Reactions

Letters to the editor

Chemical safety

I read with interest the recounting of the challenges a graduate student had getting insurance coverage after a lab accident (C&EN, Nov. 2, 2020, page 26). While the issues raised are important, there is a critical aspect to this story that was not discussed but is very important to note: trifluoroacetic acid is a volatile, corrosive, and toxic reagent and like other similar reagents should never be transported in an unsealed, open vessel as it was in this case, leading to the injury. Doing so puts oneself and one’s colleagues at risk of injury. Treatments after the fact are usually imperfect, and it is better to avoid the accident to begin with. This requires awareness of the dangers associated with the materials used; a cautious, careful mindset; and a sense of personal responsibility for the safety of one’s colleagues and oneself.

Simon Friedman
Kansas City, Missouri

Editor’s note: Shiva Dastjerdi, the subject of the article, followed her lab’s procedure for handling trifluoroacetic acid.

Public’s interest in chemistry

It seems that while both physics and ­biology are extremely successful in triggering interest of the general public, chemistry, a discipline located somewhere in between the two, fares incomparably worse. This has nothing to do with the perceived difficulty of the disciplines. For instance, there is a popular view that nobody really understands the general theory of relativity, which may or not be true, but it adds an additional layer of mysticism to physics and cosmology, as they lead the public to the quasi-religious adventure with the big bang, the expanding universe, and black holes. On the biology side we have a compelling link to medicine, and our prone-to-myth-seeking minds are intrigued by the three letters DNA, which seem to decide what we look like and if we are prone to cancer, pinpoint our ancestry, and help solve famous crimes.

Short of discovering a Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, or David Attenborough of chemistry, the best remedy to this unfortunate situation would be to identify a chemistry-related phenomenon or a term related to it that would intrigue a significant part of the general public enough to delve into related areas of chemistry. We think this role could be played by chirality (perhaps better referred to as handedness). Although also frequently used in certain branches of physics, the term plays a special role in chemistry, where it is pivotal in explaining molecular structure and, even more importantly, in understanding the origin of life. Understanding why only one type of handedness is found in biomatter (the phenomenon known as homochirality) should help figure out the chain of events leading to the formation of living forms of matter on Earth and in space.

Roman Bielski (Coopersburg, Pennsylvania) and Michal Tencer (Nepean, Ontario)