Kill me now.

[baratron]

More geeking has been occuring. We were discussing <http://www.finchcms.edu/cms/biochem/walters/sweet/sucralose.html>sucralose, a new sugar substitute. In the process of finding out about it, I found more bloody awful psuedoscience.

"The manufacturer claims that the chlorine added to sucralose is similar to the chlorine atom in the salt (NaCl) molecule. That is not the case. Sucralose may be more like ingesting tiny amounts of chlorinated pesticides, but we will never know without long-term, independent human research."

Chlorine is chlorine is chlorine. Oh, it's certainly true that some chlorinated compounds are perfectly safe for humans (at least in small doses), whereas others are deadly poisons, but the same is true of oxygenated ones. I'm just thinking about yummy sulphuric acid, which consists only of hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen - three elements which are absolutely essential to us. And apart from the Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide page (which is a spoof), I don't see people trying to ban oxygen. Saying that there is a difference between chlorine in one molecule and chlorine in another is just ... wrong! It's almost as bad as the page I found which declared that there was "good" ozone and "bad" ozone. Ozone is ozone! Three little oxygen atoms holding hands!

Yes, please kill me now. I can't take the appalling lack of public awareness of science any longer.

Comments

[mhw.livejournal.com]

But to some extent there is a difference, in the same way that "mercury poisoning" is different depending on whether it's organic or inorganic mercury. The chlorine in salt is present as chloride ions, not as covalently bound chlorine atoms as in organochlorine compounds.

[djm4]

Oh yes; the appalling pseudoscience is on the part of the manufacturer, surely? I mean, when faced with such an idiotic statement as: 'the chlorine added to sucralose is similar to the chlorine atom in the salt (NaCl) molecule', almost any attempt to refute it risks sounding like bad science.

NaCl is not a 'molecule' so much as a crystalline lattice. The 'chlorine atom' in salt is a chloride ion - and chloride ions do, broadly speaking, behave the same as each other whatever substance they're in (particularly once dissolved in the bllodstream. They behave very differently from chlorine atoms in covalent bonds in molecular structures, and molecules that simply happen to contain chlorine don't really have any characteristic behaviour that I can think of.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that it is the manufacturer who have made that statement. At least, I can't find it on the Sucralose (http://www.sucralose.com/) or Splenda (http://www.splenda.com/) official web sites. (It could be there, but I can't be bothered to trawl through the entire site). The closest I can find is here (http://ingredient.splenda.com/faq/main1.asp#3), and that is not scientifically horrendous.

I would be able to take the views of the original web site more seriously if they were not trying to sell me a device to Learn how to make homemade rainwater into a universal medicine for just a few cents per dose, three doses per day on our other website www.water-water.com. Eww.

Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't touch sucralose with a bargepole, at least until I'd looked up all the studies myself. But scaring people with misleading information is immoral, in my book.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

molecules that simply happen to contain chlorine don't really have any characteristic behaviour that I can think of.

Of course, I realise that you're agreeing with me - or at least agreeing with what I meant, which may not be the same thing!

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

I concidered makeing home made rain water, but I just havn't got space for a cloud in my flat any more.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I don't think the authors of that site would even understand the difference between ionic and covalent compounds. The implication in their wording is that if you take a compound which would normally be safe and add chlorine to it, you will suddenly make it toxic. And that's definitely not always true.

I'm thinking at the moment of ethanol and methanol. Ethanol (as I'm sure you know) is ordinary alcohol that people drink. Methanol is methylated spirits, which is very very poisonous to humans. Yet ethanol and methanol are chemically very similar. They contain the same elements: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen - yet one is extremely toxic and the other is only slightly toxic.

Yes, some chlorinated compounds are evil. Others are useful, and a few are essential. Saying that chlorine in sodium chloride is good while chlorine in Agent Orange is bad is just... bizarre. It is the final result: the sodium chloride or the Agent Orange that is bad. The chlorine is irrelevant.

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Ozone down here = Bad
Ozone up there = good
Ozone the 90's children pop show = V bad

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

There are good and bad locations for ozone, though.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Indeed :) Ozone in the stratosphere is good. Ozone in the troposphere is bad. However, the ozone that's in the stratosphere is exactly the same chemical that's in the troposphere.

I could quote several pages of my thesis at you (it's about PM10 and ozone pollution), but won't, because most of it's unpublished.

[lovingboth]

Or English.

Today's Metro has - in two different locations - the phrase 'Andy Cole scored in either half' when they mean both halves.