There’s Soap in Your Mayonnaise!

The word “chemical” is often treated as a bad thing, as many commercial interests want you to reject “chemicals” and “go natural.” As if the natural world wasn’t made of chemicals. The two terms are not opposites.

As a scientist with a degree in chemistry, the surge in chemophobia over the last five years has been both baffling and frustrating.

While there are plenty of toxic substances that we should be well frightened of, there are also many safeguards against their use – by and large, the chemicals you encounter in your day-to-day life are benign, even the ones with the scary unpronounceable names and the ones made from substances that can literally chew your face off (sodium chloride, I’m looking at you). But it’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of common-sense-based marketing. Scientific literature is not exactly reader-friendly, and scientists have a long history of alienating themselves from Normal People.

Michelle Wong gives us a basic lesson in surfactants, the chemicals that cause hydrophiles, or water-soluble chemicals, to bind easier with lipophiles, or oily chemicals. Surfactants are pretty much soap, which allows us to rinse oils off our skin, hair, dishes, and clothing with water. But they have many other uses that are necessary to everyday life -like breathing. Read about them at The Toast.