The Firebreak's Filthy Fifteen (Part 2)
The worst marketing scams built on activist chemophobia fear campaigns
How many times have you heard someone warn you about a chemical in a product or that some scary sounding substance can cause cancer (in mice)? The daily social media exposure to fear campaigns in our consumer products has generated widespread chemophobia. This causes anxiety and influences decision-making in an irrational manner. And where you have fear, anxiety and unreason, you have a marketing opportunity for scammers with no integrity.
The anti-chemical campaigns built on chemophobia rely more on consumer ignorance than facts.
The first fallacy is that chemicals are man-made. In reality, man is made of chemicals - everything is a chemical and many natural chemicals are far more dangerous than our well-tested synthetic chemicals.
The second scare tactic is to claim that a (synthetic) chemical may combine with another chemical to cause unknown risks. Our body is constantly combining chemicals exposures. As Bruce Ames had frequently argued, we are exposed to over one thousand chemicals in a single cup of coffee. Of the 22 chemicals that have been tested, 17 are carcinogenic to rats. We drink all of those chemicals combining in our bodies (the average meal combines 10,000 chemicals) and, still, we have managed to survive.
We need to understand Paracelsus. Everything is a poison, even water, but the dose makes the poison. To say that a level of herbicide exposure level detected on cereal can cause cancer can be scary, but the activists paid to push these fear campaigns fail to specify how many thousands of bowls of cereal, per day, we would have to consume to put ourselves at any serious level of risk.
But we just can’t be sure, can we?
There is more fear, anxiety and ignorance on chemicals than facts and evidence. The marketing opportunists have fed on consumer lack of knowledge and relentless activist anti-chemical campaigns to promote alternatives that are, literally, better than nothing. The game is simple: Focus on a fear of a chemical, promote an alternative product without that chemical and then slap a “chemical-free” label on your product. Even if there is no evidence of any risk from chemical XYZ, the very label “XYZ-free” is enough to motivate consumers to pay up for the assumed “safe” product.
Chemophobia is based on a fear of an unknown, unnatural chemical. In the consumer’s ignorance, there is no fear of what chemicals are in the alternative (fear never seems to be binary), but given relentless activist campaigns and media amplification, anything must be better than the chemical they have been told will cause them significant harm.
What are the five biggest chemical fears that contributors to the Firebreak have determined to be part of the 2025 Filthy Fifteen?
6. BPA-free and Phthalate-free
Bisphenol A or BPA is used in the production of plastics in food applications like can linings, plastic bottles and baby bottles as well as thermal paper found in certain receipts. It has been identified as an endocrine disruptor and the source of scientific disagreement on whether the levels of exposure would constitute any risk. The US, EU and Canada have banned BPA in baby bottles out of precaution … and just to turn down the noise.
Given the high level of activism against BPA (as a plastic, as a chemical and as an industrial product), the BPA-free label is widely marketed. But what then replaces BPA? Bisphenol S (BPS) has recently started to be widely used in applications that had relied on BPA. But as a less-tested product, we are only now learning how BPS is not only considered an endocrine disruptor, it may also be carcinogenic. This is a good case of a marketing scam that forced consumers to shift to an alternative with a higher risk profile.
Phthalates are a family of chemicals used as plasticizers to make plastics like PVC softer and more flexible. They are also used in certain cosmetics and food packaging applications. Phthalates have been identified as an endocrine disruptor and given it is used in many children’s products and toys, has sparked an enormous amount of regulatory debate. There are alternatives, but initial studies on the less widely used substances indicate they have been found to possibly affect female reproduction.
Like BPA, the campaign against phthalates has been part of the larger anti-plastics activism. The main issue with phthalates is that it makes PVC more versatile. As Greenpeace enters its fifth decade in their anti-PVC, anti-chlorine campaign, they are trying anything they can to denormalize the useful plastic.
While producers are rushing to provide a product that is BPA-free or phthalate-free, it is likely that the alternatives contain higher health risks. The activists seem to be more concerned about banning all plastics than protecting public health and the marketers are just responding to the dominant fear campaign on whatever they perceive the public wants to hear. Consumers are left confused and scared.
7. Paraben-free
Parabens have been widely used in cosmetics and personal care products since the 1920s. They are also used in food and pharmaceutical products given their efficient potential to preserve and protect products from bacteria and mold.
Activists like the Environmental Working Group have relentlessly campaigned against parabens claiming they are endocrine disruptors that could lead to breast cancer. These claims have been widely debunked by, for example, Cancer Research UK. The words “synthetic chemical” are often added by activists to amplify the fear. Certain parabens have been detected in urine, but as the CDC says, this does not mean there are any risks from parabens.
So while parabens are not acutely toxic or posing any significant risk to human health or the environment, once one brand started to market their cosmetics, soap or toothpaste as “paraben-free” to gain a niche market, all brands had to push into the space. Some products used Kathons as an alternative preservative, until they got banned in the EU for their negative health effects.
Meanwhile, consumers seem to be more concerned about parabens than preventing bacteria and mold in their personal care products and marketers aren’t in the business of educating the fearful. They’ll just have to throw them out sooner and buy new stocks.
8. Plastic-free Products
Plastics have been widely portrayed as detrimental to the environment with activists urging their ecologically concerned followers to try to go “plastic free”. Plastics though have always been introduced as a means to reduce the strain on the environment. See the Firebreak’s article on the sustainable advantages of plastic compared to alternativies.
In the 1960s, plastic shopping bags were aimed at reducing the rate of deforestation from all of the paper bags being used and wasted.
Plastics were introduced in the textile industry to reduce the demand for leather production and the strain on wildlife.
In building and automotive industries, plastic alternatives were seen as lighter weight, more energy efficient and easier to manufacture than steel or aluminum.
In food packaging, plastic wraps prevent food waste and spoilage as well as reducing transportation and reuse costs when compared to glass, paper or metal alternatives.
There are easier, more ecological solutions for producing and recycling plastics than the alternatives, making plastic the more environmentally-friendly choice in 15 out of 16 applications (see study). “Plastic-free” is a feel-good marketing scam, but nothing more.
9. Hormone-free, chlorine-free chicken
Organic farmers like to say that their chicken is free from any hormones. The organic food lobby wants the consumer to believe that conventional poultry farming is about pumping chemicals into the livestock to get a higher return. This is not the case, of course. It is illegal to use growth hormones on chickens in the US and the EU. The practice has been banned in the US since the 1950s. Even if it were legal, just the logistics and cost of administering the hormone implants on tens of thousands of broiler chickens would be hard to imagine.
The scam is even better played when the organic lobby tries to link conventional poultry production to hormones by conflating non-organic meat production as “using beef hormones and chlorine rinsing”. Chicken can be dipped in a chlorine bath to disinfect the product (preventing bacteria like salmonella from spreading). There is no risk with this health prevention practice, any more than going for a swim in a public swimming pool. It is basic risk management in a risk-averse narrative dominated by affluent naturopaths.
10. No “Forever Chemicals” (PFAS-free)
There are thousands of per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) coming from the versatile fluorine chain. Because they don’t break down easily (a virtue in many applications like fireproofing and waterproofing), they are used in a wide range of industrial applications. Because fluorine-based chemicals don’t break down easily, they are showing up more widely in the environment and in our bodies. While they have been used since the 1930s, the anti-PFAS campaign is fairly recent, with the term “forever chemical” only being coined in 2018 in an op-ed by a Harvard professor.
After two widely used PFAS substances had been identified to have potential health risks, the entire class of chemicals has been targeted by activist campaigns and zealous regulators. Add unlimited budgets from the manipulative litigation industry into the mix (seeing PFAS as the next Big Tobacco lawsuit honeypot), and these are the makings for a forever fear campaign. Most studies though have merely identified substances in the environment and in humans, but have not determined any significant risks.
PFAS-Free or “Contains no Forever Chemicals” labels have started appearing on a wide range of consumer products but the reality is most products never had PFAS chemicals or did not pose any health risks. PFAS has been a well-orchestrated activist fear campaign accompanied by an impressive media onslaught against a large body of useful chemical substances.
These chemical substances are hazards still looking for a disease. But the marketing scammers are already ahead of the game.
Part 3 will look at five marketing scams that try to get consumers to pay more for a better system or practice. As our activist-driven generation is busily enforcing the need for transitions to a better future (food, energy, transportation, economic transitions ...), it should come as no surprise that marketers are getting in on the show.