The promise of better living through chemistry has not always
been kept. Chemical techniques were used to produce both penicillin
and dynamite, penicillin can have harmful side effects while
dynamite has beneficial uses. Insecticides have helped alleviate
world hunger while they have disrupted global ecosystems. Numerous
petrochemicals have made life both easier and more hazardous.The
Two Faces of Chemistry presents a balanced view, weighing the
assets and dangers of the whole range of modern chemical compounds
and their byproducts, including food additives, "natural" foods,
fertilizers, pesticides, drugs and other medications, cosmetics,
soaps and detergents, plastics, artificial rubber, fluorocarbons,
and leaded gasoline. Caglioti, an organic chemist who has written
widely in the popular press, not only makes all this material clear
and understandable to readers without technical background but also
captures the drama that accompanied the development of new products
and the revelation, often years later, that they could lead to
devastating results. In each case - for example, in his accounts of
"the saccharin mess" and "the Pill" - he carefully sifts through
all the accumulated layers of controversy in order to arrive at an
unbiased evaluation and assessment of risk.The book's coverage is
worldwide, but most of the data is taken from those countries that
use chemicals intensively: the United States, Western Europe, and
Japan.The writer and chemist Primo Levi, states in his Foreword
that "underneath the statistics and technical data, which with good
reason are plentiful, there flows through this book a silent
current of wisdom, educational intent, and morality. While it does
not attempt to dictate solutions, by its very character it teaches
us how best to go about finding them."Luciano Caglioti is Professor
of Organic Chemistry at the University of Rome.
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