Trial and error is a process inherent to the scientific method. The academic community only accepts theses whose hypotheses have been validated by a demonstration, which usually involves a previous series of failures, adjustments and discards. The problem arises when one or more of these errors slip, inadvertently or on purpose, into the verification phase. Because that erratic seed of chaos usually produces, sooner or later, an unwanted reality.
An idea that seemed great thus becomes a technique or product with potentially disastrous consequences. There are more possibilities of catastrophe the greater the diffusion, since the opportunities for latent damage increase, in addition to the greater the apparent success, the more resounding the subsequent failure. History is rich with supposedly brilliant solutions until, as Beethoven said of the opening notes of his Fifth Symphony, “Fate knocks at the door.”
Let them ask, if not, amazing material. Asbestos, or asbestos, was already used in the Neolithic to produce fireproof pottery. It was also used by the ancient Greeks, who wove these mineral fibers to wrap mortal remains in funeral pyres so that the ashes of their loved ones would not fall into the embers.
The Industrial Revolution brought this silicate to its peak in multiple applications for daily life, despite a danger detected as early as 1899. After that alarm, launched in Victorian London by Dr. Montague Murray, in 1924 the first death from asbestosis was certified. . An English textile worker died of this pulmonary fibrosis which, with cancer of the same organ, has led the lethal diagnoses due to continued exposure to asbestos.
In Spain, a leading construction company became a symbol of this scourge. Founded in 1907, Uralita, which became synonymous with fiber cement, had to compensate both its workers and residents of its factory in Barcelona in 2010 for harmful asbestos fumes. Five years later it changed its name to Coemac to stop being identified with the dangerous material.
The peninsular asbestos boom had flourished in the post-civil war, especially with the construction boom of Franco's developmentalism. Until its outright ban in 2001.
There are also substances that take time to find their moment of glory, and misfortune. It happened with DDT. Already synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler, dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane had to wait until the Second World War to be valued as a pesticide. The Japanese Empire was the world's leading producer of another element that kept tropical diseases such as malaria, dysentery, dengue and typhoid at bay, but, of course, it was not going to provide its product to the enemy. This is how DDT found stardom in the West.
Rediscovered in 1939 by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller, who for this discovery would win the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1948, this powerful insecticide protected the United States troops deployed in the jungles of the South Pacific.
After the war, it became the pesticide par excellence for crops. 40,000 tons were produced per year between 1950 and 1980. It was prescribed by the WHO to end malaria worldwide. Until a 1962 essay, Silent Spring, by biologist Rachel Carson, evidenced the high toxicity of this agent for the environment and, when moving up the food chain, for humanity.
DDT affected both wildlife and people with infertility, tumors, neurological problems and other severe disorders. A decade later, it began to be banned in the US and other countries. Today only India uses it after its eradication from China in 2007.
In 1949, one of the most controversial Nobel Prizes in the annals of the award was awarded. The Physiology and Medicine award went to the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz. Known since 1927 for his pioneering role in cerebral angiography, in 1935 he debuted a technique performed by the hands of his neurosurgeon colleague Pedro Almeida Lima. By injecting alcohol into the frontal lobe and, later, severing nerve fascicles there with a leucotome (a sharp instrument with a retractable mechanism), he claimed to improve symptoms of depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety.
Lobotomy caused a sensation in psychiatric hospitals in the mid-20th century. At least 75,000 were performed, promoted by influential neurosurgeons, such as the North American Walter Freeman with his transorbital approach. Although 5% of the patients died during the intervention and others committed suicide after it, some remained more docile. But they also ended up, for the most part, stupid, emotionally dull, incontinent, and dysfunctional in other areas.
The release of antipsychotic medications such as chlorpromazine in the 1950s reduced the use of lobotomies. By the 1970s, the use of this technique had declined to the point of irrelevance.
One of many innovations that appeared in the groundbreaking sixties, plastic bags marked a before and after in shopping. Fabric and paper companies had dominated the sector until then. However, the Swedish company Celloplast patented a one-piece design in 1965, due to Sten Gustaf Thulin, which made those two materials obsolete.
Polyethylene, whose formula was secret during World War II, surpassed both in cost, malleability and impermeability. The plastic bags were also more resistant than the paper ones and why carry a cloth one if the new ones were given away as gifts?
This is how, a decade later, eight out of every ten shopping bags in Europe were already made of polyethylene. The situation worsened in the following decade, when there was almost no store in the world that did not provide this free convenience that, in reality, hid an unpayable price.
The alarm was raised in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. This oceanographer came across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, designated in capital letters because of its practically continental size. The largest of its kind on the planet, today it is divided in two, but both halves together are almost quadruple the size of Spain.
It began to be known that each of those innocent bags takes a century and a half to biodegrade. Bangladesh led the way for other nations by banning disposable bags made from ethylene, a petroleum derivative, in 2002. In 2011, one million of them were consumed globally per minute (again: per minute), but by the end of the decade two out of three countries had begun to regulate this carnival of nonsense.
The 1970s were characterized in the West, among other aspects, by the hedonism resulting from the sexual revolution, without yet lashing out at the scourge of AIDS. Hence, at that time a brand new invention began to cause a sensation that, with antecedents in interwar solar lamps, allowed you to show off a sexy tan all year round.
Who died in 2023, Friedrich Wolff patented in 1970 a bed that radiated ultraviolet rays with which to get tan. He industrialized his production five years later with that of his brother Jorg and, in 1977, the capital of his native country inaugurated the first location with sessions open to any passerby. The system soon spread from Berlin to the world.
However, voices were soon heard warning of the health risks of these devices. Immune, ocular and epidermal conditions, including the dreaded skin cancer, were among the possible consequences.
Spain regulated the use of these devices in 2002. Minors, for example, cannot use tanning beds. Nor in the United Kingdom and part of the United States, as well as in France since 2013. Brazil directly banned its use in 2009, as did Australia five years later. In this ban, data such as almost half of melanomas in patients up to thirty years old can be attributed to sessions in UV cabins, according to 2018 statistics from the French health agency.
