I remember taking AP Chemistry in high school and nothing more after that. Barely dabbled into topics about organic chemistry.
In the lectures about chemical reactions, I always wondered, “So I get the electrons wanting to get into stable states, yeah. But what else could this molecule or atom react with? Aren’t there like, so many things out in the real world that could have a multitude of different reactions with this?”
Knowing medicines and household products have so many complicated things in them with names I can’t even pronounce, what do manufacturers do to ensure it doesn’t harm anyone or anything that it’s not supposed to?
I get that everything still comes with a warning label, but can someone give me some layman insight into how companies think about safety and how to chemically engineer “safer” products?
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Straight up testing.
Most substances are pretty well known, even with complicated names.
Mix 10 non dangerous substances together and together and they are likely not dangerous either.
Knowing how two substances behave you can estimate what both together do.
Every single products especially medical and cosmetic go through a long testing period. Starting with tests on things like pig skin, moving to living animals like mice or rats and even more human like monkeys. At the end there is a test period on volunteers.
Only if all these steps are done without a single problem the product gets released.
In most western country’s this entire testing period is controlled or verified by companies or state, not related to the manufacturer of the product.
Of course all this can still oversee problems, think of asbestos wich was deemed to be safe for years and years.
Our technology and testing has improved alot since, but noone can ever be sure that something like asbestos doesn’t happen again.
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