Haunted by the ghosts of our own making

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to present to the public about some chemistry we have been exploring. The opportunity came through the program at the Spencer Museum and their Common work of art event series. This year, the work of art chosen is the painting “Haunted by the Ghosts of Our Own Making” by Hollis Sigler. The piece is reminding us that the abundance of food in the world comes at a cost from the use of pesticides. The author created the piece after breast cancer diagnosis. It specifically references DDT, as a faint, barely visible inscription on the sky. This is, I think, why they wanted a chemist as one of the participants.

Initially, I thought I would talk about chemophobia and the rise in distrust in science. But that felt too preachy and instead I picked to tell a story about trisulfur radical anion - a species we found a way to easily make and that we studied in recent months. The same S3 unit is found in calicheamicin which is one of those hard-to-believe mechanism of action antitumor antibiotics. The point I was trying to make is that chemicals are neither good nor bad, but we can understand their effects, use them, and mitigate the consequences of their use by increasing our understanding of them.

Trisulfur radical anion asymmetric stretch can be detected with Raman spectroscopy.

Overall, it was a fun experience. Audience had great questions about chemistry, and I found that it was easy to talk about “difficult” concepts to curious people.