Social chemistry

I was at a conference where someone said something about the Holocene. I suddenly thought this was wrong. The world has changed too much. So I said: ‘No, we are in the Anthropocene.’ I just made up the word on the spur of the moment. Everyone was shocked. But, it seems to have stuck.

Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen.

Abstract

This article is both an essay to propose social chemistry as a new scientific discipline and a preface of the books Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World. Environmental chemistry is a fast emerging discipline aiming at the understanding the fate of pollutants in ecosystems and at designing novel processes that are safe for ecosystems. Past pollution should be cleaned, and future pollution should be predicted and avoided (Lichtfouse et al. 2005a). Such advices are still not applied by humans as demonstrated by the Fukushima nuclear event and global warming. Human errors are repeatable. We therefore suggest a possible solution, which involves bridging chemistry and society by integrating social sciences in chemical research. In particular, citizen discourse analysis should be useful to design chemicals that are both innovative and accepted by society. Then, we present the recent success of environmental chemistry through the foundation of the Association of Chemistry and the Environment; the increase in the impact factor of Environmental Chemistry Letters from 0.814 in 2006 to 2.109 in 2009; and over 35,000 chapter downloads of the book Environmental Chemistry. Lastly, we highlight major topics of the new book series Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World (Lichtfouse et al. 2011a, b). The two first volumes are entitled Nanotechnology and Health Risk, and Remediation of Air and Water Pollution.