Chemicals surround us and make up everything in nature — everything we use, eat, and breathe. Yet the mere mention of the presence of chemicals is enough to scare some people.

The anti-vaccine movement was fueled by spurious concerns about a patently false relationship between a mercury preservative in vaccines and autism. Sadly, chemical additives are increasingly being cited as the reason for parental resistance to vaccination, which has led to the re-emergence of serious preventable infections, such as measles. Measles infections increased by more than six-fold between 2010 and 2014.