Why There's Antifreeze in Your Toothpaste: The Chemistry of Household Ingredients

by Simon Quellen Field

A Selection of the Scientific American Book Club

Explaining why antifreeze is a component of toothpaste and how salt works in shampoo, this fascinating handbook delves into the chemistry of everyday household products. Decoding more than 150 cryptic ingredients, the guide explains each component's structural formula, offers synonymous names, and describes its common uses. This informative resource can serve curious readers as a basic primer to commercial chemistry or as an indexed reference for specific compounds found on a product label. Grouped according to type, these chemical descriptions will dissolve common misunderstandings and help make consumers more product savvy.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Chemistry, Reference, Popular Science

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know what's not that much fun? Reading a dictionary. Sure you learn lots of new words and some interesting facts...but you're reading a dictionary.

This is a dictionary of chemistry as it regards household items--like toothpaste and shampoo. It started out as a narrative and then I kept hoping it would come back to being cool stories or vignettes or something.

But no.

That is not to say this is not an interesting book. It is.

However, it was not the book I was looking for.

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book intimated me at first. Many, but not all, of the chemicals, minerals and polymers referred to in this book have an illustration of their molecular structure. Since carbon atoms are assumed to have bonds with 4 hydrogen atoms, their presence is shortened with a straight line that is often off kilter to represent another shared bond with another hydrogen atom.

In other words, to keep the image of molecular structure from being too cluttered, it's simplified with straight lines and angles. I forgot to mention that atoms that share electrons are represented with parallel lines, adding to the confusion. The first 3 chapters are filled with a glut of information about how electrons are shared and atoms are removed within their structure, I kept having to refer to the introduction that explained all of that complexity of everyday chemistry.

I was about ready to trash this book. But the next morning, I found myself explaining some of the chemical makeup of teen favorite foods, such as Flaming Hot Cheetos. Food dyes in foods are a big political issue right now and I had some students asking about if their favorite snacks were going to be discontinued. I really didn't understand why brominated vegetable oil would be in orange soda in the first place. Thanks to this book, I now understand that orange flavonoids are composed of fats which do not bind with water. That means without the emulsifying effect of the bromides, your orange soda will separate like an unshaken bottle of Italian dressing. Plus it wouldn't look orange. Having just read about all that in this book, I was able to explain that thanks to the government ban, you would still have your favorite foods. Only, I imagine your unopened bottle of Sunkist is going to look very different in the next couple of years.

I started to see that the teaching resource that I was hoping this book would be in my culinary classes actually coming to pass. But I was still overwhelmed by the writing since this was a college level read. So I set a goal to read 5 pages a day. Eventually I began to learn about how emulsifiers, cleansers, flavoring agents and food dye are not just made but crafted into other products that we use in our everyday lives. Not all of it bad, either.

The antifreeze mentioned in this book is actually a natural chemical that by itself does prevent products from freezing. But without another chemical agent added to the antifreeze that helps prevent damage to vehicles, it's not toxic to humans.

If you teach CTE Culinary Arts or Foods and Nutrition Courses in either middle or high school, you should get this book! If your department head is anything like mine, you're expected to cross teach from a variety of subjects in hopes of boosting those ever important testing scores. This book can help you work on making Chemistry and bio-sciences more relatable to your students. Just don't feel bad if you have to do a review of that section on how to read and understand a structural formula more than once. Lord knows that I was still checking it over with just a couple of pages left to read.

Maybe I should have paid better attention in Chemistry when I was in high school...

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is hard to give a chemistry book more than three stars, although it really was more interesting reading than I expected. I don't have any kind of chemistry learning to really appreciate the organic chemistry molecule structures and symbols but the English text was quite understandable. I liked the pictures. I liked the way the chapters were arranged and I actually got quite a lot of information out of it.

Reading the labels on food packages and other products, both house hold and health and beauty aids will always be more informative, now that I know what some of the ingredients are and why they are there and what they do.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

In our modern lifestyle, there are chemicals in all sorts of things. Many of them are harmless, and all of them have a reason to be there.

Simon Quellen Field examines different chemical compounds and explains their descriptions and uses. The book is a fascinating journey through the wonders of chemistry.

Many chemical compounds have multiple uses. The book works as a reference material.

Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Literate Duck · Rating 5 out of 5]

fun review of chem/org Chem. great explanations, uses. includes chemical structure, aka names, etc.

[Eric Bingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book probably wasn't meant to be read from cover to cover. It reads more like a reference book. Having said that, it is an awesome reference! If you have ever wondered what all those weird sounding things on your ingredient labels are doing there, this book has the answers. It does an excellent job of discussing all the random ingredients in anything from food products to cosmetics to shampoo.

[Vish Wam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would rate more like 3.5.
Better read as a reference book. Good book for those who are intrigued to know what kind of chemical environment they put themselves through everyday. Would come in handy for Forensic chemists and aspiring Chemical Engineers. Once read, it provides a fresh new perspective of world around in-terms of a fingerprint of chemicals. Also has the factor that an make budding chemical engineers think of potential replacement compounds to whats already been commercially used.

[Alicia Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Field overestimates my willingness to look at chemical formulas. This is a great book for explaining the puzzling list of ingredients in, say, ice cream. My only complaint is that he fails to explain the harm many ingredients cause. For example, why do parabens severely irritate my skin? Why are certain additives linked to cancer? It feels like this book is written to assure the public that we have nothing to fear from chemistry.

[Angela]

I read the "Focus On" bits, but the overall book is more chemistry than I want to deal with at this time. I think this would have been a GREAT help when I was trying to understand organic chemistry -- some of the intricacies of the science are explained pretty well in the beginning of this book.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very cute. You can get a flavor of what certain chemicals in your daily life do and, as a chemist, I really appreciated seeing the organic structures presented with each compound. That said, you don't need a chemistry degree to enjoy this one. Some interesting surprises in there too.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is excellent if you have a list of things that you want to understand better (why they're included etc.) but I found the book very boring to read cover to cover. It was interesting the first 20 pages or so, but it started to sound more like a textbook than anything.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to the book for attributing information towards my chemistry project. And for providing the chemical composition of shampoo.

[plumcrazybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good reference book for all of those wierd ingredients you find around the house.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference book, I kept it on hand for months and would break it out whenever I bought anything with interesting ingredients.

[Darko Doko · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more of a reference book when you want to know more about some chemical compound. It's not for reading page by page