November 2005 – Page 3 – David Bradley

Elemental Celebrities

I just wonder how many British tabloid readers are going to be turned on to chemistry with the news this week that the Royal Society of Chemistry has decided to associate various celebrities with an appropriate element from the periodic table. They kick off by labelling Rebekah Wade Editor of infamous red-top The Sun with bromine and her partner soap star Ross Kemp with caesium. An RSC “scientist” is reported as saying that life is all about chemistry and recent violent reactions between Wade and Kemp could be down to the explosive chemistry between them.

Other “stars” elementalised by the RSC press office at the beginning of Chemistry Week include:

Jordan ï¿½ Silicon, Mick Jaggerï¿½ Neon, Wayne Rooney ï¿½ Sulfur, Tim Henman ï¿½ Boron, Anne Robinson ï¿½ Chlorine, George Galloway ï¿½ Mercury, Colin Montgomery ï¿½ Beryllium, Steve Redgrave ï¿½ Gold, Bruce Forsyth ï¿½ Helium, Ken Livingston ï¿½ Palladium, Russell Crowe- Iron, Jose Mourinho ï¿½ Arsenic, Jane Goody ï¿½ Lead, Thierry Henry ï¿½ Silver, Anne Robinson – Promethium, Andrew Flintoff ï¿½ Iridium, Roy Keane ï¿½ Krypton

For some reason quizmistress Anne Robinson gets two mentions and they spell sulfur incorrectly using the old “ph” version despite a ten-year RSC/IUPAC ruling that it should be spelled with an “f” these days.

Drop me a line or leave a comment, if you cannot work out why a particular celeb gets assigned a certain element, although most are “obvious” (to tabloid readers, at least).

Arsenic Problem

On the day I publish an item on a new arsenic assay , I received an email from an old contact of mine Dipankar Chakraborti of Jadavpur University who is at the forefront of As science and finding a solution to this insidious problem facing the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

Here’s what he had to say:

“To understand the exact magnitude of groundwater arsenic contamination and its health effect in West Bengal, India we have studied one of the arsenic affected district Murshidabad out of nine affected districts in West Bengal in details for last seven years with twenty people in our group including a dermatologist, neurologist, gynaecologist, pathologist, analytical chemist, biochemist, geologist, civil engineer, etc.

We have analyzed about 30,000 water samples from this district alone and screened 25,274 people with our medical group for arsenical skin lesions and other related arsenic toxicity. We have also analyzed 3843 biological samples (hair, nail urine and skin scales).

We have studied in details the district Murshidabad as a whole and semi micro and micro level studies in one block, one Gram Panchayet (cluster of villages), one village and published five papers in peer-reviewed international journals.”

Email me if you’d like to receive a PDF file carrying the complete citations from Dipankar.

For more information on the arsenic problem, read my Guardian article on the subject.

Atomic Arsenic Assessment

Researchers in Vietnam and Switzerland have developed the first large-scale method for validating the microbial reporter-based test for measuring arsenic concentrations in natural water resources. Their test is based on a modified bacterium (Escherichia coli), engineered to bioluminesce on induction by arsenic ions. The team has developed specific protocols for overcoming interference from iron and has now confirmed the viability of the test against results obtained using atomic absorption spectroscopy.