There was an excellent article yesterday about so called chemophobia (and fear of GMOs as well) at The Collapsed Wavefunction. It reminds me of the Royal Society of Chemistry's £1 million bounty on finding a chemical free product.
All I can add is to emphasize the last paragraph of the post. While it's important to respond to chemical misconceptions by the public, if we're looking for the source we would do well to hold up a mirror. Where are the Sean Carrolls and Richard Dawkinses of the chemical world? Why don't we do more to excite the next generation to learn what the world around them is made of, and why it behaves the way it does? If we become more proactive in teaching the amazing things described by chemistry, perhaps we wouldn't need to be so reactive in debunking the myths about evil chemicals.
