Throughout the ages, people have suffered for what is fashionable. In the 1800s, thousands of people died to to exposure to arsenic used in producing green wallpaper (not to mention green clothing, hats, shoes and much more).
"[Arsenic] was used in the production of green dyes, which were incorporated into everything from ribbons to playing cards. [T]he craze for deep green wallpaper...led to thousands of families meeting their deaths as a result of their taste in home furnishings. Not that they actually licked their walls: the dye was very unstable, so the slightest breeze could dislodge a puff of toxic dust."
"Queen Victoria herself was so appalled by the homicidal tendencies of green wallpaper that she ordered every room in Buckingham Palace to be stripped of the stuff." Kathryn Hughes of The Guardian explains in a review of the new book by author James C. Wharton, The Arsenic Century.
It makes us very glad that arsenic is not used in the production of green dyes for home or textiles today!
No comments:
Post a Comment