Text | Zheng Shujing
This article is reproduced from the public account "The PaperFactCheck", the original article was first published on February 12, 2022, the original title was "Mingcha | the artificial snow of the Beijing Winter Olympics contains "toxic substances" DHMO? , does not represent the view of the Lookout Think Tank.
1 Quick glance
Tetsuya Watanabe's speech mentions dhimo as Dihydrogen Monoxide, which literally translates to dihydrogen monoxide and the chemical formula is H₂O, which is commonly known as "water".
According to reports, the Beijing Winter Olympics use cutting-edge artificial snowmaking technology and equipment, which can create artificial snow exactly the same as natural snow, and the dry humidity and dosage of snow can be intelligently controlled. This snow is non-toxic and harmless, and people can freely contact it.
2 Event background
The opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is more than a week old. On February 5, Japanese economic commentator and writer Tetsu Watanabe also tweeted more than a dozen tweets questioning the use of artificial snow at the Beijing Winter Olympics. He mentioned that artificial snow contains a lot of DHMO, which is a dangerous chemical.
3 Mingcha
What is DHMO?
Searching for DHMO on the Internet, it can be found that this substance has a variety of aliases, such as decarburized formaldehyde, caustic hydrogen, zero alcohol, dihydroether, hydrophenol, dihydrogen monoxide, hydroxyhydrogen, hydrohydronic acid, caustic hydrogen, dizezether, noxane, oxyethylene, hydrogen hydroxide... However, if you want to say that the most familiar nickname is H₂O, which is commonly known as "water".
DHMO is an acronym for Dihydrogen Monoxide. In Latin, Di and Mon are prefixed with the meanings "two" and "one", respectively. Hydrogen means "hydrogen" or hydrogen, and Oxide refers to the compound of oxygen. So, literally, Dihydrogen Monoxide is "two hydrogens, one oxygen," meaning dihydrogen monoxide, and its meaning is self-evident when the formula is written.
Water is a substance that already has a chemical formula, so why bother to rename it DHMO? This has to start with the last century.
In 1990, Eric Lechner, a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, posted on a Google online forum called rec.humor.funny, saying that he found that his drinking water system was contaminated with a harmful chemical called dihydrogen monoxide — a substance that is colorless and odorless, completely soluble in water, and cannot be removed by any water purification device, and that the human body may lead to death when ingested. Lakena also wrote in the post about a series of properties of DHMO, water, such as the ability to accelerate the rusting of objects, which has been applied to animal research, foam production, and so on.
Lakena posted a post on the rec.humor.funny online forum.
The post is now seen as the original source of DHMO jokes, but Leckner himself may not have been malicious, because the rec.humor.funny forum is a forum that mainly aims to produce and share funny paragraphs, and the content cannot be taken seriously. The forum describes itself as: "a funny joke (in the opinion of the arbitrator)".
In 1997, Nathan Zohner, a 14-year-old student at Eagle Rock Junior High School in Falls Falls, Idaho, noticed the joke while completing a school science practice project and distributed a report titled "Dihydrogen Monoxide: An Unrecognized Killer" to 50 of his classmates to decide what to do with the chemical. In the end, 43 of the 50 students voted unanimously to take action to ban the use of hydrogen monoxide.
Zona has compiled an article titled "How Easily Are We Fooled?" The How Gullible Are We report received attention and coverage from several media outlets, including The Washington Post, and DHMO's "fame" spread.
The Washington Post reported on Zona's project.
But even so, in the past 20 years, people have still been given the name of "dihydrogen monoxide" from time to time. During the 2012 London Olympics, there was a passage on Weibo that said that "the coach finally admitted that he had given Ye Shiwen a liquid called dihydrogen monoxide to replenish His energy", originally intended to ridicule foreign countries to question the chinese national swimming team player Ye Shiwen taking stimulants, and did not want to be taken seriously by many netizens. Tetsuya Watanabe's tweet is no joke, and he himself has seriously mentioned in a follow-up tweet that the dangers of DHMO have been confirmed, but the relevant results have not yet been published.
How did the snow for the Beijing Winter Olympics come about?
So, where does the snow used at the Beijing Winter Olympics come from, and will it cause harm to the environment or the human body?
Yan Jiarong, spokesman for the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, answered a question from Asia News On a question at a State Council press conference held on January 13, saying that the snow sports competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics are mainly located in yanqing and Chongli mountainous areas, which have relatively unique climatic conditions and more natural snowfall. This provides a prerequisite for reducing the amount of water used for artificial snowmaking.
According to the news released by the official website of the International Olympic Committee on February 6, during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the ancient poplar stadium complex in Zhangjiakou is expected to have 30 centimeters of snow this year, which may use about 10% of the natural snow, and the snow fields in Yanqing area are almost 100% dependent on the use of artificial snow.
The use of artificial snow at the Winter Olympics is not alone in Beijing. The IOC notes that in recent years, as the global climate has changed, snowfall around the world has become increasingly difficult to estimate. To ensure the smooth holding of the event, it is necessary to rely on artificial snow. Artificial snow was used to varying degrees at Vancouver in 2010, Sochi in 2014 and Pyeongchang in 2018. In addition, Bernhard Russi, chairman of the Mountain SkiIng Committee of the International Snow Federation (FIS), previously mentioned in a media meeting that artificial snow is almost necessary to achieve the perfect competition venue for mountain skiing.
Discussion of artificial snow for the Beijing Winter Olympics on the official website of the International Olympic Committee.
Yan Jiarong's speech also mentioned that artificial snow is not entirely an emergency means to cope with the weather, but is actually an objective demand for the quality of snow used in major international events. Judging from the holding of snow projects around the world, major international events basically use artificial snowmaking. Because compared with natural snow, artificial snow can change the particle size, moisture content and hardness, which is conducive to meeting the needs of different competition venues, and artificial snow is more stable than the characteristics of natural snow, and it is easier to prepare a consistent state of the snow after being pressed, leveled and injected. From the perspective of the competition, such a consistent piste also means to some extent fairer.
In response to the technical means of artificial snow realization, the Scientific Rumor Dispelling Platform of the China Association for Science and Technology published an article on February 3 that there are generally two kinds of snowmaking technology on the market now: one is to produce flake ice with an ice-making device, and then through the ice crushing device, the sheet ice that has been made is crushed into a powder, and then spewed out through the air transfer system to form a "snowflake"; the other is to borrow biodegradable proteins to make water molecules condense into ice crystals when they are above normal temperatures. According to the relevant staff, the Winter Olympics use artificial snow made of environmentally friendly refrigerants, and all snowflakes are formed by water injection.
Yan Jiarong said that the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics uses the world's most advanced high-efficiency water-saving equipment and intelligent snowmaking system, which can dynamically maintain the best snowmaking efficiency according to the external environment and avoid waste of water resources. The china daily report also mentioned that the artificial snow composition of the Beijing Winter Olympics is exactly the same as that of natural snow, and the dry humidity and dosage can be intelligently controlled. The water consumption and manufacturing cost of this snow are relatively low, and it is non-toxic and harmless, people can freely contact it, and snow melt water can also be harmlessly recycled after the game.
Based on the available information, it is ridiculous that Tetsuya Watanabe used DHMO to criticize the behavior of artificial snow in the Beijing Winter Olympics. The name DHMO comes from a joke posted on a Google online forum by a student at an American university in the last century, which means hydrogen monoxide. It is both "water" itself and "poisonous".
According to reports, the artificial snow used in the Beijing Winter Olympics is produced according to the corresponding technical indicators of the ski trails required for different competitions stipulated by the International Snow Federation, and its composition is exactly the same as that of natural snow, not only non-toxic and harmless, but also the dry humidity and dosage of snow can be intelligently controlled, which can be recycled in the future, effectively avoiding the waste of water resources.