referring to both chains and cycle structures based on a certain "base" of atoms, and that base is chiral -- it is different from its mirror image. Glucose thus refers to both L-glucose and dextrose. You can process both in some ways -- they both taste sweet to you. But you can't metabolize L-glucose, because the first step uses a similarly chiral enzyme called hexokinase, which only fits properly with dextrose. Most lab synthesis of glucose (which is to say, pretty much all lab synthesis which is not bio-synthesis) is symmetric under mirror reversal and thus produces 50% dextrose, 50% L-glucose. So about half of the glucose synthesized in a lab requires special evolution on the part of humans to process.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Humans haven't evolved fast enough to deal with the diet of ordinary civilization either (which is only 300-500 generations old). However, humans are omnivores so we're pretty flexible in what we can eat and stay healthy. Also, there are plenty of unhealthy and downright hazardous natural products. For example, ergot of rye is a hallucinogen which is poisonous in moderate doses and has many toxic side effects at lower doses. Botulism is extremely hazardous, of course. Cassava is highly toxic when eaten raw and the right variety can easily kill a human with a dose the size of an ordinary meal if not prepared correctly. And, of course, one would not want to eat a salad of Rhubarb leaves, poison ivy, nightshade, hemlock, and mistletoe berries. Whether you're dealing with synthetic or natural products discretion is always necessary.
- evincarofautumn 14y ago
  Don’t forget bezoars from unripe persimmons, or hydrazine poisoning from improperly cooked morels, or hydrogen cyanide poisoning from fruit pits. There are endless ways to kill yourself by eating carelessly. Then again, a lot of the foods we so enjoy are enjoyable precisely because they contain things designed to kill or discourage pests. Capsaicin, for example, or caffeine. And much of human history is owed to alcohol; when safe drinking water is scarce, there’s always beer.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Or simply inhaling water, of course. Chemophobia is about nothing more than familiarity. What we are familiar with we accept and are comfortable with, what we are unfamiliar with we are more likely to be afraid of. News organizations play this up all the time, because playing on fear of the unusual is an easy way to gain ratings (especially in a modern world where anything unusual that happens anywhere on Earth can be fodder for a local news broadcast). For example, imagine you hear a story of someone having died in an arson fire, the news will probably have little impact on you, you may not even feel anything other than a small degree of sadness. Now imagine that you hear another news story, except this one is about how someone tampered with someone else's toothpaste and snuck in eggs of a parasite which then hatched and grew in the victim's intestines for a day and eventually led to the death of the victim. You'd almost certainly pay attention to that story, and you'd probably have strong feelings about it too. And you'd also likely feel a little wary whenever you brushed your teeth or bought toothpaste. You'd almost certainly never feel wary or in fear of arson while living in your apartment though, and you probably wouldn't think about how horrible dying from fire could be. However, in the US the risk of dying from arson is far, far higher than dying from intestinal worms. However, in some parts of the world the latter would be far more common and familiar. Just because something is common and familiar doesn't mean it's safe, and the inverse is true as well.
troels 14y ago
"Humans evolved consuming only organic material from their very ..." I'm fairly sure that we still haven't adapted to consume anything but organic material.
- drostie 14y ago
  Salts?
  - troels 14y ago
    touché ..
Nursie 14y ago
I like to think of it this way - It's strange how the last hundred years in the west have seen the greatest expansion in both length and quality of life isn't it, while at the same time we all have to deal with these 'chemical toxins' that people decry. Maybe they aren't poison, and just maybe we've all benefited from the rise of synthetic medicine (amongst other things).
- megablast 14y ago
  This is incredibly simplistic. The last 100 years has seen the expansion of the car industry as well, I guess there must be some relation to out quality of life as well. Even though cars are responsible for over 100,000 deaths a year.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > The last 100 years has seen the expansion of the car industry as well, I guess there must be some relation to out quality of life as well. How many people would die if not for ambulances?
  - Nursie 14y ago
    Motor transport allows nutritious food to be brought to market more cheaply and easily than ever before. Also as the other guy mentioned, ambulances. I'll re-pose my initial point as a question to see if it comes across as less simplistic - If humans haven't evolved to tolerate synthesised chemicals in the last 100 years, but our atmosphere, food and medicine is full of them, why are we living longer than ever?
derleth 14y ago
> Humans evolved consuming only organic material from their very beginnings up until about 100 years ago. Humans also evolved to have a dozen or so children and see four or five of them make it to adulthood. The reason you see life expectancies as low as 35 for past European cultures isn't that the people were dying in early middle age: Adults could and did live to see 70 or more. It was because they had horrible infant mortality rates combined with horrible death tolls from childhood illnesses. The only thing keeping everyone from going back to that is chemicals. The modern First World have-three-kids-keep-three-kids lifestyle is entirely artificial. It depends on artificial things to keep it going.

e2e8 14y ago

You have to keep in mind that humans evolved to live as hunter gathers in the savanna of Africa. Most of the things that come after that we were not evolved for. For example humans were not evolved to sleep in beds in air conditioned houses, etc. So evolution is not necessarily the most important factor. Life is a very complicated chemical process.

sliverstorm 14y ago

Considering you can synthesize organic material, life can produce inorganic compounds, and plenty of organic material is toxic as shit, I'm not sure I agree with that line of thinking. I can't speak for everyone, but I am of the opinion that glucose synthesized in a lab requires no special evolution on the part of humans to process.

megablast 14y ago
What you are saying is disingenuous. Clearly the pills made for pharmaceutical are incredibly dangerous, even when taken as per the instructions. That is why they are prescribed. Avoiding taking prescription drugs unless you really have to (ie are going to die), as I do, is not a bad way to live. Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things. So I do not take pills for headaches, for sleeping, etc... You thinking is because you can die by a bear, you should not look before crossing the road.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things. But consider the flip side; just because some man made things can kill you, does not mean we should avoid man made things. You thinking is because you can die by a bear, you should not look before crossing the road. You are really reaching.
- MDS100 14y ago
  Depends on the pills. Melatonin for sleeping is great for example: http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/ http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/ http://examine.com/blog/better-sleep-probably-no-caveats/ http://examine.com/blog/better-sleep-probably-no-caveats/
- DanBC 14y ago
  Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is a very safe drug if you do not take too much. Being in pain when there is a simple, cheap, safe, effective medication is a bad way to live.
  - megablast 14y ago
    The problem I have with it is that it lowers the bodies natural ways of dealing with pain. You become more reliant on it, rather than just handling the pain yourself. This works for non extreme pain, of course.
    - carbocation 14y ago
      You are describing the phenomenon of chemical dependence. Can you point to a trial, cohort study, or even case series showing evidence that acetaminophen is a compound on which people develop dependence?
    - DanBC 14y ago
      People in pain tense their muscles, they walk in a different way, they stop exercising, they stop moving around so much. All of these things help keep pain going on longer. For long term pain with no worrying cause you should carefully take pain killers and keep moving. Things like lower back pain (which can have serious causes, so get it checked) get much worse if you stop exercising, but get better if you get appropriate exercise.
drostie 14y ago
Your opinion is in fact wrong. Or, at least, it's phrased in a way that is just-barely not true. Glucose is a catch-all term referring to both chains and cycle structures based on a certain "base" of atoms, and that base is chiral -- it is different from its mirror image. Glucose thus refers to both L-glucose and dextrose. You can process both in some ways -- they both taste sweet to you. But you can't metabolize L-glucose, because the first step uses a similarly chiral enzyme called hexokinase, which only fits properly with dextrose. Most lab synthesis of glucose (which is to say, pretty much all lab synthesis which is not bio-synthesis) is symmetric under mirror reversal and thus produces 50% dextrose, 50% L-glucose. So about half of the glucose synthesized in a lab requires special evolution on the part of humans to process.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

Humans haven't evolved fast enough to deal with the diet of ordinary civilization either (which is only 300-500 generations old). However, humans are omnivores so we're pretty flexible in what we can eat and stay healthy. Also, there are plenty of unhealthy and downright hazardous natural products. For example, ergot of rye is a hallucinogen which is poisonous in moderate doses and has many toxic side effects at lower doses. Botulism is extremely hazardous, of course. Cassava is highly toxic when eaten raw and the right variety can easily kill a human with a dose the size of an ordinary meal if not prepared correctly. And, of course, one would not want to eat a salad of Rhubarb leaves, poison ivy, nightshade, hemlock, and mistletoe berries. Whether you're dealing with synthetic or natural products discretion is always necessary.

evincarofautumn 14y ago
Don’t forget bezoars from unripe persimmons, or hydrazine poisoning from improperly cooked morels, or hydrogen cyanide poisoning from fruit pits. There are endless ways to kill yourself by eating carelessly. Then again, a lot of the foods we so enjoy are enjoyable precisely because they contain things designed to kill or discourage pests. Capsaicin, for example, or caffeine. And much of human history is owed to alcohol; when safe drinking water is scarce, there’s always beer.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Or simply inhaling water, of course. Chemophobia is about nothing more than familiarity. What we are familiar with we accept and are comfortable with, what we are unfamiliar with we are more likely to be afraid of. News organizations play this up all the time, because playing on fear of the unusual is an easy way to gain ratings (especially in a modern world where anything unusual that happens anywhere on Earth can be fodder for a local news broadcast). For example, imagine you hear a story of someone having died in an arson fire, the news will probably have little impact on you, you may not even feel anything other than a small degree of sadness. Now imagine that you hear another news story, except this one is about how someone tampered with someone else's toothpaste and snuck in eggs of a parasite which then hatched and grew in the victim's intestines for a day and eventually led to the death of the victim. You'd almost certainly pay attention to that story, and you'd probably have strong feelings about it too. And you'd also likely feel a little wary whenever you brushed your teeth or bought toothpaste. You'd almost certainly never feel wary or in fear of arson while living in your apartment though, and you probably wouldn't think about how horrible dying from fire could be. However, in the US the risk of dying from arson is far, far higher than dying from intestinal worms. However, in some parts of the world the latter would be far more common and familiar. Just because something is common and familiar doesn't mean it's safe, and the inverse is true as well.

troels 14y ago

"Humans evolved consuming only organic material from their very ..." I'm fairly sure that we still haven't adapted to consume anything but organic material.

drostie 14y ago
Salts?
- troels 14y ago
  touché ..

Nursie 14y ago

I like to think of it this way - It's strange how the last hundred years in the west have seen the greatest expansion in both length and quality of life isn't it, while at the same time we all have to deal with these 'chemical toxins' that people decry. Maybe they aren't poison, and just maybe we've all benefited from the rise of synthetic medicine (amongst other things).

megablast 14y ago
This is incredibly simplistic. The last 100 years has seen the expansion of the car industry as well, I guess there must be some relation to out quality of life as well. Even though cars are responsible for over 100,000 deaths a year.
- derleth 14y ago
  > The last 100 years has seen the expansion of the car industry as well, I guess there must be some relation to out quality of life as well. How many people would die if not for ambulances?
- Nursie 14y ago
  Motor transport allows nutritious food to be brought to market more cheaply and easily than ever before. Also as the other guy mentioned, ambulances. I'll re-pose my initial point as a question to see if it comes across as less simplistic - If humans haven't evolved to tolerate synthesised chemicals in the last 100 years, but our atmosphere, food and medicine is full of them, why are we living longer than ever?

derleth 14y ago

> Humans evolved consuming only organic material from their very beginnings up until about 100 years ago. Humans also evolved to have a dozen or so children and see four or five of them make it to adulthood. The reason you see life expectancies as low as 35 for past European cultures isn't that the people were dying in early middle age: Adults could and did live to see 70 or more. It was because they had horrible infant mortality rates combined with horrible death tolls from childhood illnesses. The only thing keeping everyone from going back to that is chemicals. The modern First World have-three-kids-keep-three-kids lifestyle is entirely artificial. It depends on artificial things to keep it going.