Causes
According to Neil Eisberg, editor of Chemistry & Industry, chemophobia is a result from a public lack of trust—compounded by sections of the media and certain environmental groups—in the chemical industry after chemical disasters:
" reputation with the general public, once extremely high, has fallen to an all-time low as a result of accidents such as Bhopal and Seveso and health scares fed by campaigns by environmental groups and encouraged by a sometimes gullible media. "But where does this lack of trust originate? According to Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, ...the present situation originated in the 'fabulous fiction' of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, which portrayed chemistry as a blind and brutal enemy of birds and other living creatures."
A contributory factor to chemophobia is due to increasing sensitivity of analytical techniques that can now detect extremely low levels of chemicals. Detected levels are usually so low as to be harmless, though media often only report the fact that the chemical has been detected in such-and-such a place and that it is harmful, but not at which levels the compound might cause harm nor the levels at which it was detected.
"Away from the high doses of occupational exposure, a whole host of unwanted chemicals finds their way into our bodies all the time, chemical baggage we carry is very small. It is only because of the great advances in analytical chemistry that we are able to detect it’s there at all."
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