Well, I never knew that!

by Simon Robinson, SCI Members' News Editor

Everyone reading this will be a consumer. Many people reading this will take a lot of pride in the work they do at companies which make the products that make modern life comfortable and bearable. But to the outside world chemicals are seen as dangerous, hard-to-understand things that should be phased out for safer, natural alternatives.

This is a pity for two reasons. Firstly, the developed world would not like a return to the expensive world of unsafe drinking water and ineffective soap substitutes, and secondly, many naturally occurring substances are dangerous.

The chemicals industry must work hard at listening to these worries and addressing them in a way that neither patronises nor bamboozles the questioner. It must be open about what happens at its factories, and it must tell people what the point of it all is.

Telling your neighbour that you make sodium laureth sulphate will mean nothing to them, unless they are avid readers of shampoo bottles. No! You make the stuff that makes shampoo work. In advertising the motto is ‘keep it simple’. We could all learn from that.