5 March 2022 | New Scientist | 5The leader
PERFLUOROOCTANESULFONIC ACID
might not roll off your tongue, but
you almost undoubtedly have some
of it inside you. Once widely used as
a water-repellent coating for clothing
and fabrics, “PFOS” is now notorious as
a non-biodegrading “forever chemical”
that builds up in the environment,
our water supply and eventually us.
The world is finally coming to terms
with the legacy of our indiscriminate
development and use of chemicals over
the past half-century and more. Last year,
the UN declared chemical pollution a third
great planetary crisis, alongside climate
change and biodiversity loss.
These are welcome developments,
as are earlier steps, such as the agreement
in 2001 of the Stockholm Convention
on Persistent Organic Pollutants andsubsequent actions to expand its scope,
under which many of the most harmful
environmental chemicals, among them
PFOS, are now targeted for elimination.
For many, “chemistry” and “chemicals”
have themselves become dirty words.
According to Google’s Ngram Viewer,
which tracks words in published materials,use of “chemophobia” was falling
sharply until 2011, but has since
been creeping upwards again.
Yet chemistry has been good to
us, paving the way for everything
from life-saving drugs to invaluable
technologies such as touchscreens.Today, it is also helping to clean up the
environment, for example by developing
liquid solvents to absorb carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere, a crucial part of
our quest to hit net-zero emissions.
As our report on seven particularly
future-facing chemical innovations makes
plain (see page 38), chemistry has plenty
more green potential, too, for instance
through creating less environmentally
damaging batteries and harnessing the
power of photosynthesis to boost the
clean-energy transition, or righting the
wrong of persistent plastic pollution by
developing infinitely recyclable polymers.
So we should be wary of throwing away
the chemical baby with the polluted
bathwater. Chemistry has all too often
been part of the problem – but used
right, it can be part of the solution, too. ❚Chemical solutions
Chemistry contributes to many environmental woes, but it can help fight them too
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