The Life of Remarkable Substances

Chemistry is a realm of miracles—and truly wonderful discoveries still await us.

How to live in a world whose hallmark is advice from the “How to Clean Your Home Without Chemicals” series, where authors recommend using soda, vinegar, and citric acid—those same huge-scale products of industrial chemical production—precisely? How accurate is the statement: “The more dangerous a chemical substance is, the harder its name is to pronounce”? (Spoiler: not at all—otherwise chlorine for the human body would be safer than your own DNA).

Today, in both Russian and international information spaces, we’re faced with a huge number of myths and scary bedtime stories connected with chemistry. Somehow, chemistry has begun to provoke suspicion and fear, and irrational fear of everything “chemical” has flourished—chemophobia.

However, real stories related to the discovery of chemical substances and to finding out their useful properties are far more interesting than invented legends. Besides, they can help the reader get rid of irrational fear of “chemistry,” become interested in chemistry, and make more and more people stop perceiving this science as something dangerous.