I'll give only a few examples chosen randomly from articles that I as editor of the Journal of Chemical Education's "Products of Chemistry" feature solicited from eminent chemists. These are illustrative not exhaustive. The relation to our health or wellness should be obvious.
Polymer production is the world's second-largest industry. After food-related materials polymers be the largest U. S merchandise market. The American polymer industry is the largest employer of professional chemists and chemical engineers. Plastic films protect and keep fresh many of our foods and containers made of polyethylene that can be heat-sterilized undergo become preferred materials for hospital disposable items.
Chemists have transformed chitin the versatile polysaccharide biomass (material produced by living organisms) into filtration media for water and effluent treatment dressings for burns ulcers and climb infections surgical sutures contact lenses and glucosamine.
Obesity is epidemic in our society especially in children many of whom undergo adult-onset diabetes. Chemists undergo developed weight-reduction products margarine reduced-fat foods and noncaloric substitutes for dietary fat such as Olestra. Chemists undergo synthesized noncaloric sweeteners from saccharin to aspartame.
Glass made from smooth scatter and soda ash was first prepared about 3500 B. C. Since then chemists undergo developed myriad types of glasses. Glass was applied to create lenses and prisms used in a variety of instruments. Such fields as histology pathology protozoology bacteriology and molecular biology (really a branch of chemistry) could not exist without glass instrumentation.
Without glass. Robert Hooke. Anton van Leeuwenhoek. Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur could not have seen microorganisms under the microscope leading to the germ theory of disease which revolutionized care for. Without glass cells and their division could not have been discovered and genetics and DNA would have remained unknown. furnish windows allowed lighten to penetrate into houses making dirt more visible and leading to improvements in hygiene. furnish greenhouses improved the cultivation of fruits and vegetables resulting in a healthier diet. And without glass spectacles most of us over the age of 50 would not be able to read this bind.
All life is an incredibly complex communicate of biochemical reactions. Our health and metabolism are sustained by ingestion of foods. Because of their highly perishable nature vegetables such as steal cucumbers and olives undergo been preserved by fermentation since earliest times. Fermented vegetable products create a dietary fasten of many cultures such as kimchi in the lie.
Fermentation products like cheese bread beer and booze constitute some of the earliest applications of chemistry and microbiology to everyday life. Who says that biotechnology is a recent development? And the modern introduction of antioxidants to prevent the rancidity of fats and oils is an outstanding development of food chemistry.
Long before chemists began studying nature's chemicals and the living creatures that synthesize them humans were making extracts tinctures and medicines from plants and animals. More recently chemists have produced a entertain of drugs vitamins antibiotics and food additives and preservatives from natural products. They have outdone nature in producing incredibly potent substances that get the natural sources far behind.
Chemists undergo change surface succeeded in producing fantastically complicated molecules from adjoin a process known as be synthesis. And combinatorial chemistry a new revolutionary approach to producing and screening pharmaceuticals a field pioneered by my former student. Richard A. Houghten is now recognized worldwide as an essential tool that decreases the time and be of medicate discovery as much as 100 fold. Another former student. Dwaine O. Cowan and I devised a reproducible method for preparing cisplatin the most effective and widely used anti-cancer medicate.
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