Group 16 Elements The Chalcogens

Linus Pauling Have you ever smelled hydrogen selenide  

Matthew Meselson No, I never have. Pauling Well, it smells much worse than hydrogen sulfide.. .. Now, hydrogen telluride smells as much worse than hydrogen selenide as hydrogen selenide does compared to hydrogen sulfide. .. some chemists were not careful when working with tellurium compounds, and they acquired a condition known as tellurium breath. As a result, they have become isolated from society. Some even committed suicide. 

Pauling But Matt, I m sure that you would be careful. Why don t you think it over and let me know if you would like to work on the structure of some tellurium compounds  

Interview between Pauling and then prospective graduate student Matthew Meselson, who during his subsequent tenure with Pauling did the Meselson-Stahl experiment, which proved the semiconservative nature of DNA replication. 

Two of the group 16 elements—oxygen and sulfur—are among the most familiar ones. Not only is water critical to all life and O2 to all aerobic life, the ozone layer protects life and civilization on Earth from the sun s harmful ultraviolet rays. The annual worldwide production of sulfuric acid is in the hundreds of millions of metric tons and is the highest by weight for all industrial chemicals. Indeed, the amount of sulfuric acid produced is often a good indicator of a country s state of industrial development and economic status. 

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