The Royal Soci­ety of Chem­istry is offer­ing £1,000,000 to any­one who can pro­duce a 100% chemical–free sub­stance.

Why? Because they have grown tired of the word chem­i­cal being used neg­a­tively, per­pet­u­at­ing the idea that any­thing con­tain­ing ‘chem­i­cals’ is inher­ently bad.

The Royal Soci­ety of Chem­istry is today reclaim­ing the word chem­i­cal from the adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing industries.

It has been mis­ap­pro­pri­ated and maligned as syn­ony­mous with “poison”.

The truth, as any right-minded per­son will say, is that every­thing we eat, drink, drive, play with and live in is made of chem­i­cals — both nat­ural and syn­thetic chem­i­cals are essen­tial for life as we know it.

[…]

“Should any­one do this, we will see thou­sands of years’ worth of knowl­edge evap­o­rate before our eyes. We would have to tear up the text­books, burn the degree cer­tifi­cates and retrain the teachers.”

To see how bad the sit­u­a­tion is, here’s a Google search for “chem­i­cal free”.

via Richard Holden