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Episode 14: Chemical Stripes – Visualizing Chemical Trends of the Past Influencing Today - with Dagny Aurich and Emma Schymanski
Live from SETAC Europe 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Dagny Aurich and Emma Schymanski from the Univesity of Luxembourg about how the "climate stripes" data visualisation approach for climate change was adapted to "chemical stripes" to show the increasing ubiquity of persistent compounds in society and the enviornment.
The number of chemicals threatening global health is rising rapidly, with increasing numbers of persistent compounds accumulating in our environment. There are alarming signals that elimination of existing and prevention of further contamination can no longer be delayed. Communicating this need for action to the scientific and non-scientific community in an understandable way poses a challenge for many researchers.
This work shows the possibility to use chemical stripes to help communicate this message, modifying the existing graphics of the climate stripes - showing the trend of global warming - and applying it to the chemical space. Specific persistent organic pollutants (POPs) including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), triazines and triazoles were selected based on their presence in regulatory lists, such as the Stockholm Convention. With the use of patent data for those compounds coming from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the comparison to the rise of overall chemical numbers registered in databases like the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) registry, a definite trend can be seen: Patent and overall chemical numbers are on the rise and regulations do not stop this trend. Often the drafting, discussion, and adoption of legislation takes decades, even when there is need for quick action.
The minimalistic but intuitive visualization of the chemical stripes helps communicate this information by indicating the evolving chemical numbers in traffic-light colours. The chemical and historical data presented, using the model of stripes, will be accompanied with open-source code (in progress) for others to generate their own stripes for a given set of chemicals. The colour scheme raises awareness of the "red" state we face today, with environmental pollution impacting our health and the ecosystems we live in. All substance classes investigated so far revealed the same pattern. Overall, the aim of these graphics is to emphasize the urgent need for elimination and prevention of persistent chemicals by illustrating the exponential growth of patent and chemical numbers over time, in the hope that this will help with the identification and prioritization of harmful substance classes and to help stimulate further action, without decades of delay.
See Dagny and Emma's presentation at SETAC here: https://zenodo.org/record/7885032
And the original publication showing the chemical stripes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01735
To follow more of the work of ZeroPM, follow our Zenodo Community , youtube channel and our webpage to find all our resources ZeroPM.eu.
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By ZeroPM - Zero pollution of persistent and mobile substancesLive from SETAC Europe 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Dagny Aurich and Emma Schymanski from the Univesity of Luxembourg about how the "climate stripes" data visualisation approach for climate change was adapted to "chemical stripes" to show the increasing ubiquity of persistent compounds in society and the enviornment.
The number of chemicals threatening global health is rising rapidly, with increasing numbers of persistent compounds accumulating in our environment. There are alarming signals that elimination of existing and prevention of further contamination can no longer be delayed. Communicating this need for action to the scientific and non-scientific community in an understandable way poses a challenge for many researchers.
This work shows the possibility to use chemical stripes to help communicate this message, modifying the existing graphics of the climate stripes - showing the trend of global warming - and applying it to the chemical space. Specific persistent organic pollutants (POPs) including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), triazines and triazoles were selected based on their presence in regulatory lists, such as the Stockholm Convention. With the use of patent data for those compounds coming from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the comparison to the rise of overall chemical numbers registered in databases like the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) registry, a definite trend can be seen: Patent and overall chemical numbers are on the rise and regulations do not stop this trend. Often the drafting, discussion, and adoption of legislation takes decades, even when there is need for quick action.
The minimalistic but intuitive visualization of the chemical stripes helps communicate this information by indicating the evolving chemical numbers in traffic-light colours. The chemical and historical data presented, using the model of stripes, will be accompanied with open-source code (in progress) for others to generate their own stripes for a given set of chemicals. The colour scheme raises awareness of the "red" state we face today, with environmental pollution impacting our health and the ecosystems we live in. All substance classes investigated so far revealed the same pattern. Overall, the aim of these graphics is to emphasize the urgent need for elimination and prevention of persistent chemicals by illustrating the exponential growth of patent and chemical numbers over time, in the hope that this will help with the identification and prioritization of harmful substance classes and to help stimulate further action, without decades of delay.
See Dagny and Emma's presentation at SETAC here: https://zenodo.org/record/7885032
And the original publication showing the chemical stripes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01735
To follow more of the work of ZeroPM, follow our Zenodo Community , youtube channel and our webpage to find all our resources ZeroPM.eu.