Monthly Archives: Aug 2013

Amazing alkaline lemons?

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Tonight on How Not to Get Old (I really shouldn’t have been watching it) I heard the following gem:

Lemon

Can lemons neutralise acids? (Spoiler: no)

“Lemons neutralise acidity.”

In fact, not only did I hear it, it even flashed up on the screen in a helpful little box. The speaker was Elizabeth Peyton-Jones, who says on the Channel 4 website that she is a “herbalist, naturopath and food and health consultant” and that she has “run a highly successful alternative health clinic in Central London for over a decade.”

Hm.

256px-Zitronensäure_-_Citric_acid.svg

A molecule of citric acid. Definitely not an alkali.

Let’s start here: lemons are acidic. Why are they acidic? They contain citric acid, about 5% by weight. Citric acid has the chemical formula C6H8O7, and the catchy systematic name of 2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid. If you look at the molecule you can see why it’s an acid. See those OH’s that are sitting next to =O’s? Those are acid groups. There are three of them. This is most definitely an acid.

Why do they make it an acid? Or rather, what is an acid? Well there is a bit more to this than I’m about to explain (interested parties could read about Lewis acids) but essentially acids are substances that can release H+ ions (‘hydrogen ions’) when they’re dissolved in water. Those three acid groups in citric acid can, in theory, release three H+ ions per molecule. So you might expect that citric acid is a pretty strong acid.

In fact, it’s not.  It’s actually what chemists call a weak acid, because although it can release three hydrogen ions per molecule it doesn’t really want to that much. It’s a stingy old Scrooge and likes to keep hold of them. But that doesn’t make it somehow not an acid, it still is one. The pH of lemon juice is about 2.

Which brings me to pH. It’s possibly the most abused and misunderstood scale ever. (There are two wonderful blog posts on that very subject, written by Marc Leger, which you really should read, obviously after you’ve finished here.) I’ve even found a school text book, yes honestly a school text book, that said “no one really knows what pH stands for”. Er. What?

Chemists know what it stands for thank you very much (I suspect, or at least hope, that the author of that book was not a chemist). The H stands for, guess what? Yes, the amount of hydrogen ions. The p is a symbol chemists use as shorthand for ‘negative log10‘ (it’s p because it comes from the German word for potency or power, potenz, and this might be why some books claim that pH stands for ‘potential hydrogen’, which it doesn’t really).

Log refers to logarithms. I’m not going to explain those in depth here – if you want to know more, this page has a clear explanation – but you will have come across other log scales. Probably the best-known is the one used to describe earthquakes: the Richter scale. Basically when you go up by a factor of 1 on the scale, it’s actually a power of 10. A major would-seriously-damage-buildings earthquake that measures 7 on the Richter scale is 1000 times more powerful than a light crockery-rattling quake that only measures 4. The pH scale is like this: every point on the scale represents ten times more (or fewer, depending on which way you’re going) hydrogen ions.

Slightly counter-intuitively (but the maths works out, honest) a lower pH means more hydrogen ions. An acidic solution with a pH of 2 has 1000 times more free hydrogen ions than one with a pH of 5. The pH scale goes from 14 down to 0, and actually negative pH values are possible as well. Values above 7 are described as alkaline (or basic), 7 itself is neutral and those below 7 are acidic.

Saying that this or that acid has a pH of a specific number (like I sort of did back up there when talking about lemons, remember I started with lemons?) is a bit of a nonsense, although many authors do it. pH refers to the concentration of hydrogen ions. You could get some hydrochloric acid (the stuff in your stomach) and dilute it, and its pH would actually go up. Really. If you drop a bit of lemon juice in a big glass of water its pH would be closer to neutral (pH 7) than 2. If you think about it you know this: drink neat lemon juice and you’re puckering up your lips in a classic ‘sour’ face. Drink some water with a bit of lemon in and you barely notice it.

Phew. Ok. Back to the frankly silly statement that lemons neutralise acid. We’ve established that lemons contain citric acid, and although citric acid is a weak acid, it still is an acid. It produces hydrogen ions when you put it in water, and for that reason the pH of lemon juice – as it comes out of the lemon – is about 2.

If you want to neutralise an acid, you need an alkali (or, more generally, a base). Alkalis contain OH– ions (hydroxide ions) which can react with hydrogen ions and actually remove them from a solution, like this:

H+  +  OH–  –>  H2O

Look, that’s water on the right hand side of that slightly-wonky arrow. Pure water has a neutral pH of 7. If you add exactly enough hydroxide ions to join up with all the hydrogen ions, you get water (and a salt, because there will have been some other stuff in there as well).

Once you get this far, it becomes fairly obvious that adding more hydrogen ions to hydrogen ions isn’t going to neutralise anything. It’s like trying to turn your blue paint purple by adding more blue paint.

If anything, adding more acid will make your solution even more acidic (although with a weak acid it may not be quite that simple, is it ever?) Again, experience bears this out. Your stomach contains hydrochloric acid, along with some other stuff, and has a pH of between 1.5 and 3.5. Fortunately your stomach is lined with special cells that protect you from this powerful stuff. Acid indigestion, something many of us have experienced at one time or another, happens (usually) when that stomach acid gets where it shouldn’t be, i.e. into your esophagus, where it burns.

If you have indigestion, do you drink lemon juice? No you do not. Not unless you actively like pain, that is. No, you take an indigestion remedy. Guess what they’re made of? Yes, alkalis, or bases (and sometimes other clever ingredients as well). They really do neutralise the excess acid by way of the equation I wrote up there.

And unless you have indigestion, why would you want to ‘neutralise acidity’ anyway? Stomach acid evolved for a reason. It helps to break down your food, proteins in particular, and it also keeps you safe from lots of bacteria and other nasties which usually don’t like acidic conditions. Once your stomach has done its thing the partially-digested food passes into your small intestine where it gets squirted with bile, which actually does neutralise it so it can pass through your intestines without doing any damage.

Your body has this covered. There really is no need to mess with it, and in any case, you can’t really. At least, not beyond your stomach (and urine, possibly – see my comment at the end). Homeostasis insures that everything stays remarkably consistent, and good thing too. There are lots of chemical reactions going on in your body that keep you alive, whether you realise it or not. If you could actually mess with the pH of your blood (pH 7.35-7.45) you’d be in a whole heap of trouble.

So can lemons neutralise acid? No. Can what you eat ‘alkalize’ your blood? (It’s terrifying just how many websites there are about this.) No. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. If you were to eat a lot of indigestion tablets they would neutralise the acid in your stomach, but that would have no effect on your blood. Literally no effect.

By all means eat a healthy diet. Fruit and vegetables are definitely good for you. Lemons contain vitamin C (yet another acid: ascorbic acid) which is a vital nutrient. Eating them will certainly do you no harm and might well do you some good. But don’t let anyone tell you they’re anything more than a healthy citrus fruit.

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Note: 
As you can see, this post has generated a lot of comments. Some more scientific than others.  In particular, a lot of them have focused on urine, and the effect lemon juice might or might not have on urine pH. My original post was not about urine, but clearly a lot of people are fascinated by the subject. Who knew?

So here’s a little extra on that topic to save me repeating myself in comments.

It’s well-known that chemical makeup of urine can be affected by what we eat. We’ve probably all experienced the odd effects of asparagus, or beetroot, or even sugar puffs, so the idea that certain dietary substances make their way into urine is nothing particularly new or surprising.

And following from this it IS possible to affect urine pH by eating or drinking certain substances. For example, if you’re a cystitis sufferer, you might have used a sodium citrate-containing product such as Cymalon. During a cystitis attack the urine becomes more acidic. These products work by creating a buffer effect in the bladder, which means they raise the pH slightly towards neutral and, crucially, stabilise it so that it doesn’t drop again (or, indeed, rise).

Lemons contain citric acid, the salt of which is citrate. So it’s possible eating a lot of lemons (or drinking a lot of lemon juice) could have a similar effect. I found a paper on this very topic. The researchers found that drinking lemon juice produced a small increase in urinary pH from about 6.7 to 6.9. So, ok, it went up a tiny bit (remember that pH 7 is neutral) but given that the error in their measurements was +/- 0.1, that’s virtually no change at all.

That said, the main focus of their interest was actually treatment of kidney stones, which are, in some cases, caused by a build-up of calcium oxalate which then forms crystals. The researchers found that the lemon juice helped the body to get rid of oxalate, and they’re not the only ones to draw this conclusion. Magnesium can also help prevent kidney stone formation (magnesium-rich foods include leafy greens, nuts and seeds, oily fish and whole grains – basically all that ‘healthy diet’ stuff, funnily enough).

So in summary (and I stress, I am not a medical doctor and you should take your GP’s advice over that of some blogger on the internet), if you suffer from kidney stones, lemon juice might be helpful. It certainly won’t do you any harm (well, except possibly to your tooth enamel). A generally healthy diet will also, not surprisingly, be beneficial. Lemon juice might have a very tiny effect on urine pH. However if it does, the result is only to raise the pH a tiny bit closer to pH 7 (i.e. neutral). It does not make your urine alkaline.

The topic of gout has also come up. Vitamin C is known to help with gout. Lemons contain a lot of vitamin C (ascorbic acid, not to be confused with citric acid). If you’re a gout sufferer, drinking lemon juice might help. Although taking a vitamin C supplement might be even better.

None of this in any way relates to the blood, or ‘the body’ in general. You cannot, absolutely cannot, affect your blood pH with your diet, and nor would you want to.

Oh, and buffers seem to come up a lot too. To save time I put all of that in a separate blog post: buffers for bluffers.

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Note: comments have been closed on th

is post because I found myself repeatedly refuting the same arguments over and over again. One in particular is the notion that lemon juice somehow becomes alkaline once in the body, and that this is why lemons are considered ‘alkaline’. Lemon juice will certainly be neutralised during the digestive process but there is no mechanism by which it could possibly “become alkaline”. Please don’t post comments on other pages in this site to get around the fact that comments have been closed.

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More tales of asking for evidence: is there any point to anti-bac pens?

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Anti-bac pen

A pen you can lend without fear of passing on bugs?

My last post concerned Asking for Evidence about chia seeds and ended with a thrilling cliffhanger: what happened when I started asking questions about anti-bac pens? I’ll bet you’ve been biting your nails (you shouldn’t, bad habit) just dying to hear about it. Well the wait is finally over…

First of all, in case you’ve never heard of an ‘anti-bac’ pen, allow me to enlighten you. These are pens made of a special plastic that has been treated to be antibacterial. That pen you lent your mate only to suspect they might have been sticking it in their mouth, and possibly even more disturbing bodily orifices? Fear no more, if it’s an anti-bac pen no germs will adhere to its plastic barrel, and you can continue to chew it yourself with impunity.

Well that’s the theory anyway. A quick look at the website http://www.anti-bac.ltd.uk throws up a number of interesting claims. In particular, “The active agent is moulded into the pen and is effective 100% of the time for the entire lifetime of the pen.” and “kills 99.9% of harmful bacteria and viruses” (hey biologists, can you kill a virus?)

The anti-bac website also mentions BS EN 20645, and after a bit of studious googling (I believe I’m correctly following official guidance in using that verb) I discovered this standard relates to the antibacterial activity of textiles, specifically “woven, knitted and other flat textiles”. At the risk of stating the obvious, these pens aren’t knitted. Although apparently the standard can be applied to other materials, providing it’s “adapted accordingly”.

So, how was the test adapted? Are the results published somewhere? Does it really last for the ‘entire lifetime’ the pen (and what is that?) Exactly how much bacterial and viral genocide actually occurs on contact with this shiny white plastic?

I emailed the company to ask them about these questions. What did they say?

Wait for it…

Nothing, nil, nada. No answer. I even used the ‘sales’ address, as companies often actually check that one.

Huh. Well obviously this would be a very short piece if I’d stopped there. So I went in search of another expert, and quickly managed to dig up the contact details of Professor Ian Jones at the University of Reading.

A molecule of triclosan; bacteria beware!

Unlike Anti-bac Ltd he was very quick to reply to my emails, and told me that these pens work in a similar way to anti-bacterial chopping boards. They incorporate a disinfectant into the plastic, usually triclosan. Triclosan is an antibacterial and antifungal agent. It’s actually quite a small molecule, falling into a group called polychloro phenoxy phenol. Sounds good doesn’t it? For the non-chemists out there, things with benzene rings (those hexagon thingies) and phenols (hexagon thingies with OH attached) are often not especially good for one’s health.

Screen Shot 2013-08-19 at 20.04.33And so we find the fire diamond for triclosan… now if you’re a regular reader you’ll be an expert with these by now. If not, just a quick reminder, the higher the number the nastier it is. That 2 in the blue section means that continued exposure could cause possible residual injury. Other substances with a 2 include the old-fashioned anaesthetic ether, and anti-freeze ingredient ethylene glycol. Of course, this is referring to significant quantities of the free chemical, not minute amounts embedded in plastic. And the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that exposure to triclosan – which turns up in lots of things, including anti-bacterial soaps – doesn’t present significant risks to human health. It might not even be triclosan in the anti-bac pens (the company didn’t get back to me, so we don’t know). Still… it raises an interesting point, given how paranoid many people are about chemical exposure. Which is riskier? Bacterial exposure or chemical exposure? Especially taking into account the findings from the University of Michigan School of Public Health that washing with plain soap is actually more effective than using those with antibacterial agents such as triclosan.

Anyway, back to the anti-bac pen claims. Professor Jones went on to say that these pens “have their place, especially in situations which are very sensitive to contamination issues like hospital wards and surgeries. The downside is a false feeling of safety when in fact everything else you touch has not been sanitised in the same way and the fact that their use detracts a little from the real challenge which is to get people to adopt routine hygiene measures such that their hands are not likely to be sources of infection in the first place.”

I asked him more about the ‘lifetime of the pen’ issue, and he explained that the disinfectant is built into the plastic, so organisms are indeed killed when they come into contact with it. As the grip wears down fresh plastic is revealed, so theoretically the anti-bacterial properties never wear out. The problem is that that, of course, pens are picked up by sticky, greasy, sweaty fingers all the time and stuffed into icky pockets and less-than-pristine pencil cases. Once the plastic gets covered in a layer of grime, the whole thing will stop working.

He finished by telling me that “these materials never completely kill organisms, they reduce numbers between 100 and 1000 times. However that can still leave a significant number of organisms alive.”

So in summary, chances are the active ingredient won’t really be effective for the lifetime of the pen under normal handling conditions. It might be true that active ingredient kills 99.9% of bacteria, but that could still leave quite a lot on the pen. Worth spending your money on? Maybe in places such as hospital wards, where the people handling them already (we hope) have scrupulously clean hands, but in your child’s grubby pencil case? Probably not.

Want more? The third part of my Ask For Evidence work was recently published on the Sense About Science website, you can read it here.

Tales of asking for evidence: are chia seeds all they’re cracked up to be?

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I’ve mentioned it before, but this summer I got involved with Sense About Science’s Ask for Evidence Campaign. This is a brilliant campaign in which Sense About Science (for some reason they never abbreviate their name to initials) encourages people to ask organisations about dubious ‘scientific’ claims. Ever wondered what on earth Boswelox actually is and whether it can really counteract ‘skin microcontractions’? Ask the company for evidence. See what they say. (In that particular case the UK Advertising Watchdog has already weighed in, but you get the idea.)

chia-seeds-photo

Are chia seeds all they’re cracked up to be?

I picked up on a few different claims, the first of which had to do with chia seeds. They are the latest health food craze (well, you know, one of latest – this is an area that moves fast, another health food craze could have gone from magical weight-loss aid to dangerous cancer risk in the time it’s taken me to type this), and come with all manner of interesting claims from stabilising blood sugar levels to having “8 times more Omega 3 than salmon“. The trail led back to AZChia, a company set up by Dr Wayne Coates of the University of Arizona. Although, in Dr Coates defence, many of the more hyperbolic media claims don’t appear to have actually started with him, and his work seems to be rigorous.

There are lots of claims out there in the press, but they most seem to boil down to omega-3 fatty acids. Now, there’s a whole other essay to be written on that topic, but essentially (wait for it) these are essential (boom) fatty acids. That means we need them to maintain good health and although there’s some controversy over exactly what they do and don’t affect, there’s no question they’re vital for a healthy metabolism. However they can’t be made in the body (not from scratch, anyway) so we have to eat them. This is potentially tricky for vegetarians because the main source of omega-3 fatty acids is fish oils. But they do turn up in certain plant foodstuffs, and one such foodstuff is chia seeds. In fact, chia seeds biggest claim is that they are the “richest natural plant source of omega-3 fatty acids“.

But before we go any further with this it’s important to realise that there’s more than one type of omega-3 fatty acid. There is a group of molecules that fall into this category, and some of them are tricker to obtain from certain food sources than others. In particular, there’s something called ALA (α-Linolenic acid), another called EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and finally DHA (docosahexaenoic acid – these names just get better and better don’t they?).

The main source of these last two, DHA and EPA, is cold-water oceanic fish, like cod and salmon. Both EPA and DHA are converted into prostaglandins which regulate cell activity. DHA is a structural component of such minor essentials as your brain, retina and skin. Make no mistake, you need these molecules.

ALA is slightly different. ALA is available from plants such as, guess what, chia. And also kiwifruit seeds (bizarrely, these have nearly as much as chia seeds), perilla and flax, otherwise known as linseed. Humans cannot make ALA; we have to eat it. However our bodies can make DHA and EPA from ALA.  So, eat your ALA-packed plants and, in theory, you get the complete set.

But it’s not quite that simple (it never is, is it?)  Yes we can synthesise DHA and EPA from ALA, but only poorly. For adults, it might be less than 1% for DHA, and probably less than 5% for EPA (the numbers are slightly higher, although not much, for babies).

Back to that claim that chia seeds have 8 times more omega-3 than salmon (not, I should stress, a claim actually made by Dr Coates). It is true? Well, 100 g of salmon contains roughly 0.4 g of ALA, whereas 100 g of chia seeds contains more like 18 g. So that’s actually a lot more than 8 times. On the other hand, chia seeds contain no DHA or EPA (fish sources, remember) whereas salmon will give you about 1.4 g and 0.4 g respectively. Chia seeds may contain more omega-3 in total than salmon, but it’s not the good stuff. There’s none of the DHA that’s so important for healthy brain, skin and eyes. You might be able to convert a little bit from the ALA that is there, probably enough to get by (particularly if you’re a vegetarian or a vegan and willing to eat a lot of seeds), but oily fish really is the best source.

What about the claim that chia seeds are the richest plant source of omega-3 fatty acids? I pressed Dr Coates for evidence of this, since it’s a statement he makes on his website, and his response was as follows:

“No one paper is going to say that. You are wanting something that does not exist to my knowledge. You would need to compare hundreds of analyses and papers, determine good analyses from bad, etc. Different harvest cycles, growing locations, varieties, all affect the numbers so impossible to really do it. The statement is based on years of work and knowledge.”

So tricky to prove, but probably true. Possibly.

There is a little more to this story. Chia seeds are often promoted as a whole food, packed full of many nutrients over and above omega-3s. A ‘super-food‘, if you will. They do indeed contain a whole range of nutrients. But Dr Loren Cordain, author of the book The Paleo Diet, contends that chia seeds also contain high levels of phytate.  Phytate is the salt of phytic acid, and is a substance that binds minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium and copper, making them unavailable for absorption by the body. As a result, chia seeds are actually quite a poor source of these minerals. And, as with all plants, it’s a similar situation with vitamin B6 – it’s something we absorb far more effectively from animal sources. In short, just because something’s in a plant, doesn’t mean we can make use of it.

oily_fish_box

If you’re not a vegetarian, stick to your oily fish.

So, in summary, should you be sprinkling chia on your breakfast cereal? Well, it probably won’t do any harm. If you’re a strict vegetarian or vegan they may be worth considering, although they’re probably not worth paying a lot of money for. If you’re a meat eater, you’re almost certainly better off sticking with oily fish – it’s a much better source of the really essential fatty acids.

….

I also investigated some other claims for Ask for Evidence, one of which was the statement made by Health Journalist Hazel Courteney on national radio that “the average person absorbs into their bloodstream alone about 14 kg of toxins annually through their skin.” There is more to follow on this particular story, and it should appear on the Ask for Evidence page shortly.

There was also something on anti-bac pens which I’ll discuss next time. Watch this space!

Liquid calcium? Why words really matter in chemistry

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dl-265_1zI happened to see an advert for Arm & Hammer toothpaste on TV a couple of days ago, in which they cheerfully proclaimed that it contained “liquid calcium”.

navigator_highlighted_periodic_table

Calcium, on the left. With the metals.

This brought me up short.  First thing: calcium is a metal.  Now, as a famous British movie star might say (or perhaps might not say), “not many people know that”.  Ask a roomful of people if calcium is a metal and most of them will tell you it’s not.   I’ve even heard students who know what the periodic table is and what the position of elements within it means, and who can see calcium right there on the left hand side, express their doubts.  Everyone associates calcium with bones and teeth, possibly rocks at a push.  No one (other than chemists of course) hears ‘calcium’ and thinks of a silvery-grey metal.

But that is indeed what it is.  It is a metal, and although its melting point isn’t huge in the grand scheme of metals, it’s still a fairly substantial 842 oC.  The temperature in your bathroom is probably in the region of 20 oC.  In fact your kitchen oven probably only goes up to about 240 oC, so the melting point of calcium is some 600 oC hotter than the hottest setting on your oven.

ca_2_2

Calcium and water: what you can’t see is how hot this sucker is going to get.

Temperature problems aside, pure calcium is also highly reactive.  Drop some in water and you’ll see a lot of violent bubbling followed by the solution turning white as a corrosive calcium hydroxide solution forms.  The bubbling is due to flammable, potentially explosive, hydrogen gas.  Oh, and it will get really, really hot too – this is what chemists call an exothermic reaction.  I for one will confess to once (many, many years ago, of course) dropping a red-hot boiling tube into which I’d popped just a little too much calcium metal.  After it had also bubbled up and covered my hand with the aforementioned calcium hydroxide.  Ooopsie.  (Fear not, my hand survived unscathed, after the application of copious amounts of cold water – the go-to cure for most chemical exposures).

So, at the risk of stating the obvious, there’s no liquid calcium in Arm & Hammer toothpaste.  And a jolly good thing too.

What is there?  At this point I should probably point out that Arm & Hammer are quite careful, in their literature and on their packaging, to always put a little ™ by “Liquid Calcium”.  A quick glance at their website clarifies that they’re talking something called “Liquid Calcium ™ Technology” which refers to an ingredient that contains “up to 8 times more calcium and phosphate ions than the amount found in saliva so it is able to replenish ion content in your mouth and subsequently re-mineralise and protect your teeth more efficiently.”

Ah, now we get to the truth of the matter.  It’s not liquid calcium, but calcium ions in solution.

Does this matter?  Am I being unnecessarily pedantic?  Liquid/solution, calcium metal/calcium ions, what’s the difference?

H2O2

When an extra O really matters.

Well, the thing is, chemists are pedantic.  See, in chemistry, it genuinely could be a matter of life and death.  Ethanol, for example, is ‘drinking’ alcohol.  It’s the stuff in beer, and wine, and strawberry daiquiris.  It may not be exactly healthy, but most adults can consume some fairly safely.  Ethanal, on the other hand, is a toxic and probably carcinogenic substance that’s mainly used industrially as a starting point to make other chemicals.

To pick another example, chlorine is a highly toxic gas that’s been used in chemical warfare; chloride ions are found in salt and are consumed perfectly safely every day.  The difference between ions (atoms or molecules which have become charged due to the gain, or loss, of electrons) and atoms is really quite critical in chemistry, and in life in general.

potassium and water

Potassium reacting with water – pretty!

‘Everybody’ knows that bananas contain lots of potassium.  But potassium is another highly-reactive metal.  In fact it’s even more reactive than calcium.  Potassium explodes with a rather beautiful lilac flame in contact with water.  It’s pretty to watch, but you wouldn’t want it in your mouth.  Actually bananas contain potassium ions (and just to really mess with everything you thought you knew, not even that much compared to lots of other foods).

Back to the dubious labelling again, It’s interesting that Arm & Hammer have chosen to say “fluoride” – which specifically, and correctly, refers to fluoride ions – and not “liquid fluorine”.  I mean surely, in the spirit of consistency, it should be liquid fluorine and liquid calcium (argh!), or fluoride ions and calcium ions.

The word liquid has a specific meaning in chemistry.  It means a pure element or compound in its molten state.  Pure water at room temperature is a liquid.  So is ethanol, and mercury, and bromine (interestingly these last two are the only chemical elements which are liquids at room temperature).  Ethanol dissolved in water, as it is in strawberry daiquiris (more or less), isn’t a liquid.  It’s a solution.  This matters.  Liquid ethanol is pure ethanol.  Drink that and you’re looking serious alcohol poisoning in the face, and it’s about to wallop you for looking at it funny.

frustration_350px

An Arm & Hammer chemist?

Saying, or even implying, that calcium ions in solution is ‘liquid calcium’ is like saying that seawater is liquid sodium (sodium is another highly reactive metal – orange flame this time).  It’s just nonsense.  Ok, it’s probably not going to cause anyone any actual harm, but that’s not the point.  It’s completely factually inaccurate.  I am absolutely certain that the chemists working for Arm & Hammer wanted to tear their hair out when the advertising company came up with this name for the formulation they’d spent (probably) years slaving over.  And I expect they were essentially told to shut up about it, the vast majority of our customers won’t know the difference.

And sadly this may be true.  But it shouldn’t be.  Would Arm & Hammer care if their boxes were labelled ‘tothpast’ instead of toothpaste?  I bet they’d be bothered if the boxes were priced at £250 instead of £2.50.  Why fuss over spelling and numbers but be careless over scientific literacy?  Either precision matters or it doesn’t.

Perhaps it’s time scientists starting making as much noise about this kind of thing as people who complain about stray apostrophes or the misuse of the word disinterest.  You never know, it might help levels of scientific understanding.

Mind you, perhaps the author of a blog called The Chronicle Flask shouldn’t throw stones…

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After I wrote this post I tweeted something referring to “liquid phosphorous”.  It was pointed out to me, quite rightly, that I meant “liquid phosphorus”.  Phosphorus is the noun – the name of the chemical element – and phosphorous is an adjective.  As in, “phosphorous fertiliser”.  I confess I was a bit hazy on that one until made to check, which is ironic really. Consider me sent to the back of the class 😉