Phenol

Phenol, initially known as "phenic acid", is the simplest compound existing among aromatic compounds deriving from benzene, called phenols.

These compounds have a hydroxyl group (-OH) bound to the aromatic ring of the molecule. Although phenols, like alcohols, have a –OH group, they do not behave like the latter; in fact they are acid compounds.

Phenol exists in the form of white crystals which, due to oxidative processes, tend to change color assuming a yellow or pink color. They are crystals that dissolve well in water and even better in ethanol and chloroform.

Phenol can react as an acid and be converted into the respective salts, the "phenates" and / or it can react like an alcohol and form, with carboxylic acids, the corresponding esters.

Phenol was synthesized in the 1860s and was initially used as a deodorant and a sanitizer for sewers.

In 1865 the Scottish physician Joseph Lister, a professor of surgery in Glasgow, used this substance as an antiseptic in an exposed fracture case, and it was precisely in this way that the practice of antisepsis was born in surgery (a method that aims to interrupt the microbial reproduction, not necessarily through the killing of germs), followed by the practice of asepsis (a procedure created to prevent contamination by microorganisms of substrates and / or objects that had previously been sterilized; it is a practice that is used much in operating theaters).

Therefore it is possible to deduce that phenol is used for the disinfection of hospital environments, surgical instruments and medical equipment.

However, phenol is also used:

• as a disinfectant;
• as a reagent for the production of bisphenol A, phenolic resins and caprolactam.
• as an exfoliant: it can be used in cosmetics for the preparation of exfoliating products, thanks to its ability to remove the outer layers of the epidermis.
• as a tool of "death" to execute sentences. In particular, it was used during the Second World War, in the Nazi extermination.
• As a "medical tool" in lateral laminectomy by phenolization: it is an outpatient surgical procedure that destroys the lateral matrix of the nail a few millimeters away from the lateral fingertip, so that it does not grow back, thus avoiding the recurrence of the ingrown nail. The intervention is aesthetically invisible.