Vanity, Vitality, and Virility The Science Behind the Products You Love to Buy Book

"The days when the chemical industry was careless and uncaring are long gone, and yet even in its early years it was responsible for rescuing many millions of people from lives of disease, scarcity, drabness, and poverty."

There need to be more popular chemistry books, and especially those which aid a scientific understanding of the magical materials that most people use in everyday life. I really appreciated the approach of this book, and learned a lot. It really does amaze me just quite how many things, even cosmetics and nappies, rely on products from the petrochemical industry, even through these could not be more different from crude oil. This brings back happy memories of the eye-opening awesomeness of applied chemistry at A level. Here's a tour of everything I've learned!
The first chapter concerns cosmetics. I was surprised just far back the historical evidence goes for "modern" products like lipstick, and particularly the truth of the anti-wrinkle cream story. The most common chemical used in creams for this effect is glycolic acid, a hydrocarbon which peels the superficial layer of dead skin away from the face. "Because it was common in so many foods, glycolytic acid was deemed inherently safe. Were it not so, the toxicity test carried out on it might have given cause for concern." It was interesting to learn that there are perfectly potent anti-wrinkle chemicals known to science, but it's the safety concerns that keeps these dilute and ineffective in commercial products. Even if this is the same material that is polymerised in medical sutures I use everyday! Good to know that useful biproducts come from vitality. Another cosmetic covered was sunscreen, which as a red-haired Scottish person I consider a final line of protection against death itself. "A good sunscreen should be easy to apply to the skin, giving a continuous film, and yet be invisible. It should not be sticky, or easily washed off when swimming, although it should be easily removed using soap." A recurring theme is just how many different factors must be considered when developing products the public will want to use, far more than just the presence of an active ingredient. And it was also helpful to know that SPF suncream ratings are a logarithmic scale, I don't know why this is not publicised.
The chapter on food was even more compelling. It's a shame that the basic chemistry of fats is not taught in food technology/home economics in school to avoid the temptation of daft diets. I was particularly fascinated by the story of Vitamin C, first isolated from paprika by a crazy Hungarian who wanted to call it "ignose" as a joke. This one acidic bastian against scurvy isn't needed in the diets of most animals. "Almost all animals make their own Vitamin C, the exceptions being fish, bats, ginea pigs - and humans.". Lucky us.
Being me, I also enjoyed the reproduction chapter, especially the section on the enigmatic nitric oxide, once thought to be nothing more than a free radical produced in car exhausts. "NO was an unstable, toxic free radical gas, and as unlikely to be made in the human body as to win a Nobel prize ..." This was one of my favourite topics in cardiovascular physiology as an undergrad. I enjoyed the author's deep research and the way he narrates through the papers that led to the eventual discovery of NO as a crucial physiological messenger. Additionally, I enjoyed the irony of excess selenium promoting sperm motility with the side effect of rank breath: "While such men might be producing Olympic swimming sperm, their changes of these finding their target are virtually non-existent." I can think of some really creepy excuses for BO based on that.
The next chapter, based on one of my morbid fascinations, the utter ennialation of bacteria, confirmed my life philosophy that it you want something disinfected - douse in it bleach. Bleach, the active ingredient of which is the hypochlorite ion, is pretty hardcore. It even kills fungal spores. And I was fascinated to find that evolution has even got on my bleach bandwagon. "In 1996, it was reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that white blood cells produce hypochlorite to fight off invading microbes." Phenols were also mentioned as cleaning products, but dealing with high concentrations in the lab and witnessing the lethal reactions these chemicals undergo makes me question whether these are selectively toxic to microbes and not just equally toxic to everything else they come in contact with, with the exception of the innocently dilute Dettol. Then I got a shout-out! "A molecule that contains a positively charged nitrogen atom to which is attached a long hydrocarbon chain can lance through a bacterium's cell wall and deliver it a deadly blow." Those quaternary ammonium salts sound effective. A molecular sword! How cool is that?
I'm sorry to say that the chapter on antidepressants was rather vague and verged on inaccurate at times. The basic grey matter on the outside white matter on the inside division just isn't true, and I think that the description of the synapse really needed a diagram to make any sense to anyone not familiar with this term. There are plenty of textbooks with some basic functional information about neurotransmitters which this chapter could seriously have benefitted from. This is a real shame, because some of the strongest scepticism in certain public groups concerns drugs that act on the brain. I'm sorry to have to bring the rating down one star because of this chapter.
I appreciated the message of this book, although I think that it's main market will be readers already with a good appreciation of industrial science. "Compared with the obnoxious materials in the water, food, and air of a century ago, today's environment is clean and safe, and getting better all the time." Yet at the same time, environmental issues surrounding disposal "Its ultimate fate is still either incineration of disposal to a landfill site.", and the need to develop polymers based on renewable sources are real areas of concerns which challenge the current production methods used in industry. I particularly appreciated the afterword guide to interpreting epidemiological reports in the media. I think this should be on the reading lists of all budding scientists in their final years of school.