Asked by Anonymous

Why do we tend to assume that natural chemicals are safe while industrial chemicals are evil? Is this correct?
Answered by bobpursley
We are more comfortable with poisons we grew up with.
Answered by Dr Russ
Indeed this is often the case. There are some very poisonous naturally occurring materials, for example produced by fungi. If this is for an essay try not to compare 'evil' and 'safe' directly. Safe and unsafe we can define in someway, whereas words like 'evil' are emotive and hard to define.

Another inference along the same lines is organic produce, which the majority of folks assume are chemical free, or grown without chemicals and therefore 'safe'. In reality there is a set of 'organic' chemicals that are allowed to be used so that the produce can be called organic.
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