If you want to lessen your personal petroleum footprint - never mind as a BP protest - parking the car will get you there fastest. Transportation accounts for two-thirds of all the oil the nation uses.
But if you use a bike instead, consider that the tires are likely made from petroleum.
So, OK, you'll walk. Except that the soles of your sneakers probably contain petroleum, too.
Various groups have listed surprising things petroleum is in, from CDs and eyeglasses to beach balls and bubble gum to dishwashing liquids and deodorant.
It's in clothing, fishing line, disposable diapers, teething rings, crayons, and vitamins.
What's it doing in there? It's providing good old hydrogen and carbon, says Carnegie Mellon University chemistry professor Andrew Gellman. Hydrocarbons are a building block for plastics and synthetic materials of every kind.
Ballpoint pen? Plastic. Many inks are petroleum-based, too. Windshield wiper? Synthetic rubber, which is really just another plastic.
As for a simple bandage, the plastic is made from oil and the nonstick pad that covers the wound is man-made cloth manufactured from petrochemicals.
Here's another way to look at it: "The carbon is like a Lego, and you can put it together in different ways," says Dady Dadyburjor, a chemical engineering professor at West Virginia University and a member of the American Chemical Society's petroleum division. "By adding different things to it in different ways, you can get a detergent bottle or a pair of nylons."
If you're wondering about the aspirin, a component, salicylic acid, is petroleum-based, according to the folks at Bayer HealthCare L.L.C.
Triacetin, another petroleum-based chemical, is used as a plasticizer for the thin film coating that's on the surface of many pills.
