Literature Research

Road salt is one of those things that we know is harmful but is a necessity when it comes to safety. Canada is known to be the world’s highest consumers of salt. With the harsh winters Canada has, 5 million tones of road sale are poured onto roadways each year. Even though salt causes enormous damage to the environment and building structures, it still gets used because of its reliability and reasonable economic value, as well as being easy to store and apply. The price of road salt is between $50-$65 a tone, which is truly cheap, but 15 times that amount is used to clean up the environmental mess. In the long run, salt is reliable and easy to store and apply, but it’s really costing us our roads and the environment around them. This is why our mixture is in desperate need.

Peppers were chosen to be experimented with because of their known heat production when chewed in the mouth. We discovered this heat was caused by a chemical called capsaicin, which is found in hot peppers. Capsaicin is a crystalline alkaloid, which allows any cold or hot temperature to not effect its potency. Capsaicin is used for other things in society. For example, people with arthritis use a cream that has capsaicin in it. The capsaicin cream attacks the nerve endings and makes them numb, not allowing the neurons to send a message of pain to the brain. The amount of capsaicin in a pepper is measured in units called Scoville units. In our project, two different kinds of peppers were used: Thai chili peppers and Habanero peppers, because of their high Scoville units. A pepper is not hot when you put it in your hand, but when they’re crushed up; the juices inside explode, and can cause irritation to the skin. These juices contain capsaicin, creating the heat, which means friction is needed to create the exothermic reaction.

Plants that are known as thermogenic plants produce their own heat by possessing an enzyme known as alternative oxidase (AOX), which is found in the plants mitochondrial respiratory chain. The AOX allows plants to produce their own heat, which produces a smell that attracts prey. We found many different kinds of thermogenic plants, such as Voodoo Lilies, Arum Lilies, Magnolias and Water lilies. The lotus was found to have temperatures that stay between 30 and 36 degrees Celsius in environments where temperatures were as low as 10 degrees Celsius (“Warm-Blooded Plants?” By Susan Milius). A heat-making pathway, otherwise known as the secondary process of respiration, has been known since 1932 by physiologists. In the 1970’s, activity in this pathway had jumped, linking it to slow heat burns of arum’s. We believed papaya may have had this protein AOX, which there possibly could be but with our research we found no reason to believe this. Although we do know papaya has an enzyme called papain, which is known to catalyze chemical reactions. This known fact about papain could explain the more effectiveness having papaya in the mix for we believe it could be able to speed up the peppers exothermic reaction.

Jamaica is one of the select countries that grow papaya for export to various countries, like Canada for consumption. Previously, Canada used to import approximately one million crates of papaya from Jamaica each year. In more recent years, the importing has dropped down to just under 143 000 crates. The production of our mixture, which involves papaya, could increase the papaya market, as it would generate a need and want for a healthy alternative to the chemically toxic road salt that is currently being poured onto roads each winter.