CHEMISTRY IS CREATIVE 

"Chemistry is creative was the theme of the 1990 National Chemistry Week. The results of creative chemistry and of creative chemists are all around you. 

Consider your typical morning. It starts with the irritating "Bleep‑Bleep" of your digital alarm. A chemist first made and studied the materials in the plastic case, the "chips" and quartz timing mechanism and the lithium battery that powers them‑who said all of the results of Chemical creativity are pleasant? You throw back the brightly coloured polyester insulated comforter and blended cotton‑polyester sheets. Chemical creativity is responsible for the polyester and the dyes to brighten your bed clothes. 

As you stagger toward the bathroom, think about the carpet you are walking on, and the paint and the vinyl coated wallpaper and the dyes used to colour them. Step into the tub for your shower. You are still surrounded by the results of chemical creativity...the shower curtain, the wall ties including their colouring materials and grouting, the painted ceiling, and even the enamel finish of the tub. Turn on the water using the chrome‑plated brass taps. As you come awake in the water stream think about how the water was made safe to drink with chlorine, or, if you are on the Bay Bulls reservoir and the plant is working, ozone. And now your shampoo and soap. Who first made the surfactants, the perfumes the anti‑dandruff additives, and deodorants in them? Creative chemists. 

Throughout the day, as you first towel yourself off get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, grab your coat and books and papers, and set‑off for school...just about everything you see, smell, touch, taste, or hear is the result of or has been affected or influenced by chemical creativity. Let's consider the milk you poured on your cereal. It was in a brightly coloured, plastic coated paper container when you used it...plastics and dyes we have already mentioned and, of course, much creative chemistry has gone into paper making The origin of the milk though was a cow, a cow that ate Vass, hay, and grain grown with the help of fertilizers herbicides and pesticides. The cow received essential vitamin and mineral supplements and, when sick, antibiotics and other medicines. Between the cow and the carton, the milk also encountered numerous results of chemical creativity some subtle, for example the tires of the trucks that hauled it at various stages of its travels, others more direct like the vitamin D supplements often added to milk 

The vast majority of the results of creative chemistry that you encounter are beneficial.  Sometimes though, the final application of the chemist's creativity is harmful but should chemistry and chemists be blamed for killing trout if a forester decides spraying is necessary to control the hemlock looper and the pilot of the plane sprays streams and ponds as well as  forest? Even then, it is an analytical chemist using methods developed by chemists who identifies and quantifies the toxin and, often, chemists determine how to clean up the mess. 

Chemists sometimes wonder why a chemical that returns you to health is not a "chemical" but 'medicine, why a twenty litre can of hexane spilled on a highway is a disastrous chemical spill when the local garage uses gasoline to clean grease off engine parts routinely, why people believe it is possible to have a 'pure, chemical free mineral water"... But why go on. 

Without the creativity of chemists, our standard of living would be much lower, our lives much shorter, less healthy, less comfortable, less varied, much greyer and less colourful, and much smellier! And, of course, world hunger would be infinitely worse 

National Chemistry Week and the theme “Chemistry is creative” were designed to make everyone more aware of the contributions of chemistry and chemists to society, to raise our profile and to make more young people aware of the value, excitement and challenges of chemistry. Canada and Canadians need more chemical creativity and creative chemists. Take advantage of National Chemistry Week and the opportunity it offers to learn and to think about chemistry's contributions to your daily life.