Scientists used to be focused on finding solutions to obvious societal issues like reducing poverty and disease, accelerating travel, and improving the convenience of our daily lives. It was believed that the environment had natural resources that ought to be used to support society's advancement. Chemistry was seen as a scientific instrument that might use natural resources to improve our quality of life.
Prior to 1970, DuPont Chemical Company's marketing tagline, "Better things for better living... through chemistry," represented this mindset. Unfortunately, scientists have occasionally produced more complicated issues with wide-ranging effects in the process of solving our pressing societal challenges.
Modern society's consumption, processing, and production of chemicals has resulted in health effects, depletion of natural resources, and environmental damage on a global scale. A lack of scientific understanding and the incapacity to quantify the fate, transport, and toxicity of chemicals in the environment have sometimes obscured the consequences of such impacts. A chemical product's safety concerns might have been discussed in terms of the product's immediate or microscopic effects. Nonetheless, scientists, authorities, and the general public did not always have serious concerns about the long-term and/or worldwide effects of chemical use on the environment and human health. The necessity for a more thorough analysis of the possible effects of chemical use in society is demonstrated by the depletion of the stratosphere ozone layer caused by chlorofluorocarbon chemicals (CFCs) and the bioaccumulation of chlorinated organic pesticides in the food chain.
CFCs were regarded as a "benign" class of chemicals for nearly 50 years because of their low acute toxicity and non-reactive nature. They were the perfect choice for a wide range of commercial and industrial applications because to their affordable manufacturing costs. These applications included hospital sterilant, industrial solvents, foam blowing agents, propellants in aerosol cans, and refrigerants. From 400 million pounds in 1960 to 2.5 billion pounds in 1988, CFCs were used worldwide. Data released in 1974 by atmospheric chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland revealed that CFCs may be a major factor in the stratospheric ozone layer's thinning. These scientists faced a great deal of criticism from the public, government regulators, and other chemists. Their hypothesis was validated, nevertheless, in 1987 when additional researchers established a clear connection between the depletion of ozone molecules in the stratosphere over Antarctica and the chlorine component of CFC molecules.
In the 1940s, chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides were first used for chemical past management, including dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).
