Social Chemistry

This article is both an essay to propose social chemistry as a new scientific discipline, and a preface of the book Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World. Environmental chemistry is a fast emerging discipline aiming at the understanding the fate of pollutants in ecosystems and at designing novel processes that are safe for ecosystems. Past pollution should be cleaned,future pollution should be predicted and avoided (Lichtfouse et al., 2005a). Such advices are still not applied by humans as demonstrated by the Fukushima nuclear event and global warming. Human errors are repeatable.We therefore suggest a possible solution, which involves bridging chemistry and society by integrating social sciences in chemical research. In particular citizen discourse analysis should be useful to design chemicals that are both innovative and accepted by society. Then we present the recent success of environmental chemistry through the foundation of the Association of Chemistry and the Environment; the increase of the impact factor of Environmental Chemistry Letters from 0.814 in 2006 to 2.109 in 2009; and over 35,000 chapter downloads of the book Environmental Chemistry volume 1. Lastly we highlight major topics of the book Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World(Lichtfouse et al. 2012a,b).The book presents 23 chapters sorted into two parts: 1. Nanotechnology and Health Risk, and 2. Remediation of Air and Water Pollution.