Curated category
IARC Group 1 carcinogens
- CadmiumCadmium hides in plain sight. Atomic number 48 on the periodic table, it sits quietly alongside zinc and mercury in group 12, a soft silvery-white metal that…
- GasolineGasoline sits at the center of modern life in a way few substances can match. It is a transparent, yellowish liquid, flammable and faintly sweet-smelling…
- TobaccoTobacco kills more than 8 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization. About 1.3 million of those deaths happen to people who never…
- OpiumOpium is the dried latex drawn from the seed capsules of a single plant, Papaver somniferum. It is also known by a poetic Latin name: Lachryma papaveris, the…
- BerylliumBeryllium carries atomic number 4, making it one of the lightest solid metals on the periodic table, yet it is strong enough to be used in the mirrors of the…
- ArsenicArsenic carries the atomic number 33 and the chemical symbol As, but those tidy facts barely hint at the element's long, strange relationship with humanity.
- AsbestosAsbestos has been woven into human civilization for at least 4,500 years, yet for much of that time it was celebrated as a kind of miracle.
- Alcohol (drug)Alcohol, the molecule known to chemists as ethanol, has been part of human life for at least thirteen thousand years. Beer brewed by the Natufian culture in…
- BenzeneBenzene is a colorless liquid that smells sweet and helps give gasoline its aroma. It is six carbon atoms locked in a flat hexagonal ring, each carbon…
- Gamma rayIn 1900, the French chemist and physicist Paul Villard was studying the radiation pouring out of radium when he noticed something that did not fit.
- SunlightSunlight arrives at Earth after a journey of about 8.3 minutes from the surface of the Sun. Yet a photon born in the solar core may have spent between 10,000…