In high school, I had a chemistry teacher who loved to terrify us with grisly tales of all the chemicals lurking in our everyday lives. According to him, these chemicals were hazardous, and our exposure to them would inevitably lead to certain death.

Never mind that he couldn’t quite pronounce the names of these supposedly deadly chemicals (aspartame was always “aspartane,” and antiperspirant became “antipresspirant”), these chemicals were everywhere, hiding in our food and hygiene products, quietly waiting to kill us.