Most of the time we are not even aware that the air around us is a huge gas mass with many elements and compounds. These include the oxygen we breathe and keep us alive, the carbon dioxide we breathe in, and many more. The fact is that this gas mass is a bed of chemical compounds that sometimes react with each other, changing shape as if in a laboratory.

A team of European and American scientists discovered an entire category of these compounds: hydrotrioxides, molecules with three oxygen atoms bonded together, highly reactive molecules that can interact with other chemicals in their pathways. They’ve probably always been around us, but researchers warn they can affect our health and climate.

What exactly are hydrotrioxides?
Hydrotrioxides (ROOOH) are molecules that have three cascading oxygen atoms (OOO) and a hydrogen atom (H) attached to an organic moiety (R). Thanks to the new study published in the journal ScienceWe now know that in the atmosphere various radicals can form as a result of the encounter of unstable molecules that tend to react with each other to form different compounds. Specifically, it will be the result of coupling between a peroxide (molecule with two oxygen atoms attached, ROO) and an OH radical with one oxygen and one hydrogen atom.

How can these molecules affect us?
He explains that the potential risk of these molecules will be explained by the team responsible for the study due to their interaction with aerosols, which are tiny liquid particles suspended in the air. Once the hydrotrioxides were incorporated into these microdroplets, they would interact and form new structures by interacting with the molecules inside them. Henrik Grum Kjaergaard, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of the study, explains that these new structures will be ones that could affect our health. Yes, it indicates that more research on this will be necessary.

Replacing aerosols can also have climatic effects, as aerosols have their own role in filtering out energy from the Sun. This is a researcher at Aarhus University in Copenhagen and co-author of the study, Eva R. Kjaergaard. Earth’s heat balance.

More research will be required.
To determine how these particles affect our health and climate, it will be necessary to analyze them better and examine their reactions with other molecules in the environment, particularly aerosols, as the study’s authors point out. The authors caution that these compounds have been present in our atmosphere for years, so the study does not mean that an increase in the incidence of these molecules on health or climate is expected.

However, it is recommended that you study them carefully to discover whether their assets involve risks and, if so, how to deal with them. One thing this study shows is the need to continue investigating, that even something as mundane as the weather that surrounds us can continue to bring us surprises.

From theory to exploration.
The existence of these molecules and their presence in the atmosphere had already been theorized by scientists, this theory has now been reconfirmed by this team of experts. Similar compounds, hydroperoxides (ROOH) were already known to exist, but so far this variant has been observed for the first time in a laboratory simulating terrestrial atmospheric conditions.

The key to the study is that it predicts these compounds can stay in the atmosphere for minutes or hours, giving them enough time to interact with other molecules and oxidize them. Another relevant factor is that they can be formed via heavier peroxides than previously believed.

Image | Linden Arnhold, TROPES