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Posted on October 24, 2007 by Jason Petrina | Posted under Business
Industrial Chemicals - Terror or Triumph?
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The fears surrounding industrial chemicals are not unwarranted. The Love Canal incident did happen. The problems associated with asbestos, DDT, and thalidomide are real. Chemicals are capable of causing severe pollution and multiple health problems in humans, up to and including fatalities. The benefits that chemicals bring us, however, outweigh by far the problems that they have caused and, with continued governmental regulation and supervision, we can continue to use them to the benefit of all mankind with few causes for concern. What few people realize is how industrial chemicals serve us each and every day. They protect our crops from insects, purify our drinking water, provide ways to keep food fresh, and supply the flame quenching materials for fire extinguishers and fire sprinkler systems to name only a few of their uses. Even those chemicals that can be very harmful to the environment have their place in modern society. Would anyone use benzene, for example, if there were not some practical application for it? Of course not. These chemicals show up in cleaning products, are used in the manufacture of various products, and may even be present in our homes. Simply put, the world needs industrial chemicals to function in the manner to which we have become accustomed. This is not to say that there should be completely free and open use of industrial chemicals. Certain substances and chemical compounds are far too dangerous to be considered anything but a controlled substance and the governmental regulation of those substances is definitely a necessary precautionary measure against both the corporate misuse of industrial chemicals and their falling into the hands of the general public. In fact, that may be the most frightening thought of all. The damage that could be done by John Q. Public's access to certain industrial chemical compounds could make the Love Canal disaster look like a proverbial walk in the park and the Exxon Valdez oil spill look like a small mishap. So, before you take the stand that industrial chemicals are “bad" and sign off on some Greenpeace movement that is an attempt to eradicate them from use completely, stop and think about all the ways in which they make your life easier and all the products which you wouldn't have access to without them. Without industrial chemicals it would be difficult to run your automobile, heat, cool, or insulate your home, or dry clean your clothing. Without industrial chemicals, our lives would be very different. So to answer our titular question or, better yet, to narrow it down to “are industrial chemicals good or bad" and answer it by saying that they are neither “good" nor “bad." They simply are. It is their use or misuse that determines their benevolence or malevolence and the manner of that use which determines whether their application will be helpful or harmful to human beings and the environment. About The Author: Jason Petrina is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit - www.articleclick.com |
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