Tylenol Is Made From Crude Oil. Can We Change That?

A lot more depends on fossil  fuels than you might expect.

Like your medicine cabinet. No, not the plastic pill bottles… the pills  themselves might be derived from crude oil.

Indeed, one of our most commonly-used drugs uses  a component of crude oil as a starting material.

And that drug is: Tylenol! Which is, by the way, safe and  effective, including during pregnancy.

Hence why it’s commonly-used. More than 15,000 metric tons are  produced globally every year.

Which means a lot of petroleum goes into  that needed, safe and effective pain relief.

Unless we didn’t have to use oil.. It is possible to recycle  plastic and turn it into Tylenol.

Not possible for us humans, though – we  need a hand from a pretty unexpected place.

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Crude oil contains the starting chemicals  needed for a bunch of things you might not   think of, from shaving cream to paintbrushes,  clothing to fertilizers… and acetaminophen.

AKA Tylenol. Also called paracetamol outside the US.

We’ll just stick to calling  it Tylenol for this video,   though keep in mind we mean  the substance, not the brand..

See, Tylenol is made up of carbon,  nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen.

But the thing about chemical synthesis  is that you can’t just pick out the   elements you want and stick them  together like building bricks.

There are only certain chemical  reactions that are physically possible.

To build up a molecule with an  oxygen here and a nitrogen there,   you need the right conditions  to achieve those reactions.