Category Archives: Organic

The Great Debate: Chemical Additives in Food – Are They Helping or Harming You?

Chemical additives in food safety and effectiveness is currently one of the most disputed issues in the field of science. Some argue that these additives are necessary to preserve food and enhance taste. Others are concerned about their potential health risks. This blog aims to explore both sides of the scientific discourse and offer insight into the reasoning behind each perspective.

One perspective of the debate supports the use of chemical additives in food. They argue that these additives are essential for preserving the freshness of food, preventing spoilage, and enhancing its taste and appearance. Additionally, they emphasize that numerous food additives have undergone rigorous safety evaluations and have been authorized by regulatory organizations such as the FDA.

Moreover, some argue that the amount of additives in food is relatively small and does not pose a significant health risk to the general population. They also argue that without these additives, food production would be less efficient and more costly, resulting in higher prices and less availability of food.

Figure 2: Two Cans Of Boiled Green Peas and Fresh Vegetables

On the contrary, there are others who express worry about the safety and possible health hazards of chemical additives in food. They contend that certain additives may lead to adverse effects on human health, including but not limited to allergic reactions, hormone disruption, and an elevated risk of cancer.

Furthermore, some argue that the long-term effects of consuming these additives are not well understood, and that more research is needed to assess their safety. They also argue that the use of chemical additives in food is not necessary, and that natural preservatives and flavourings can be used instead.

In conclusion, the use of chemical additives in food is a controversial issue with valid arguments on both sides. While some argue that these additives are necessary for preserving food and enhancing its taste, others are concerned about their potential health risks. It is important for regulators, food producers, and consumers to carefully consider the evidence and arguments from both sides in order to make informed decisions about the safety and effectiveness of chemical additives in food.

The Killer That Could Save Your Life: Snake Venom

Snakes are a root of fear for many people due to the dangerous venom they produce. Around 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes each year, 2.7 million of which are envenomings. Of these, up to 180 thousand cause death, and three times as many result in amputations or permanent disabilities. However, snake venom may also save your life. Snake venom has been used to treat a variety of conditions since the 1930s, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and strokes.

Snake venom contains a variety of compounds, including a variety of powerful enzymatic and non-enzymatic peptides. Enzymes are biological catalysts used to promote the reaction of chemical compounds. Enzymes found in snake venom have a variety of applications, from antiviral and antibacterial properties. Further, several non-enzymatic peptides, such as 3FTxs and disintegrin, found in snake venom have been used as therapeutic agents for HIV, muscular dystrophy, cancer, and a variety of other ailments.

Tertiary structure of 3FTx non-enzymatic protein. Source

3FTxs, or Three-Finger Toxins, are a large group of non-enzymatic peptides found in venom that have been widely studied. Their identifiable structure appears due to the presence of several disulfide bonds in the molecule. The wide variety of these neurotoxins and the breadth of their family allow them to have a wide variety of uses, and their prevalence in venom among several snake species made them very researchable. 3FTxs have been used to treat drug-resistant HIV strains, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and other debilitating conditions.

However, snake venom comes at a cost, and an expensive one. Snake venom samples can cost anywhere from 250-4000$ per gram. These prices are in great part due to the immense difficulty in extracting snake venom. Snake venom extraction is done through a process called milking, a dangerous and tedious job, during which milkers run the risk of being bitten. Further to maintain the snake’s health, only small quantities of venom can be extracted at a time, with milkings occurring about every 30-60 days. This maintains the high price, making many therapeutics inaccessible to the general public.

Snake milking venom extraction. Source

Not only is venom extraction dangerous, but it also comes at a cost to the animal. Often snakes are kept in plastic bins stacked in rows in facilities, kept for extraction of venom. Groups have argued against the ethics of this, as the snake’s lifetime is significantly decreased by this treatment. Synthetic production of snake venom is an evolving field in recent years but has yet to be a more affordable and energy-efficient alternative to snake venom usage.

The importance of snake venom in the production of therapeutic agents cannot be underestimated, however, the mal-treatment of the animals, even if they frighten us, is an important consideration in the development of these life-saving products, particularly if those products are only accessible to people with enough money to cover the cost.

~Tristan Ruigrok

Melatonin: A Sleep Aid That Keeps Doctor’s Up At Night

Melatonin is a common over-the-counter drug in many Canadian homes. Available as a pill, gummy, or vape. Currently, this hormone is a staple of many nighttime routines. However, many medical professionals do not support melatonin’s gain of popularity.

Our brain releases melatonin when it is dark. This hormone naturally signals our circadian rhythm. Melatonin supplements function as a sleep aid.

Chemical structure of melatonin.

Melatonin is an over-the-counter natural health product in Canada. While in many other countries, it is a prescription drug.

With many forms of melatonin commercially available in Canada, use has increased dramatically from 2000-2018. The marketing of this hormone has led to uses against medical advice gaining popularity. Many use melatonin to control sleep schedule abnormalities caused by sleep disorders, anxiety, and restlessness.

Users have even incorporated melatonin into their daily routines. Claiming it is the key component allowing them to maintain a healthy sleep schedule.

However, many doctors do not recommend long-term dosing of melatonin. Doctors strictly recommend melatonin for short-term usage.

Doctors generally only support using melatonin to recover from jet lag and other short-term sleep schedule interruptions.

The use of melatonin to treat the common sleep disorder delayed sleep-wake phase disorder has been controversial. Sleep specialists prefer to treat it with bright light therapy or chronotherapy.

There is also a lack of scientific evidence supporting that melatonin use can improve the sleep quality of people with insomnia.

Insomnia is a common sleep disorder. People with insomnia may turn to melatonin for relief.

There is also evidence that long-term use may lead to your body stopping the natural production of melatonin, leaving you dependent on the hormone.

So, consult your doctor before taking melatonin. For every positive testimonial from someone who freely doses themselves, a medical professional is frowning on that decision.

Is Hair Dyeing Harmful?

Hair coloring (HC) is a beauty practice that changes one’s natural hair colour using chemicals to remove pigments in the hair shaft, melanin, by oxidizing the pigments, and replacing them with other pigments of choice. HC comes in different types, depending on how long a person wants the colour to last by changing the concentration of hydrogen peroxide (HP), ammonia, and paraphenylenediamine (PPD). Ammonia causes the swelling of the hair shaft, opening hair cuticles so HC pigments can penetrate into hair. HP oxidizes melanin in the hair strand, removing its natural colour to create a canvas. Finally, PPD complexes with HP to form a colourful complex, which then binds to our hair to give it a new colour.

Health concerns relating to hair colouring practice.

It is undeniable that HC improves the appearance drastically if you choose the right colour, but the harm of “forcing” hair to change color to health is extremely harmful that not many people are aware of. Several studies reported a possible correlation between certain chemicals in many oxidative-type HC products to a few sub-categories of cancer. Ames et. al. founded that the oxidation reaction between HP and each of the three main chemicals in oxidative-type hair colouring products – PPD, 2,5-diaminotuluene (TDA), and 2,5-diaminoanisole – yield a mutagen Bandrowski’s base. They conducted a facial absorption test on rats and found that this compound is a carcinogen to rats. Some HC users reported experiencing allergic reactions after using an at-home HC product or obtaining HC services from salons. Several hairdressers experienced frequent incidents of hand dermatitis from long-term exposure to HC products. This is because PPD, TDA, and other chemical compounds in many HC products are strong and extreme sensitizing compounds that lead to contact dermatitis (Figure 1) in many people who directly come in contact with the chemicals.

Figure 1: Contact dermatitis occurs when skin comes into contact with a substance that causes our body to elicit one or several allergic reactions. Source: Wikimedia

Why do people still choose to dye their hair?

Despite health concerns surrounding chemical compounds in HC products, HC remains a popular beauty practice these days among all ages, either to change their natural hair colours or to cover up grey hairs. For many people, HC not only improves their appearance and boosts their self-confidence if they choose a colour that matches their complexion but also a way to express their personality. To avoid the harmful effects that come from strong concentrations of HP and other compounds in HC products, experts from the US Food and Drug Administration recommend people to opt for temporary or semi-permanent HC, which contains the same chemical formula in permanent HC products, but at lower concentration. In addition, hairdressers always wear gloves, and some would wear masks to avoid inhaling the fume, while handling HC products. However, HC users and hairdressers should consult dermatologists or health experts if they experience any reactions or health concerns after using HC products to avoid the risk of having cancer.

The Controversy Behind Neem Oil

Since 2012, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) of Health Canada has banned neem oil for its use as a pesticide, despite many benefits it brings in the agricultural field. Nonetheless, neem oil has been been the subject of intensive synthetic research for its impressive biological activity.

Neem oil is commonly known as a pesticide. (source)

What is neem oil?

Neem oil, or margosa oil, is an extracted vegetable oil from the neem tree’s seeds. The seeds are the richest source containing the naturally occurring pesticide called Azadirachtin.

Structure of Azadirachtin (source)

Benefits of neem oil

Azadirachtin is found to be an effective systemic pesticide and to have growth-disrupting effects against more than 200 insect species.

In an urban settings, neem oil is a great solution to a pest infestation. A bottle of neem oil will come in handy when your garden is infested by either mealybugs, thrips, aphids, fungus gnats, spidermites and more. Neem oil effectively eliminates every stage of the pest’s lifecycle, including eggs, larvae, pupas, and adults.

Mealybugs infestation (source)

Ladybugs, earthworms, and other beneficial insects are generally not affected by neem oil.

One other known benefit of neem oil is boosting the process of wound-healing and skin regeneration. Neem oil is also found to help calm eczema and psoriasis. These health benefits are due to neem oil’s components of fatty acids, limonoid, and vitamin E.

Why banned neem oil?

Despite the proven advantages neem oil has, Health Canada said neem oil has not been certified and registered as a pest control product. The government hasn’t had sufficient evaluation to determine whether neem oil is safe to be used as a pesticide, nor the environmental risk it brings.

There are several case reports of neem oil poisoning in children and elderly caused by neem oil ingestion. These cases report symptoms of nausea, vomiting, seizures, kidney failure, restriction in blood supply to the brain. The long term effect of neem oil is also not clear.

Environmental Hazard to Reusable Material: Converting Plastics and CO2 into Fuel

Plastic waste management has become a serious issue over the last few decades. In 2019, the total amount of plastic produced since 1950 totaled just over 9.5 billion tons, and plastic production hasn’t slowed down, as 400 million tons were added to that in 2020.

The chemical bonds that make up plastics are hard to break and do not degrade in the environment quickly. This makes plastic waste challenging to deal with, leading to a large amount of plastic being discarded or incinerated.

While people have been recycling since the late 1980s, only about 6% of annual waste is recycled, and only a further 20% of that stays recycled. Current recycling methods consist of mechanical recycling, a process by which the plastic is ground or melted down into a new product, or chemical recycling, a process by which chemical additives break down the plastic into more manageable pieces to be used as raw material. However, both methods are not environmentally friendly or cheap, leading to a high volume of plastics that are not recycled (see below).

The final fate of plastics over 65 years. only 1.72% of plastics remain recycled.

Finding new ways to deal with plastic waste is a heavy focus for environmental scientists, leading to catalysis, electrochemistry, and photochemistry developments. One such method, developed by Dr. Resier and his team at the University of Cambridge, has found a way to deal with this waste in an environmentally clean way. Using a perovskite (PVK) based photocathode and a copper-palladium alloy anode in combination with a CO2 reduction catalyst, they transformed PET plastics and CO2 into a variety of useable fuels and by-products, such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen gas, and glycolic acid.

Electrochemical pathway of CO2 reduction into CO and byproducts.

The photoelectrochemical system works upon sunlight exposure under zero applied voltage and generates products 10-100 times faster than other catalytic methods. Further, the catalyst system is not sensitive to the introduction of bio-organic molecules; in fact, the presence of small amounts of food products could increase the activity of the system.

However, this process is anything but cheap. The copper-palladium alloy anode is not cheap to fabricate, and the materials required are rare, palladium being over 15 times rarer than platinum. This increases startup costs, which is not favorable to most companies who could instead dump the waste.

While advancements in this technology are still needed, there is a positive outlook for the future of plastics and environmental contaminants. We may yet be able to save our fragile, yet vital planet from our own advancement.

Tristan Ruigrok

From catnip to bug spray

Researchers from Iwate University in Japan have published a new paper that explains one aspect of the intriguing response cats have to catnip. The paper, published on June 14th 2022, shows that chewing catnip leaves maximize the release of organic compounds and repels insects. Tamako Miyazaki, who led the research, hopes that the work will pave the way for development of new insect repellants.

A photo of a domesticated cat eliciting a behavioral response to catnip. Source

Catnip is a non-toxic plant in the mint family and it has been long known to elicit several responses in cats. And, it’s not just domesticated cats that are affected, catnip induced behavior has been seen across the feline family including leopards, cougars, tigers, and lions.

Figure 1: Effect of leaf damage on the airborne emission of nepetalactone. Data adapted from Miyazaki et al.

The behavioral response which includes rolling, licking and chewing is seen in two thirds of all felines. The prevalence of these responses led Miyazaki and his team to believe there was a biological importance of the behavior.

Miyazaki and his group have previously identified nepetalactone as the compound responsible for triggering the behaviors.

Nepetalactone is a iridoid compound that is present in high concentration in several plant species including catnip. The group’s previous work, published in 2014, showed that nepetalactone had a strong insect repellant effect. The behavioral response of rolling resulted in the transfer of nepetalactone to the cats fur and provided protection from insect bites.

Following on from this study the team turned there attention to why cats are often seen chewing catnip. Considering that this behavior was also linked to insect repellence the team began by measuring the airborne emission of Nepetalactone from intact and manually damaged leaves. The manual damage was intended to simulate the effects that chewing had on the leaves.

The results, shown in figure 1, was a 20 fold increase in nepetalactone emission in the manually damaged group. When tested on mosquitos, the damaged leaves showed a much greater repellant effect than intact ones. The research group also found that leaf damage affected the cat’s response duration. On average, the studied cats responded to damaged leaves 6 minutes longer than were presented with intact leaves.

The researchers propose that chewing the catnip leaves is an important evolved response that maximizes the amount of airborne nepetalactone. When combined with rolling, the behavior maximizes the protective qualities of catnip and offers a significant benefit to cats.

The paper concludes that there maybe something to be learnt from catnip. Specifically, further studying into the structure and synthesis of nepetalactone may lead to new kinds of insect repellents. While more studies are needed to assess the effectiveness of such a use one thing for sure is that it would have the seal of approval from cats.

Forensic science: chemists are detectives in lab coat

Ever wonder how evidence is processed from a crime scene?

In the 19th century, British chemist James Marsh first developed a forensic method for detecting arsenic. And just in a period of ten years, the Marsh test solved 98 poison related cases all over England and Wales. Since then, forensic chemistry has always been an important aspect in a criminal investigation.

Source: Wikimedia

Nowadays, different substances can be identified using familiar laboratory instruments such as Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Thin Layer Chromatography, High Performance Liquid Chromatography, and more. These identifications play a crucial part in a police investigation as they provide investigators with leads suggesting how a crime is committed.

Different body fluids detection through FTIR. Source: Ayari Takamura and others

Remember that scene in the movie where a crime scene investigator sprays chemical onto something, and then trace of blood becomes apparent? This is called Luminol test. In the presence of blood, luminol reacts by fluorescing, thus emitting a blue glow in a dark room. Luminol is a water-based solution that detects blood even after it has been diluted 10,000 times.

The Kastle–Meyer test is another blood detection test that is common in crime labs. Phenolphthalein reacts with hydrogen peroxide in the presence of hemoglobin to turn from colorless to pink.

One important branch of forensic science is toxicology. A toxicology test uses principle of analytical chemistry , biology, and the study of poisons to determine the identity and relative amount of substances presence in one’s body fluids. A tox screen can provide the police with valuable information to the nature of the investigation, such as poisoning, overdose, suicidal or homicidal.

A forensic scientist is Sherlock with a microscope!

Non-Hormonal Birth Control Pills for Males May Be Within Reach

Recently, scientists at the University of Minnesota found two promising compounds that may become the first non-hormonal contraceptive drugs for males. Testing on mice found that these compounds reduce sperm count effectively and present no side effects.

There are currently no non-hormonal birth control pills on the market for females or males, despite these pills likely having fewer harmful side effects than the hormonal birth control methods available for females.

And since males continuously generate sperm while females are born with all potentially fertile eggs, it is easier for scientists to find approaches that reversibly stops sperm production in males rather than risk “spoiling” the non-renewable pool of eggs in females.

Picture depicting the meeting of sperm and egg, which leads to fertilization and pregnancy. Image Credit: https://flic.kr/p/MCcsUf

The first potential drug discovered is a chemical named YCT529, reported by Dr. Gunda Georg’s group in spring 2022. This molecule was designed to inhibit the function of the protein retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-α). Georg’s scientists found that a lack of RAR-α protein in male mice leads to sterilization, but no additional side effects. When YCT529 was orally administered to the mice for 4 weeks, their sperm count reduced drastically, and the drug was 99% effective in preventing pregnancy.

Chemical structure of non-hormonal male contraceptive YCT529. Image Credit: Ying Cai

The same group of scientists reported the second drug named EF-4-177 in early 2023. The target of this molecule is an enzyme named cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) which helps in sperm cell production. The scientists reported an over 45% decrease in sperm count of the mice after 28 days of treatment with EF-4-177.

Currently, a startup named YourChoice Therapeutics based in Berkeley, California is working to market YCT529 to humans soon. According to their website, the company has tested on dogs and primates with positive results. Their graphics show that after two weeks of treatment with YCT529, sperm levels in dogs drop to zero and primates do not produce enough sperm to be fertile.

If a side effect-free non-hormonal birth control pill for males is introduced to the public, it would expand contraceptive options for those with testicles beyond condoms and vasectomy. As well, it would make it easier for the responsibility of pregnancy prevention to be shared between partners in a relationship.

Hopefully, more research to come will soon make non-hormonal birth control pills for males a reality.

~ Ying Cai

Aspartame Health Risk Claims Seem Artificial

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that replaces sugar in several food products. Ever since James M. Schlatter discovered it in 1965, the public has had ongoing questions about whether consumption poses a potential threat to our health. The low-calorie sugar substitute is appealing with diabetes cases in Canada rising to 8.9% of the population. Canada approved the usage of aspartame in 1981, so why is there still a controversy?

Equal Sweetener Source: 怡口糖 by SoQ錫濛譙

People have accused aspartame of causing health issues related to toxicity, diabetes, cancer, seizures, and allergies. The reality is that most of these speculations are unsupported, and the government of Canada had to examine numerous research studies to allow Aspartame’s approval in the first place.

Haighton et al. reviewed past cancer epidemiology investigations that claimed to present evidence for these suspicions. After evaluating them, they concluded that the results did not give reasons to believe there was a correlation between aspartame and cancer risk. Considerations going into this decision included how many experiments used diet soft drinks as their main sample source, which contain other compounds and sweeteners besides aspartame.

Aspartame Structure Source: Benjah-bmm27

However, there are health risks that have been discovered in regards to aspartame. It metabolizes into methanol and aspartic acid, as well as phenylalanine, a compound that negatively impacts patients with the disorder phenylketonuria. Therefore companies are required to label products to caution people of phenylalanine content.

The uncertainty around aspartame encourages the need for continued studies to identify the definitive effects of long-term aspartame consumption. It will keep Canada informed to lower the discrepancy between the public view and make sure that the acceptable daily intake, currently 40 milligrams per kilogram body weight, is up to date with health safety precautions.

For now it seems aspartame is here to stay, and we can continue to enjoy the sweetener.