Dario Bressanini, the bicarbonate method – Corriere.it

At the top of the Varia book rankings, this year he was among the most applauded guests at the «la Lettura» party, where he illustrated to the public what one cannot do with baking soda (it is neither washed nor disinfected) and explained that bleach and acids should not be mixed (otherwise the harmful chlorine gas will be released), and many other secrets for home hygiene. Dario Bressanini is a chemistry teacher at the Department of Science and High Technology of the University of Insubria of Como, author of many popular books on food, products and science in the home and in the kitchen, followed by 500,000 people on his YouTube channel: this year he obtained a great success with the new book The Science of Cleaning. The chemistry of detergent and bleach, and hoaxes about baking sodapublished by Gribaudo.

Perhaps it was the pandemic that aroused curiosity or interest in science in many, but it is interesting to know what was the driving force that pushed a chemist, a university professor, to deal with dissemination, explaining how fabrics soften after washing or how sinks flow. To clarify the “hoaxes” and the fake news spread on the net? «I have a passion: explaining things. I love – says Bressanini to “Corriere” – giving lessons to students, holding my courses at the university. And I’m not at all convinced that my task as a popularizer is to explain things “to those who already think they know them”: on the contrary, by frequenting social networks I have noticed a genuine demand from the public, at all ages, from children to grandmothers, the widespread request of accurate scientific explanations about the world.

Explain that indeed the pandemic has caused a sort of quantum leap in the demand for knowledge: «Surely these years of Covid have made us understand that looking at the world through the eyes of science is good for us. It’s good for us, for our health, but also for the wallet and the environment. And I’m not just talking about cleaning the house, but also about the themes of the previous books, such as sugars or our food».

Need to know more and better, in short. Yet we all studied science in compulsory school.

The teacher specifies: «It is a fact that the school programs were not enough. My particular opinion as a teacher, even though I teach at the university and therefore have freedom in teaching programs (and also as a father, for what I see in my children’s school programs for scientific subjects), is that I am programs detached from reality, old, abstract. It is not shown how these formulas and symbols, precisely in their abstraction, are actually found in everyday life. Notions learned and forgotten because they are too abstract».

Should it also be competent experts who can be trusted to address the public in a sea of ​​fake news? Niche on the concept of unseen trust, Professor Bressanini: «Actually, popularizers, at least in me, don’t have the idea of ​​telling the public “trust what I say”. I don’t want people to trust myself. What I try to do is also provide a method, I explain how to approach the information that comes to us, for example also that provided by companies on products. That is, in the book I don’t just offer simple answers to the single question, but I try to provide a method to go a little further. My books are scientific essays disguised as manuals, there are hundreds of notes in which I point out the scientific studies that have demonstrated everything I present, and in the initial part of the book there are definitions, an explanation of what pH is, acids and bases, in short, a “review” of what the reader has already encountered, perhaps in middle school, but applied to daily life».

The desire to explain science goes way back, not only with university courses and in magazines, such as «Le Scienze», on which Dario Bressanini has been writing a column since 2004. «When there was the explosion of social media, first with blogs, then with Facebook, and gradually up to TikTok, I noticed a large audience who maybe didn’t read magazines and newspapers on paper, but was eager for scientific content. It’s not true that younger people don’t read books: once you reach them on “their” social networks, then they delve into books. I’m happy when some boy writes to me: “This is the first book I buy after school”.

So what is the advice: learn more, study more? Bressanini replies: «I wouldn’t use the term studying, but the word “inform yourself”. Science should be part of our daily life, as normally happens for the economy, culture, sport, nobody starts studying sport, they follow it, they get informed. I would like the sciences to be part of the daily life of all of us. If this pandemic has triggered anything, it’s the fact that we need to inform ourselves more. And that science is part of our life».

Useful advice and dissident beliefs

One of the protagonists of Dario Bressanini’s book The Science of Cleaning (Gribaudo) is sodium bicarbonate, to which a chapter is dedicated that debunks some widespread beliefs. Having clarified what this very useful product is for (it is an antacid, it raises the pH, it acts against certain odours, it softens vegetables, it is abrasive), the book explains what no need. Here are some paragraphs (which are followed by an extensive explanation in the book): she does not wash or degrease; does not bleach and does not sanitize; it is not a limescale remover or limescale remover; it is not a plunger; he is not a disinfectant …