So why are so many people deathly afraid of "chemicals"? Because virtually the only time they hear about chemicals is when the media reports about them. Of course, the only time the media reports about anything, is when it has caused death and destruction. The media will not report that 5,000 plane flights, carrying 1,000,000 passengers arrived safely today, but they will tell you that Joe Blow drove his Piper Cub into the ground and killed himself. Likewise, they won't tell you that over a million tons of industrial chemicals were made today and used safely to make everything from microchips to diapers to soda pop cans, but they will tell you that the tanker wreck on I-69 did not release any "dangerous chemicals".

So, are industrial chemicals so much more dangerous than natural chemicals? A glance at the table below should convince you that this is not true. Even industry's best efforts at making dangerous chemicals, such as "nerve gas", fall short of what we can find in nature. Many industrial chemicals aren't even as toxic as natural chemicals which we eat every day! (No, I am not advocating a change in diet, although you may want to reconsider your choice of recreational drugs.)

Chemical compounds were chosen for the table on the following basis: one, they had available tox data; two, you are likely to have either heard of them or ingested them yourself. Tox data for all entries is from the eleventh edition of the Merck Index. For a few of the entries, I have included links to interesting sites on the web.

The table below lists the acute toxicity of a number of chemical compounds, as determined by animal studies. The term LD₅₀ means the dose which is lethal to 50% of the study subjects. Units for the lethal dose are given in milligrams of compound per kilogram of animal body weight. Values from rat studies are typically for oral administration (rats will eat anything). Mouse data may be intraperitoneal, intravenous or subcutaneous. The last entry has data (100% lethal concentration in water) only for guppies, and may not translate proportionately to mammals, although the related compound saxitoxin has been found to be very toxic in mammals. It should also be noted that data from rodent studies may not translate directly to human toxicity. The nerve gases Sarin and Tabun are a good example of this: mouse LD₅₀'s are ~0.5 mg/Kg, while human LD₅₀'s are believed to be <0.01 mg/Kg (somebody ask Saddam). Conversely, dioxin (TCDD, an unwanted byproduct in the manufacture of some herbicides [Agent Orange] and fungicides) is a remarkably potent rat poison (LD₅₀ = 0.022 mg/Kg) but accidental human exposure (from a fungicide plant accident in Seveso, Italy, 7/10/76, which released ~10 lbs of TCDD, or enough to kill ~1.5 million adult humans, if rat and human toxicity were the same) resulted in several hundred cases of chloracne (a nasty skin rash) among the most heavily exposed people (all of whom recovered).