448
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
lives; of the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses we live in, the industries we make our living in." That evening I left Siosson's "Creative Chemistry" lying on a table where Bobhy would see it. He opened it casually, as he does almost any book, and hegan reading. The clear, light style soon caught his interest, and in a half-hour he was enthusiastically reading about the contributions of chemistry which are so essential to our present material civilization. It rained on Tuesday of the next week. After lunch I puttered around with my chemicals, finally setting up the apparatus for generating oxygen. Bobby stood near, curious about all this clamp-fastening and fitting of glass tubing into rubber stoppers; when at length I started heating the test tube, he offered to help by holding the burner. The bubbles, which rose from the delivery tube through the water into the collecting bottle, seemed to keep Bobby fascinated until we had filled all three of our bottles. "What's in there?" he asked. "It looks like just plain air." To answer, I thrust a glowing shaving of wood into one of the bottles. It flared up and burned vigorously.
"The stuff in there," I continued, "is what makes things bum, and what keeps every living thing alive; it is called oxygen. They take it out of the air, in which it is mixed with a lot of other things, but in these bottles we have it pure. Did you ever see iron burn?" "No. It doesn't burn. of course." I put a wad of steel wool into the flame for a moment, and then threw it into a bottle of the gas. It ignited' immediately and gave off a brilliant, almost blinding light. . For a few seconds, Bobby stood speechless with I surprise; then he asked if he might help me more often and sometimes even work himself. Hesitantly and provisionally, I consented. That was four years ago. First, he dug up in the public library a book of simple experiments for the boy chemist. Then he began to perform the experi· ments described monthly in Popular Science, eventually becoming a regular subscriber to that periodical. His interest has grown until it is at least as great as mine. In high school, his best marks were in the physical sciences. 1\10st of his recreational reading lies in chemistry. Although we have emphasized the struggling and privation it entails, he has retained with increased intensity his burning ambition to become a research chemist.
Misconception? A PROMINE!'\T !\'ew York firm of sugar brokers sent this item to their customers and the press in one of their regular releases of "News Matter": "Dental decay Ilot caused by sugar. One of the greatest deterrents to the use of sugar and sugar-containing products is the popular misconception that sugar harms the teeth of both children and adults. . "Recent scientific studies indicate, however,. that where sufficient quantities of fluorides,. calcium, and phosphorus are present in food or water, dental decay is almost negligible. "Although these scientific studies-like the vitamin studiesare being continued, they do indicate an important trend in dietetics. "Food processors may find it advisable to analyze their products to sec what amount of these minerals they already contain and how they can be added economically." The'scientific world will take exception to two points in this memorandum. The first is the statement that the idea that sugar harms the teeth is a "popular misconception." And the. second is the idea that food processors should seek. mcans of iucorporating fluorides in their products. .. . . As to the idea that sugar has been falsel}! indicted in the popular mind as a causal itcm in dental decay, tlier-e is a great weight of clinical as well as experimental evidence to demonstrate that sugar is in many cases responsible for creating the environment which best favors the growth of undesirable mouth bacteria. Current work with the antihemorrhagic vitamin (vitamin K) i.s based on the premise that the sugars are broken down by these bacteria into acids which attack the teeth, and that the vitamin tends to keep the pH of the oral cavity at a higher level, thus reducing tooth decay. It is specious to argue that it is not the sugar but the sugar acids, or the bacteria which form them, wl~ich cause dental decay, if the sugar itself provides the basic medium froin- which the whole cycle of destruction cmanates,. No, we think-doctors and
nutritionists generally will agree that the idea that sugar harms the teeth is no "popular misconception. It is one of those in· escapable facts which should and must be faced squarely by the sugar-using industries if they wish to earn the respect and con· fidence of the authorities and general public. The way to amend the situation is not to declare that the evil d~s not exist, but to take such corrective measures as are being developed which will ameliorate or offset its effects. \Ve come to the second point in our friend's memorandum. We are in full sympathy with the movement to enrich candy and other sugar-rich products with nutritive clements which will raise the general level of their dietetic acceptance. But we shudder to think what would happen if some dumb guy ill Mullawalla should get the idea that he could put out a "tooth-safe" product by in· c;orporating somc "fluorides" ill it on a pinch or teaspoon basis. Fluorides, let it be known, are among the most potent death dealers in the toxicologist's arsenal. If their use in preventing tooth decay is ever to be worked out on a safe basis, it will most likely have to be by supervised treatment of public water supplies. We doubt very much that federal or state authorities could ever bring themselves to countenance the addition of such a substance to normal foods. What may indeed come.about. is that the water supply used by the processor will have been previously treated at the water plant under adequate scientific safeguards. This would take care of tht: extremely dangerous dosage factor involved, for fluorine is ont of those elements that you want so little of, that it "almost ain't." 1\0 legitimate food processor will care to assume reo spollsibility of incorporating this element in his products by the t conventional direct route once he realizes what it would mean to I him and to his business if a disgruntled or careless employee should some day makc a "slight error" ill measuring or mixing this poison in his batch. -Reprinted, with permission, from Food Ma.terials a.nd Equipment. It
