Author: Mark Lorch, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of Hull

How chemicals are deemed safe enough or too harmful

Mark Lorch, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of HullLeave a Comment on How chemicals are deemed safe enough or too harmful

If you’ve sat in a nail salon recently, you may well have encountered TPO or trimethylbenzoyl diphenylphosphine oxide to give it its full chemical name. You won’t have seen the name on the bottle. But if you’ve had your gelled fingers under a blue-violet lamp, TPO could well have been part of the process. TPO […]

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‘Mirror life forms’ may sound like science fiction, but scientists warn they could be deadly to humans and destroy the environment

Mark Lorch, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of HullLeave a Comment on ‘Mirror life forms’ may sound like science fiction, but scientists warn they could be deadly to humans and destroy the environment

NIAID When you look in a mirror, the reflection is fundamentally you, but with a perfect reversal of all your features. This illustrates a phenomenon we also see in the tiny world of molecules. Some molecules exist as mirror images of themselves, known as “enantiomers”, that can’t be superimposed on one another. This concept is […]

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