Why is oxiadation is bad? Where rust is caused because of water and oxygen reacting or oxiadation in cell biology that damage cells and DNA because of energy and oxygen reacting.

What can scientist do about oxiadation?

Could vehicles be made of other material that does not react to water and oxygen?

Edited Friday at 10:33 PM4 days by Moon99

22 minutes ago, Moon99 said:

Why is oxiadation is bad?

It is not fundamentally bad. Oxidation is merely a chemical process and it also has many important biological functions. For example, we oxidize nutrients to create reducing equivalents so that we can generate energy (via oxidative phosphorylation).

25 minutes ago, Moon99 said:

Where rust is caused because of water and oxygen reacting

Rust requires iron (it is an iron (hydr)oxide.

26 minutes ago, Moon99 said:

oxiadation in cell biology that damage cells and DNA because of energy and oxygen reacting.

So that is not the issue. What can happen is that during respiration reactive oxygen species are generated. This is mostly due to leakage from the ubiquinon pool as part of the aforementioned oxidative phosphorylation. These species are kind of aggressive and can indeed lead to damages, unless they are dealt with the many mechanisms in cells to neutralize them (e.g. superoxide dismutases, catalases, peroxidases etc.).

28 minutes ago, Moon99 said:

What can scientist do about oxiadation?

Nothing. If we stop oxidation, we stop critical biochemical processes and we just die. Not due to oxidation, but because our cells run out of energy (well and other critical processes). Redox reactions are kind of the essentials for metabolism.

29 minutes ago, Moon99 said:

Could vehicles be made of other material that does not react to water and oxygen?

I mean, yes. Anything that is not made of iron will, by definition, not rust.

11 hours ago, Moon99 said:

Why is oxiadation is bad? Where rust is caused because of water and oxygen reacting or oxiadation in cell biology that damage cells and DNA because of energy and oxygen reacting.

What can scientist do about oxiadation?

Could vehicles be made of other material that does not react to water and oxygen?

You can make cars from aluminium, which does not easily corrode. However it is costly to reduce from its ore, which is done by electrolysis, because it is trivalent, needing 3 electrons per atom. So it takes a lot of electricity. Most aluminium smelting is done close to a source of cheap electricity. In fact aluminium is only stable in air because it instantly forms a protective oxide layer on the surface. Unfortunately iron tends to form a complex range of hydrated oxides in the presence of moisture which don't form such a layer.

You can make car bodies from other materials but metals are preferred, partly because of strength but partly too because they can be designed to deform progressively in a crash, protecting the occupants.

In practice, car bodies are made from various grades of steel. This is not simply iron but an alloy of iron with carbon and potentially a variety of other elements, selected to modify the properties of the steel in various ways. Steel is generally more resistant to rusting than pure iron. Surface treatments such as galvanising may also be used to improve corrosion resistance.

12 hours ago, Moon99 said:

Could vehicles be made of other material that does not react to water and oxygen?

Yes. If you compare cars of today with those of 50 years ago, you’ll see there’s more plastic and composite materials. Steel is still present because of strength requirements and cost issues, but it’s around 60% of the weight as opposed to ~87% in 1970

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3144/fs2005_3144.pdf

IIRC, in the 70's and before, cars didn't last much beyond 10 years in the UK, when rust became a critical problem.

Edited Saturday at 03:07 PM3 days by StringJunky

2 hours ago, StringJunky said:

IIRC, in the 70's and before, cars didn't last much beyond 10 years in the UK, when rust became a critical problem.

I think we’re doing better with coating the steel, as well as with the steel itself (e.g. use of alloys)

1 hour ago, swansont said:

I think we’re doing better with coating the steel, as well as with the steel itself (e.g. use of alloys)

Yes, a lot better. They were what we called 'rust buckets' after a few years then.

On 4/4/2026 at 12:01 AM, CharonY said:

It is not fundamentally bad. Oxidation is merely a chemical process and it also has many important biological functions. For example, we oxidize nutrients to create reducing equivalents so that we can generate energy (via oxidative phosphorylation).

Rust requires iron (it is an iron (hydr)oxide.

So that is not the issue. What can happen is that during respiration reactive oxygen species are generated. This is mostly due to leakage from the ubiquinon pool as part of the aforementioned oxidative phosphorylation. These species are kind of aggressive and can indeed lead to damages, unless they are dealt with the many mechanisms in cells to neutralize them (e.g. superoxide dismutases, catalases, peroxidases etc.).

Nothing. If we stop oxidation, we stop critical biochemical processes and we just die. Not due to oxidation, but because our cells run out of energy (well and other critical processes). Redox reactions are kind of the essentials for metabolism.

I mean, yes. Anything that is not made of iron will, by definition, not rust.

Agreed, however it doesn't stop what ever metal you are using reacting with the environment, chrome for example will tarnish, silver does over time, i think more so in salty environments such as near the coast.

Am I right in thinking Oxidation is still transfer of electrons (loss) even if this is iron or hemoglobin to oxyhemoglobin in blood.

Paul

2 hours ago, paulsutton said:

Agreed, however it doesn't stop what ever metal you are using reacting with the environment, chrome for example will tarnish, silver does over time, i think more so in salty environments such as near the coast.

Am I right in thinking Oxidation is still transfer of electrons (loss) even if this is iron or hemoglobin to oxyhemoglobin in blood.

Paul

Silver tarnish is mainly sulphide though, I think. When we lived for a while in Houston we found silver items tarnished appallingly fast, due to the sulphur compounds in the air from all the refineries in the region. Back here in London it is far slower. I have not heard about silver tarnishing more rapidly near the sea. I wonder what would cause that.

Yes in chemistry the term oxidation has expanded its meaning from the original one of reacting with oxygen, e.g. Fe + 1/2 O2 -> Fe ²⁺ + O²⁻ to a more general class of reactions in which electrons are abstracted, either physically or notionally, from the substance in question. I include notionally because the concept of oxidation states treats all compounds as if they were ionised, even if they are really bound covalently. For instance in SiO2, silica, Si is assigned an oxidation state of +4 and oxygen -2, even though it is a covalent compound with only a fairly modest degree of polarisation of the Si-O bond δ⁺- δ⁻ .

I had to look up haemoglobin. It seems to be an interesting case that is quite complex to unscramble. It appears that indeed Fe is regarded as being in the +2 state and is oxidised to +3 by the coordination of an oxygen molecule. But it's odd, as the molecule adds to Fe obliquely, apparently using one of the 2 lone pairs (sp2 configuration) at one end, as a dative bond towards Fe. There seems to be in addition some kind of back-transfer of an electron from Fe to oxygen, creating a superoxide anion ,O₂⁻ , which is an odd electron species! The net result is that Fe formally acquires an oxidation state of +3. I'm actually quite intrigued by this but have not had the time to read more about it. Perhaps someone else here knows more about this.

Edited Sunday at 08:22 AM2 days by exchemist

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

I have not heard about silver tarnishing more rapidly near the sea. I wonder what would cause that.

That might be dimethyl sulphide produced by marine algae. It can nucleate rain drops. I think it's how clouds are formed over the colder sea areas; sub12c water temperatures.

Edited Sunday at 11:24 AM2 days by StringJunky

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

Silver tarnish is mainly sulphide though, I think. When we lived for a while in Houston we found silver items tarnished appallingly fast, due to the sulphur compounds in the air from all the refineries in the region. Back here in London it is far slower. I have not heard about silver tarnishing more rapidly near the sea. I wonder what would cause that.

Yes in chemistry the term oxidation has expanded its meaning from the original one of reacting with oxygen, e.g. Fe + 1/2 O2 -> Fe ²⁺ + O²⁻ to a more general class of reactions in which electrons are abstracted, either physically or notionally, from the substance in question. I include notionally because the concept of oxidation states treats all compounds as if they were ionised, even if they are really bound covalently. For instance in SiO2, silica, Si is assigned an oxidation state of +4 and oxygen -2, even though it is a covalent compound with only a fairly modest degree of polarisation of the Si-O bond δ⁺- δ⁻ .

I had to look up haemoglobin. It seems to be an interesting case that is quite complex to unscramble. It appears that indeed Fe is regarded as being in the +2 state and is oxidised to +3 by the coordination of an oxygen molecule. But it's odd, as the molecule adds to Fe obliquely, apparently using one of the 2 lone pairs (sp2 configuration) at one end, as a dative bond towards Fe. There seems to be in addition some kind of back-transfer of an electron from Fe to oxygen, creating a superoxide anion ,O₂⁻ , which is an odd electron species! The net result is that Fe formally acquires an oxidation state of +3. I'm actually quite intrigued by this but have not had the time to read more about it. Perhaps someone else here knows more about this.

I will try and do some more digging in terms of haemoglobin. In terms of what was mentioned before near the coast | was more thinking of cars rusting due to salt (or rather sea) water ( even though I think it is more corrosion) rather than silver tarnishing, sorry I need to be more clear on things.

Re Haemoglobin

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/135100003225002817

Seems to explain the process, with oxygen and haemoglobin, this is a little above me, but I do understand what a REDOX (Reduction and Oxidation) where Reduction is gaining electrons and oxidation loses electrons). Seems quite a complex set of processes going on with this.

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

That might be dimethyl sulphide produced by marine algae. It can nucleate rain drops. I think it's how clouds are formed over the colder sea areas; sub12c water temperatures.

Yes, that would make sense certainly. I had never thought of the sea as giving off sulphur compounds but that seems to be the case.

15 hours ago, paulsutton said:

Am I right in thinking Oxidation is still transfer of electrons (loss) even if this is iron or hemoglobin to oxyhemoglobin in blood.

Yes, oxidation in principle is the loss, and reduction the gain of an electron. In biology, iron is often part of an enzymes that are involved in these processes where it switches between Fe(II) to Fe(III). But obviously there area also other types redoxenzymes. The broader point here is that this reaction is not "bad" as asked in OP. Rather they are a biological necessity.