Several municipalities have tried and failed to ban dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) over the last twenty years. Yet neither the FDA nor the EPA are likely to curtail its omnipresence any time soon.
That's because DHMO is just a rarely used chemical name for water. The effort to ban it was part of a popular hoax perpetrated in the 1990’s meant to demonstrate the public’s lack of scientific knowledge.
In 1994, University of California, Santa Cruz student Craig Jackson advanced the hoax and created what would become dhmo.org, a parody website that approaches water as if it were a dangerous chemical. Among other hazards, the website lists the following reasons to be wary:
- Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
- Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
- Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
- DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
- Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
- Contributes to soil erosion.
- Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
- Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
- Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
- Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
- Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
- Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
- Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia
What is most interesting about this pseudoscientific approach is that, despite two decades of fame, the joke continues to cause alarm among those who fail to do the most basic background research. According to a 2004 article by the Associated Press, city council officials in the town of Aliso Viejo, California became so concerned about it when a misinformed paralegal brought the matter to their attention, “that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.”
As recently as 2007, the New Zealand Herald reported that Otago Prime Minister Jacqui Dean tried to ban DMHO in her province. She was the second MP in the country to get behind such a campaign without knowing what was really being supported.
Although it was meant to be lighthearted, the DHMO phenomenon bears the typical hallmarks of other serious campaigns that have pseudoscientific foundations. It's a revealing – if frightening - insight into how some politicians and activists operate. Understanding why anti-DHMO arguments make no sense can help us to see how skewing the facts can lead to faulty conclsions.
First, we must break the argument down into its component parts, since it is actually two separate claims. The first is that DMHO is a dangerous chemical, and the second, that it ought to be banned.
While all of the points that Jackson makes on his website are technically correct, they misdirect the reader by needlessly stoking fears that would be uncalled for if one knew the actual nature of the substance. In truth, common sense keeps us safe from many of water’s hazardous effects, while allowing us to enjoy its vast range of benefits.
Take, for instance, the claim that DHMO is found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions. This fact means nothing on its own, but many who read it are liable to conflate correlation with causation, assuming that because it was found in tumors, it must be contributing to disease. Upon closer scrutiny, even the correlation is weak – otherwise one would expect to find that consuming less water would decrease the incidence of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions, which it does not.
This is the same kind of mistake that anti-vaccination proponents make about thimerosal and autism. Removal of the preservative did not cause autism rates to fall, but the assumption of causation remains prevalent among groups opposed to vaccines. Such diversions can have a far higher cost than the risk posed by the products being railed against, as evidenced by the needless resurgence of measles and other preventable diseases in wealthy countries like the U.S. and the U.K.
DMHO does become dangerous in certain situations. Boiling water can burn you; floods, hurricanes, and blizzards (all of which contain a lot of water) have killed thousands throughout history.
Under normal conditions, however, our interactions with water are quite safe. We drink it, bathe in it, and swim in it. If we consider the ratio between our safe encounters with water and the encounters that do us harm, the relative risk is extremely small.
This does not mean, however, that risks ought to be ignored. We are taught from a young age not to stick our hands in boiling water, not to keep electrical appliances near our bathtubs, and to stay indoors during hurricanes. These precautionary measures are important, though they only account for a small piece of the overall picture.
Once we understand the relative safety of water, it appears evident that it should not be banned. Moreover, because the benefits of interacting with water (it is largely responsible for our continued survival) far outweigh the potential risks, such legislative mandates could only cause more harm to citizens than good.
In the case of DHMO, it should also be mentioned that the sheer infeasibility of a ban ought to stop any legislation before it gets off the ground. How does one make rain illegal? It is in exploring this aspect of the process, in fact, where many of the government officials who get duped into campaigning against water find out that they’ve erred.
Pseudoscience is a two-way street; the interpretation of the facts often matters as much as their presentation. If fallacious logic and cleverly cherry-picked facts can lead to unfounded fears about something as obviously benign as water, it should be no surprise that people fall prey to misrepresentations of more complex issues, such as vaccination, evolution and climate change.
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