© Everett Collection/Rex FeatureThe International Year of Chemistry failed to tackle the worrying proliferation of potentially damaging chemicals.
The International Year of Chemistry failed to tackle the worrying proliferation of potentially damaging chemicals. You would be forgiven for not noticing, but today marks the end of an official year of "worldwide celebration", designed to "generate enthusiasm" and "reach across the globe". For despite its hopeful hype, the UN's International Year of Chemistry appears to have had far less public impact in Britain even than its 2008 predecessor - the International Year of the Potato.
The spotlight on spuds did at least attract some national press attention: this year's science one got scarcely a mention - though it did make 350 words in the
Baluchistan Times on Thursday.
It's not as if nothing was happening. The Swiss issued a commemorative postage stamp; there was an international conference on the remote Lord Howe Island in the Pacific; 10-year-old Poorvie Choudhary set a new world record for reciting the 118 elements in the periodic table in 27.6 seconds in Rajasthan; and two weeks ago there was a "Chemistry Caroling Event" in San Francisco ("I am dreaming of a white precipate", "Deck the labs with rubber tubing", and so on). But all to little avail.
It is a shame, for there is much to celebrate. Chemicals have brought us enormous benefits, swelling our harvests, beating back previously unconquerable diseases, and producing a host of consumer goods that underpin modern life.
And the year has also been a missed opportunity for tackling, as had been hoped at its outset, the downside of this chemical revolution - what Yale Professor John Wargo describes as "an unexpected side effect" of our prosperity, "a change in the chemistry of the human body". For many of the substances that have built our economies are now embedded in our tissues and coursing through our veins: some, it seems, are up to no good.
Comment: For a good read that goes into detail regarding the health issues of vegetarianism, as well as other issues - the supposed (but nonexistent) advantages in terms of ethics, politics and sustainability - The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith (review and summary) is highly recommended. For another article, there's also SOTT's own Burying The Vegetarian Hypothesis.