SciShow Tangents - Oil

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Oil: it's a ubiquitous substance humans have been relying on for longer than you might think. We cook with it, we moisturize with it, we run machines with it - it keeps slipping into places we least expect to find it, for good and for ill... SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen [The Gauntlet]Original Crisco oil plantCompany that produces CriscoProcess to turn liquid oil into solidFair Packaging and Labeling Act decadeUpton Sinclair bookTwo oils in modern CriscoKream Krisp vs. Crisco[Trivia Question]Value of Spanish extra virgin olive oil stolen in August 2023https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/19/olive-oil-prices-surge-over-100percent-leading-to-cooking-oil-thefts.htmlhttps://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spanish-police-seize-74-tonnes-stolen-olives-amid-soaring-prices-2023-10-06/[Fact Off]Russell Martin Bliss contaminated Times Beach, Missouri with waste oil to stop dustUsing human/animal hair to adsorb oil spillshttps://www.mdpi.com/2076-3298/7/7/52https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2213343715000330https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/04/980424032349.htmhttps://time.com/6262631/philippines-oil-spill-cleanup-hair/[Ask the Science Couch]Saturated/unsaturated fat chemistry and how they influence bloodstream lipidshttps://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Book%3A_General_Biology_(Boundless)/03%3A_Biological_Macromolecules/3.03%3A_Lipid_Molecules_-_Introduction#https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/how-its-made-cholesterol-production-in-your-bodyhttps://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000871[Butt One More Thing]Mineral oil used as a lubricant laxativehttps://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/laxative-oral-route/before-using/drg-20070683?p=1https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804525/

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's the Delightly Competitive Science Knowledge Showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green. And joining me this week, as is science expert Sari Riley. Hello! And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz! I don't think you've ever said hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents in the five or whatever years we've done this. What do I usually say?

Just, hello! Right? Maybe not. I feel like it says hello and welcome every time. It's in the script. I feel like I say hello and welcome every time.'s in the script i think i feel like i say hello welcome every time this feels new to me anyway sorry hi that's how i start dear hank y'all we're all tired sari's had a stressful but exciting week sam did not sleep well last night. I also got beat up by a child while he was sleeping. I want to know,

what's your go-to blanket? I have it in this room. Yeah, I also have my blanket. It's very old. Oh, is yours yellow too, Sam? Mine's orange. Sam's looks very fuzzy. These are just like the crappy

Target blankets you can get. Sorry, Target, I love these blankets. You want to sponsor the show with these blankets this is also a target blanket oh wow it's like soft knit but the best thing about this blanket is that you can put it over your head and it's porous enough that you can still breathe um so you can immerse yourself in the darkness or your sad cave or your calm yeah i. I can't do a knit blanket. It's too many holes. Makes me too cold. I feel like it's too many holes.

I feel like that's like a not a Montana choice to have a knit blanket. Yeah, true. Mine is a gray blanket that was purchased for me by the YouTuber Johnny Harris after I did him a favor of some kind, which is weird. And it's in our house. It's called the conversation blanket because it's the blanket that you get in with somebody when you need to have a conversation with them. What the heck?

What does that mean? Is it like you need to be comforted by something while you have a hard conversation? Or is it like, it's like, or, and we need to talk about this thing that happened at school. And he was like,

I'll go get the conversation blanket. Did he name it that or was it that before? Yeah, he named it that. Oh, poor little guy. It's a very good blanket. I should send you guys this blanket because you have done many favors for me

and I only did one favor for Johnny Harris. Did he know it was a good blanket when he sent it to you? Oh, yeah. He's like, this is the blanket I get for everybody who does me a favor. And I was like, that's weird.

I love that. Yeah. You're stealing his signature move. To be clear, I would love this blanket. It is a good move. Do not not send it. But you are kind of encroaching on Johnny Harris's thing that he's carefully established for himself. Yeah, because someday you guys are going to do a favor for Johnny Harris and he's going to send you a blanket

and you're going to be like, eh, that's nice and everything. No. I already have that one. What's going to happen is that someday he's going to do a favor for someone else. They're going to send him the blanket and then they're going to say,

Hank Green taught me about this blanket and he sends it to everyone. And then he'll be so mad. Let's just make, yeah. I'm going to ruin his move. You could buy the blanket company, print your face on every blanket. And it's just like, you're welcome. DFTB is exclusively blankets now.

It's blanket of the month. Your house will be filled up with blankets before you know it. No, it's different. I only sell to one guy. I have one client. Johnny. You know what I'm saying? His name is Johnny Harris.

Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. At the end of the episode, one of these two people will be crowned the winner. What were you going to call us? I don't know. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem. This week, oh my gosh, it's from me. I hear a lot that the dinosaurs died and then they got swept over with mud and slime down into the earth where it bubbled and boiled until many years later they became the

oil. The goopy black glock that we slurp with propriety and then burn, burn, burn it to fuel our society. Black gold, Texas tea, petrol for you, gas to me. But that's not really what happened. It was mostly plant matter. The dinosaurs were way too dispersed and scattered. But oil isn't just that stuff. Oh, no. At first, it was anything you'd light for a glow. Squish an olive or corn, sunflower or peanut. Cook with it, clean with it, do what you want. You could burn all these oils, but you can only eat some. They're different, it's clear, but in some ways they're one,

some chemical ways with long carbon chains, whether it comes from a drill or from grains. It powers our cars, it powers our bodies, it powers the most peculiar of hobbies. So wonderful that we just can't get enough. But what is it then? This wonderful, terrible,

powerful stuff. Sari, what's the oil? That that was great that was really good you had so many rhymes it was susan in a way too yeah yeah a lot of rhymes i've kind of gotten yeah stuck into a particular scheme it's based on children's books it's where i guess where i got that you read i used to read a lot of those you know i'm reading less children's books now uh which is terrible and very sad because yeah reads by himself he's like i just want to read my book by myself this is a conversation blanket for one me in the book sari what what is oil i mean you kind of defined it. I don't know that I did.

Well, you defined it in its many, many forms. I don't think oil is a precise word as much as it has a vaguely chemical definition. I feel like we use the word oil for any number of liquids. That you can burn. Yeah, that you can burn yeah that you can burn that are and and like they're more or less flammable too like they're usually smooth and sticky and slippery and it's like alcohol will burn but that's that's not oil because it's not thick and and it's not is alcohol insoluble in water or like mixes with water easily?

No, it mixes with water. So alcohol mixes with water. Oils generally are immiscible or insoluble in water. They mix with other oils or like other organic solvents, but not polar water. They mix with nonpolar substances. They're mostly like chemically speaking, they're mostly hydrocarbons, which are molecules with a carbon chain, so carbon atoms that are connected to each other, and then a bunch of hydrogen atoms sticking off of those carbons. Sometimes there are other additives in there. You throw in an oxygen, you throw in a silicon, things like that. But largely,

those hydrocarbons are the base of a lot of oils. But these descriptions apply to food oils, animal and vegetable oils, fuel oils like petroleum, mineral oils, which are actually just- Oh, right. Mineral oils. I forgot about those. I'm over here trying to figure out what the hell mineral oils are. What is a mineral oil so it's it's again like an imprecise definition so that i think they were called mineral oils to juxtapose them with like animal and vegetable oils so there's the categories and 20 questions you got animals vegetables and minerals and so they say mineral oils are oils that come from rocks but oils that come from rocks, but oils that come from rocks are just petroleum derivatives.

They're still organic molecules. They're still made of carbon and hydrogen. But because we extracted them from rock, then we categorize them under mineral oil. And mineral oils are, even though they're made of the same organic molecules as food oils, they aren't digestible by us. Sometimes they can be toxic depending on what the additives are in there but it's just like another category as part of that that makes sense if i freeze an oil is it still an oil i mean that's a good question because is

butter an oil butter is not an oil wax isn't an oil the wax is different chemically this is a one where i i my brain says there's probably like a chemical molecular definition of this and there's not it's just sort of like yeah it's non-polar and it's carbon chains and it's and it's slippery i feel like slippery is such a big important part of it. The lubricant. Yeah. We have skin oils. It makes our skin slippery. If I collected enough of my skin oil, could I put it in a genie lamp and burn it with a wick? Probably.

Yes. The answer is yes. I'm almost certain that I could. I was thinking of the somehow worse version of that question is could you fry an egg with it? Just pour a bunch of cereal in the pan. The answer to that is also yes. Yeah, I think it's also. You could totally do that. Could I form it into a candle and light it and burn?

And yeah, maybe. These are all the great new P4A perks that you're coming up with. Well, that's like Shrek's little candle ear. Yeah, his ear candle. Pulls it out. Oh, yeah. Shrek did. Yeah, his ear candle. Pulls it out. Oh, yeah. Shrek did. Yeah, we're not the first people to think of this.

The word oil sounds interesting to me. I would love to know where it came from. The English word oil is from the French word. Because the French love to make things fancy. And oil sounds like a very fancy word where you kind of mush all the letters together. It's from the Latin word oleum, which comes from a Greek word that sounds basically the same that meant olive oil. Specifically like olive was related to the word elea, I think is how you would say it, which means like olive tree or olive fruit. So the first oil that we talked about was specifically olive oil.

And then from there, it broadened to other types of oily substances. That's super interesting because of course, when you say oil, the first thing I think of is the ground oil, crude oil. So petroleum, oleum is in there. The Latin word oleum is in there. And so petra means rock and oleum means oil. And so oleum just means rock. It's mineral oil again. All right, you guys.

That means it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show. And would you believe that it's happening again? It's the gauntlet. Yes. Let's see what the rules are this time are y'all are y'all ready to learn about the gauntlet again the rules are an entire page long

no they're not they're not but they're not it's not far off okay so we're gonna have a series of seven questions of decreasing difficulty. I will be directing the questions to you from one to seven, asking just one at a time. And you can choose to answer or pass. You answer and are correct. You get the points of the question number. So if it's the first question, you get seven points. Question six gets you six points.

If you're wrong, you'll lose that amount of points and your opponent can steal for that same point. But if they're wrong, they don't lose any points. Why? Don't ask questions. If your opponent attempts to steal the question and gets it wrong, the question will be off the table for future rounds. If you pass, your opponent will get asked the next question. It's a little less difficult. After we have gone through all the questions, we will revisit any past questions. Only this time they can't be skipped. If you get the answer wrong, your opponents can steal from you.

And remember to pay attention to all the questions because you might get some clues to help you out with those harder questions. Today, the gauntlet will not just be a game, but a tour through the history of that most hallowed of ingredients in American cuisine. What'd you say? I thought maybe you were going to say we would die if we lost or something. Yeah, it's not just a game. It's a lifestyle.

It's a song. No, it's a tour of a hallowed American ingredient, Crisco. Oh, okay. Is Crisco even an oil? We don't know for sure. Sam, this first question is for you. Crisco was launched in 1911 and it quickly became popular as the first solid shortening made entirely from a liquid plant oil. However, the company that made Crisco didn't actually state what that plant was in their advertising. What plant is Crisco made from? Oh, no.

I have to pass, I think. I think that's the right call. I'm not going to try to steal because that will knock out the question for the future. And I got to get one. You want to save that. You want to save that for the future. See if it comes back.

You get a hint, maybe. All right. Question number six for Sari. Today, Crisco is manufactured and sold by a company called B&G Foods. But they aren't the original manufacturers of Crisco. What was the original company that made and sold Crisco? Hint, you have heard of this company. I'm going to pass, I think.

I'm going to pass too. Okay. You don't lose points if you get it on the pick up. I know, I know, I know. All right. Sam, question number five. Shortly after the release of Crisco, the manufacturers published a book called The Story of Crisco,

which was written by Marion Harris Neal. The book contained 250 tested recipes as well as a brief explanation of, quote, the Crisco process, the chemical technique that allowed for a liquid oil to be turned into a solid fat. What is the technical term

underlying the Crisco process? I wasn't going to pass just to make it interesting, but now I got it because I have no idea. And I bet Sari knows. Yeah, yes. It's a chemistry term. It's hydrogenation.

Hydrogenation is the right answer. We have our first points of the gauntlet awarded. Wow. Love that. This is the best I've ever done. This is the most points I've ever had in a gauntlet. I can really sense your excitement from here. So, hydrogenation is when you add hydrogen atoms across double bonds, and it takes those

double bonds and it turns them into single bonds, and that turns liquids into solids when it comes to these long chains. The 19th century scientist Paul Sabatier uncovered the process that could make hydrogen, do hydrogenation. Other scientists have adapted that over the years. And it became Crisco due to the fact that the result didn't need refrigeration and could be stored for quite a while. Unlike other solid fats. Question number four, Sarah, you get this one as well. Instead of describing the ingredients of Crisco, the story of Crisco contains the incredible line, Crisco is Crisco and nothing else.

That's kind of scary. It also describes Crisco as, as quote a strictly vegetable product so just for so we're clear we didn't put any animals in this thing even though it was not made from a vegetable at the time companies weren't required to disclose an ingredients list with their food that changed with the passage of the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. In what decade was that act enacted? Okay, now I've got five whole points. I can afford to lose some.

All right. B, 70s? That's not right. God, I'm so scared. I don't lose points. I'm so scared I don't lose points I'm gonna guess it was like I don't think it could have been the 60s because they didn't give a shit about anything in the 60s

did they? but could it have been the 80s? it was the 80s it was the 60s darn it it was passed in 1967 or it was passed in 1966 and It was passed in 1967. Or it was passed in 1966 and it was enacted in 1967 under our good old friend Lyndon B. Johnson.

Just so that we have the information we need to be able to decide between products so products don't say things like, Crisco is Crisco. And nothing else. We promise. I was just trying to imagine like Don Draper reading the back of a package

and seeing what the ingredients were. And I couldn't picture it. He'd be so mad if he, were he to look at the back of a package and see the ingredients, I think. Would he be a madman, maybe? He'd be a madman. He'd be a madman.

The regulatory capture is what he'd shake his fist and say. That's what the dads all say. Regulatory capture. That's what my dad says all the time. All right. It's Sam's turn to try and get this one right. Crisco ended up replacing lard in many households for a variety of reasons, like the fact that it had a more neutral flavor

and could accommodate more dietary restrictions. And a few years before Crisco burst onto the scene, the author Upton Sinclair published a fictional novel detailing the horrors of the meatpacking industry. Do you know the name of that book? I do. It's called The Jungle. Nice. Coming in with that non-science knowledge, Sam Schultz, our everyman. I know a little bit about the arts, very little, but I learned this in high school. Includes a scene featuring vats of lard and the men who cooked them, who sometimes fell into the vats. The whole point was to gross people out, and Upton Sinclair was very effective. His book was part of a broader movement that triggered public outcry about conditions in the marketplace,

and that led to the passage of the Food and Drugs Act, which prohibited the sale of food and drugs that are misbranded or adulterated. Hooray! Good job, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, the regulatory capture continues. Yeah, it does. Sari, if you look at Crisco's website today, their page for the, quote, all-vegetable shortening product describes it as the original classic blue no pantry can do without.

But a quick look at the ingredients list shows that there are two oils, neither of which are the original oil. Can you name the two? Hmm. My mom used Crisco so much. Canola oil, sunflower oil. This is how you get into trouble in this game. Oh, no. Because neither of those are correct.

Oh, neither. Jeez. I would have given for one. I'll give you it for one. I don't know any other oils. It's not. It couldn't be like olive oil and coconut oil. That sounds disgusting. Is that right? No, no, it's not it couldn't be like olive oil and coconut oil that sounds disgusting

is that right no no it's not that can't be it is uh soybean oil and palm oil oh that makes sense neutral yeah i wasn't thinking neutral enough all right sam we're at the bottom of the gauntlet in 1920 the united states supreme court handed down a decision on the case of Procter & Gamble versus the Brown Company. The makers of Crisco had sued the Brown Company for producing a shortening product through a similar hydrogenation

process. What is the name for the exclusive right over an invention? Is it having the patent for it? Yeah. You got it. Their product was called Cream Crisp, both with a K.

Ew. Ew, ew, ew. And they ended up selling their patent to Procter & Gamble due to the cost of the case, possibly. I kind of like it. The crisp is confusing. Yeah.

Well, I guess because you fry stuff. Oh, you crisp the stuff up in the cream. Yeah. Yeah. Don't say that. Sari, remember that Crisco was launched in 1911 and it was not made of palm or soybean oil, but it was made of an oil that's not a vegetable oil. Can you tell me what it is? I mean, I guess it is a vegetable oil, but it's not an oil from a vegetable.

Not an oil from a vegetable. Well, there's some. I'm going to guess sunflower again. No. What other seeds are there? Is it like flax seed? That's closer. Cotton seed.

I was trying to just say cotton. I'm so stupid. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Cotton seed oil, which turns out is an edible oil. It's just, you don't think about it that much. No. Cotton seeds had been moved from being considered a sort of side product of cotton harvesting to an ingredient that could be used for stuff.

And after chemists developed techniques to make the smell and color more appealing to consumers, it started happening a lot more. And companies had made large substitutes that used cottonseed oil mixed with animal fats before. But now they are just going to do it all cottonseed oil. All right, Sam. Crisco is manufactured by a company. Procter & Gamble. That's right. Procter & Gamble.

I listened to that one too, but I didn't get that question. You didn't get it. And that's it, I think. I think that we, yeah, that's it. What is the score? I don't know. It's going to be, this is looking good for Sam.

The score is Hank's opening up the thing. And it's, oh my God, it's Sam at 10 and Sari at negative eight. Next up, we're going to take a short break and then it'll be time for the fact off, during which time Sari needs to bring her A game. Alright everybody, now it's time to get ready for the fact off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks any way I see fit.

But to decide who goes first, I have a question for the two of you. The price of olive oil has gone up this past year due to dry weather in the Mediterranean, leading to intense droughts that have reduced the production of olive oil has gone up this past year due to dry weather in the Mediterranean, leading to intense droughts that have reduced the production of olive oil. And with the increases in olive oil prices, thieves have been stealing from oil mills. On August 30th, about 50,000 liters of extra virgin olive oil was stolen from a Spanish oil mill. About how much is that volume of olive oil worth in dollars? $20 per liter?

That's expensive for olive. But this is fancy olive oil. This is extra virgin olive oil, if it's legit. So 20 times 50,000 is a million dollars. A million dollars of oil. One million dollars. I'll guess of oil. One million dollars. I'll guess $500,000.

The answer is, Sam's just killing it today, $450,000. Oil expert. He didn't even have to do math because Sari did all the hard work for him. Thank you, Sari. According to the numbers I have, Sam won, so you get to go first. All right. Just to give you I have, Sam won. So you get to go first. All right. Just to give you a little peek behind the curtain,

sometimes Sari will throw me a few leads for the fact that she didn't use. My cheating continues. And I have them this week. One of her leads was, quote, a guy in Missouri was hired to stop dust storms and did it by dumping motor oil everywhere. So now it's a Superfund site. While this lead is technically true, it really undersold what a horrible nightmare this event actually was.

And I'll tell you about it now. So Times Beach, Missouri was a small, middle, lower class town, 17 miles outside of St. Louis. By the 1970s, many of the roads in Times Beach were still dirt because the city couldn't afford to pave them. And they had a big dust problem as a result but there was this guy in missouri named russell bliss who was seemingly renowned for his dust suppression abilities though he was a waste oil disposal specialist by trade he also owned a horse arena and he had taken to spraying his waste oil around his property

which would keep it dust free for months he had performed this service for other horse owners around the state and in 1971 he was hired by times beach to spray down their dusty dirt roads but what the people of times beach didn't know was that several of the horse stables bliss sprayed down at those horse stables within days birds were dropping dead horses were developing lesions and losing hair, and the people who lived in and around the horse stables were getting nosebleeds, headaches, diarrhea, stuff like that. It got so bad that many of the stables had to scrape off all of the sprayed topsoil. So the CDC got involved with this pretty quickly, and they found

traces of dioxins in the soil. And dioxins are a group of extremely toxic chemicals that are often the byproduct of industrial processes. So they make living things super sick. They cause cancer, developmental issues, immune system damage, stuff like that. And they stick around for a really long time. And then what the CDC figured out from there was that Bliss had gotten a contract to dispose of dioxins from a Missouri-based factory that produced Agent Orange, the extremely terrible herbicide used by the United States in the Vietnam War in an effort to thin out the jungles in Vietnam. And a byproduct of making that terrible stuff is the also terrible dioxin. So Bliss had been taking the barrels of dioxin, mixing them with his waste oil, and then going around the state spraying dusty places with this combination to get rid of both of them at the same time. where else Bliss sprayed the oil too much. And nobody did until 1979 when the EPA started to

investigate the Agent Orange factory. And they came up with a report of several locations that were contaminated, but they didn't do anything with that list until a public interest group leaked it to the press and the press got involved. And on that list was Times Beach. So basically, the FDA was forced by public pressure to go start testing Times Beach. And guess what? It was heavily contaminated even after a decade, a decade after the spray treatment. And the town was on a floodplain and it flooded regularly. So every time the water would rise, the contaminants would spread farther and farther and get into

the water. By the end of all the testing, it turned out that Times Beach had 50% of the total dioxin waste in the entire state. So it accounted for half of the waste just in this one town. In 1982, the CDC declared that Times Beach was uninhabitable and the whole town was bought for $36.7 million. 2,000 residents had to leave their homes and Times Beach became one of the most toxic sites in the country. And it, along with a couple other disasters from around the same time, were what spurred the creation of the Superfund Environmental Remediation Program. So then the legal ramifications for Bliss and this Agent Orange factory were basically nothing because they did everything that they did before there were any regulations on dumping hazardous waste.

But on the slightly plus side, in 1997, the cleanup was officially completed, and today it's a beautiful state park. But the people still can't live there. They all lost their houses. The town just doesn't exist anymore. That doesn't happen that often, where people, where you just like straight up don't,

like a town just stops existing. That was Terry's fun fact for me. I mean, I knew it was bad but he started texting me about how bad it was when i got to the agent orange part i was like what the oh come on they were doing some stuff in the 70s sheesh i mean to to get a contract to dispose of dioxin and then be like, I know what I'll do. I'll put it on the area that is most dusty. And the actual problem I'm attempting to solve is that it blows up into the air a lot. Yeah, he pretty much messed up the whole state. I think there were sites all over the whole state that were like this.

Times Beach. I tried to find Times Beach, but I couldn't. Now it's the Route 66 National Park or something like that. State Park. Yeah, I feel like I still wouldn't go there. Well, you know what? I'm from Butte, and that's the largest Superfund site in the country. It's true.

They built a beautiful baseball diamond right over all the toxic waste, and it's fine. And I'm fine, and Tuna's fine. And everybody is fine. Everybody's fine, who isn't still underground. All right, Sarah, what do you got? So my first sentence is, human-made oil spills are extremely rough on the environment. Which, you know, I think we learned that. And whether the petroleum,

so specifically speaking about like petroleum spills, is crude oil or refined in some way. These mixtures of hydrocarbons can be toxic to all kinds of living things and they are hard to clean up. But in my very basic understanding, there are two main parts to this cleanup process. So one part of this is trying to contain the spill. So keeping it from seeping into the ground or spreading too far in the ocean. And the second is to try and soak up the oil so that it can be removed from the environment and either retransported, like squeezing out water from a rag or trashed or something. or trashed or something. I'm not going to talk about land oil spills right now, but the removal process for ocean spills is tricky in its specific way because you either need to sort of skim the oil off the surface because like we're talking about water and oil are don't mix. Um, or you need to get something that will soak up the petroleum, but not too much water. And there

are of course, material scientists working on polymers that can either absorb with a B, which is soaking the oil inside, kind of like a sponge, or adsorb with a D, which is grabbing onto oil molecules with the surface, kind of like a duster, like one of those swift things. But other researchers are looking towards materials that already exist that do one of these two things, like peat moss or sawdust. And it turns out that we have some really fantastic cleanup materials in our trash cans and shower drains. Human hair. Oh.

Hey! So each strand of human hair. I shed so much of it, and I hate the texture of human hair. But it's super valuable because each strand has a few layers. The inner ones, like the cortex, are where the pigment sits. While the outer layer, called the cuticle, is made of overlapping dead cells that are kind of like scales made of proteins like keratin and some lipids. And most importantly for this fact, the cuticle of the hair is really water repellent. But it is really good at adsorbing oils.

So that's adsorbing with a D, the surface grabbing thing. And both the oils that our bodies naturally produce and petroleum floating in a body of water. So the idea to use hair to clean up oil spills apparently traces back to an Alabama hairdresser who was watching TV in 1989. and he saw an otter whose fur got covered in oil in the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. So he did an experiment. He gathered a bunch of hair from his salon into some pantyhose and then put that little boom with some used motor oil into a kiddie pool in his backyard and then just watched as the hair soaked it all up. I mean mean did he have some idea that

that was gonna work or was he just uh he saw the otter he saw the otter he was like i guess the otter was really sucked up the oil yeah it's like that otter did so i have all this extra hair i'm just gonna give it a shot this is how the story was reported in like a science direct like nasa press release so who knows could be editorialized could have gone through a lot more steps. So we then worked with NASA researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama to investigate and test on the system further. And from what I could tell, they started publishing those results in 1998. And now like in 2015 and 2020. There are studies investigating like different textures of human hair and their

adsorbency or even different animals like human hair versus dog fur. And by and large, it seems like human hair is just as or more effective than other synthetic polymers or natural materials like moss or sheep wool or duck feathers that have been tested for oil spill cleanup. It's more environmentally friendly because hair is often just trashed anyway. So you're reusing that waste product and it's globally available wherever there are people. From what I can tell, this is where I'm speculating a little bit more. I guess the downside is that we don't necessarily have huge public pipelines for hair or receptacles for them. So you see it pop up in some news articles about environmental disasters and people using human hair for cleanup.

But I don't think it's made the cut for disaster response toolkits because we don't have a way of like mobilizing hair salons in the same way that we do of like telling material scientists to synthesize a bunch of a polymer. I feel like we could mobilize the hair people. There must be so much haircut every day like a ridiculous amount of haircut every day i guess it's like how do you get it from the salon like you can't make it cost money ideally they get paid a little bit to for their work but you can't make it like okay and i'll walk to the post office with your bag of hair. You can't do that. There's got to be a price. Like, there is an amount that the hair is worth.

I just think it's probably very low. And also contingent upon the oils, there being oil spills, which we don't want. That's true. Like, the best solution is no oil spills to move away from petroleum-based power. That'd be great. Or like, you know how the united

states has cheese caves or like storage space for a bunch of things like what if we just had a strategic air reserve yes yeah exactly and then and then we like do a really good job of converting to to renewable energy and then 30 years from now 50 years from now they're making youtube videos like do you would you believe that the united states government has a hair cave sarah did i have to do anything to the hair to make it good at it they have to like take the oils that are in there right now out to make it even better well you got to tie it together you got to make it into like a mat or a big pantyhose or something. Fill some pantyhose with it. Yeah. All right.

Well, that really changes. That changes things for me. I think it doesn't change things for me. Sam's going to run away with it because you have a big deficit to make up. That first game has to matter at least a little bit. Right. But they were both very good facts. And I strongly am in favor of doing good things for the environment um but i guess both of those things did result ultimately in good things creating some strong regulations

regulatory capture what is i gotta look it up after this podcast all right well that means we have to rapidly move on to the to ask the science couch where we ask a listener question to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Critter Keeper on Discord asks, what makes a fat trans, saturated, monosaturated, polyunsaturated, and why does that matter for our health? Great question. Is this just buzzwords? I mean, these are all actually chemical words, and they do matter for your health. Saturated means that they're saturated with hydrogens, and so there are no double bonds. Is that what it means? Yes.

Yeah. So if you have a double bond, then there's an area where there isn't a hydrogen because you're bonded to carbon instead of being bonded to hydrogen. And so it's not saturated with hydrogens anymore. And there are many different ways. So if there's multiple, then it's polyunsaturated. And there's also trans and cis unsaturated where it depends on where the hydrogen gets added. And that can make the fat either sort of like have a double bond, but still be straight or have a double bond and be kinked.

And the kinked ones, I think, are like what you do in hydrogenation where you make Crisco because they stick to each other more. And that makes it more of a solid fat instead of a liquid oil. And that's worse for you, I think, because they goop up inside of your blood vessels, maybe. How'd I do, Sari? You did pretty good, given that you were not prepared to answer this question and call back to your chemistry knowledge. So yeah, saturated is saturated with hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated means there's a double bond, is saturated with hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated means there's a double bond, at least one, that is making it so that there isn't the maximum number of hydrogen atoms that could be bonded to those carbon atoms in the molecule. Cis and trans are a little bit harder to picture unless you're

familiar with molecular structures. The best way to think about it is like, so the double bond, if you imagine it as a line, the cis double bond means things are sticking up in the same direction. The trans double bond means that the sides of the molecule on the sides of the double bond are like opposite of each other, kind of like sticking up and down. And cis unsaturated fats keep the fatty acids from packing tightly together. So the cis unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. And then the trans unsaturated fats are the ones that can pack more tightly together and become a solid. And so typically saturated fats are animal fats solid at room temperature.

Unsaturated fats are usually vegetable fats, solid at room temperature unsaturated fats are usually vegetable fats liquid at room temperature and then trans fats are what happens when you perform some chemical reactions on those liquid vegetable oils um and turn them into a solid like crisco so chemically that's what's going on and then the nutrition wise we said we're going to do this part fast and I guess I can say I am not a nutritionist and I'm scared of nutrition because there's so much misinformation right the nutrition literature particularly is so dominated by trends of the time and food industry funded studies and And there are studies that say fats are bad and proteins are bad or sugars are bad or things like that. But to explain a little

bit of the biochemistry, the main ways that we ingest fats in food are fatty acids, which are just these chains that can be saturated or unsaturated. You can ingest them as long chain fatty acids, short chain fatty acids, things like that in food. Or these fatty acids can be saturated or unsaturated. You can ingest them as like long chain fatty acids, short chain fatty acids, things like that in food. Or these fatty acids can be joined together in groups of three in molecules called triglycerides, which are often in like animals or plant oils or other fats. It is also how our bodies store unused calories. And we have triglycerides that get stored in our fatty tissues and also float around our bloodstreams.

And then third kind of like oil-related, fat-related compound in our bodies is cholesterol, which is used in lots of different ways. It's needed to make vitamin D. It's a hormone related to hormones, building hormones. It's used to build cells. It's very, very important. And your liver and intestines make most of the cholesterol that you need in your body, but some of it can come from the foods you eat as well. And so all of this to say is that when you eat food, eat fatty foods, if you eat oily foods, you get, you ingest fatty acids, triglycerides, cholesterol, and that can change the amount of how much stuff is like floating around in your bloodstream. And a lot of what I found is that we don't know exactly why that is the case. So we are worried

and we have seen people who ingest a lot of large amounts of fatty acids, particularly saturated fats, trans fats, and a lot of cholesterol who then have plaque buildups, like fatty buildups in their blood vessels, which then makes it harder to pump blood, which then can lead to hardening of your arteries or heart attacks or cardiovascular problems. And so that's why people are like, limit your cholesterol, limit your triglycerides and things like that. So something about eating too much messes with the balance of how your body has evolved to regulate itself. And that's why. But there isn't, I don't think it's like a lot of the food articles on the internet are like, don't eat this because it's bad.

And a lot of that is like, listen to your own doctor, eat balanced meals. I think it's over reductive to be like one specific type of oil or fat is bad because there are all these interconnected systems. It's also, even if I knew what was healthy, I have no confidence in my ability to act upon that knowledge. I'm not smoking cigarettes and I feel great. Like that's like, wow, good job, me. That's fantastic. Like you really hit out of the park.

We know that one's bad and you're not doing that. So there's that. If you want to ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics

for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to Jacob on Discord and at Cass Helm on Twitter and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out,

it's very easy to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents and become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes. Shout out to patron Les Aker for their support. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. We love to read them and it helps us help people find the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents,

just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stempert. Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glixman.

Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Vazio. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Luna Medish. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me, Hank Green. And of course, we could not make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire

to be lighted. But, one more thing. When you need some help getting the poop out of your intestines aka pooping laxatives can help in lots of different ways some soften your poop by adding water to them some stimulate your intestinal muscles some lubricate your insides to make everything nice and slippery specifically eating or in a dose of mineral oil, which is an indigestible petroleum derivative that you should not be cooking with, can create a slip and slide through and out of your intestines. Just a little fun fact from us. If it's really slippery in there, it'll just shoot right out.