> "I find it fascinating to know what previous generations thought was safe, and then we learn, oh, actually, that might not have been a great idea to use these brilliant dyes," Weinstein-Webb says.
Yep. William Morris was a divil for this, and refused to acknowledge the dangers well past when they were known.
I wonder though - in terms of human potential and lives lost, do all of those examples put together come anywhere near what we're doing today with PFAS, microplastics, agricultural & industrial runoff, neonicotinoids, etc.?
It's easy to point fingers now and laugh at the Victorians smearing lead pain on their face, or the folks taking radioactive suppositories for health... Fun too. But like... We're in the most glassy house imaginable.
We know better, like Morris, but we're still letting people away with this stuff (and even imprisoning the activists fighting it). Takes a lot of the fun out of it :/
The thing too is that we know better, but we still use those toxic substances because the people who are profiting off it aren't the ones suffering ill effects.
Well, at least the petrochemical people flooding the world with microplastics also have it in their bodies.
I've been learning to use makeup recently and I've been surprised at how common it is to do things that I would instinctively avoid. (I realize this is probably all extremely pedestrian for people who grew up wearing makeup, but it was surprising to me).
For example, it's fairly common to use eyeliner on the "waterline" of your eye where it will wash off into your eye over time. You need to reapply lipstick periodically; partially because some of it ends up getting washed off and swallowed. A lot of these eye and lip makeups contain (cosmetic grade) glitter. A lot of makeup is in the form of sticky sprays or powders that presumably get partially inhaled.
I don't mean this as some sort of hysterical "makeup is a conspiracy to kill us!!1!1" sort of thing. I know that it goes through extensive testing and is probably mostly safe. However, I do wonder if some of these might eventually be found to be less safe then we originally thought.
Buying good (not killing you or damaging your skin) cosmetics and using them properly is an art, as I've observed watching my wife.
To be honest, the best really is to just use retinol creams? and take care of your diet. This way you can get away using hardly any make up. Bonus is that you don't need to wash it off afterwards.
But beauty treatments and knowledge is expensive, that's why poorer or less informed people have to make do with make up. Don't quote me on this, but usually the most advertised brands are also the ones that are most toxic (just repeating what I've learned from my wife).
I've worn makeup a few times... What amazed me is how gross it feels.
It might be the ADD or whatever, but I really detest the feeling of being caked in grease. I've often wondered what kind of damage its doing to people's skin to block gas exchange, clog pores, soak in weird chemicals, etc.
Gotta say though, it never occurred to me how much goop is going in people's eye holes, or how much lipstick they're ingesting. The inhalation I've thought about a lot... It's not easy to get shit out of your lungs once it goes in there. High hopes for earth-friendly (and lung friendly) glitter to become more of a thing.
All that said - I get it. We're incredibly shallow, generally, and I've seen in myself and others the difference a little makeup can make in how you're treated.
The comparison between historical hazards like toxic dyes and modern environmental issues is a gooood one! The evolution of our understanding of risk and safety.
It didn't seem to be mentioned in the article, but have these covers always been unsafe to handle, or has the problem got worse as the books get older and maybe the chemicals are more likely to leech out or be released as dust etc?
If they've always been toxic, I'm kind of surprised that it wasn't noticed at the time. And presumably, there was a point when we stopped using these dyes. Was that because we knew the risks they posed, in which case why did we lose that knowledge, or was it just that we switched to cheaper processes that just happened to be safer?
Many pigments past and present a pretty toxic and always have been unsafe to handle. Of course it is also worse when old materials degrade and start shedding into the environment to be picked up or breathed in by people.
>presumably, there was a point when we stopped using these dyes
The discovery of toxicity and phasing out depends on the individual chemical, not really all at once.
In the past, it was often quite widely known how toxic these things were and they were used anyway.
Paris green was used as a rat poison, insecticide, and a pigment all at the same time, factory workers were often poisoned with it.
Today we are really paranoid about these kinds of things, sometimes maybe a little too much, but the comfort levels with known dangers in the past was surprisingly high.
Death, magic, alchemy, transmutation, poison (and so perhaps by extension, radiation) are all associated with fluorescent green to some degree. (Do a Google image search for "necromancy" or "poisonous dragon" and the majority colour is fluorescent green.) This might be partly influenced by the arsenic greens of the Victorian era.
Radiation would perhaps be better pictured with a light blue glow (Cherenkov radiation).
The green glow used in pop culture has its origin in the widespread use of radium paint to achieve a glow-in-the-dark effect (e.g. on watch faces) in the early 20th century. I still own a radium watch. The paint was always fluorescent green. And it did glow.
Isn’t it usually the phosphor that wears out rather than the radium decaying that stops them glowing? Would it be possible for someone with the correct safety equipment to apply a new layer of fluorescent paint?
I thought this was something new, but it’s Vienna Green still out there causing mayhem every time we forget about Vienna Green. Which they don’t even mention, they just call it copper acetoarsenite. Nobody is going to call a Victorian book or wallpaper “copper acetoarsenite” they’re gonna call it what it is, which is Vienna Green.
Readit News
Arsenic green: https://sites.udel.edu/poisonbookproject/arsenic-bookbinding...
Lead chromate yellow: https://sites.udel.edu/poisonbookproject/chrome-yellow-bookc...
Yep. William Morris was a divil for this, and refused to acknowledge the dangers well past when they were known.
I wonder though - in terms of human potential and lives lost, do all of those examples put together come anywhere near what we're doing today with PFAS, microplastics, agricultural & industrial runoff, neonicotinoids, etc.?
It's easy to point fingers now and laugh at the Victorians smearing lead pain on their face, or the folks taking radioactive suppositories for health... Fun too. But like... We're in the most glassy house imaginable.
We know better, like Morris, but we're still letting people away with this stuff (and even imprisoning the activists fighting it). Takes a lot of the fun out of it :/
Well, at least the petrochemical people flooding the world with microplastics also have it in their bodies.
Hate to smudge your consolation, but the tech is probably there for them to filter their blood now, or it will be soon. [0]
Course, it will be far too expensive for poor people.
Still! At least the microplastics in their brains will be harder to clean! [1]
... Seriously, these people need stopping. They're never going to stop on their own.
0 - https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8929/3/3/28
1 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/human-brain-tissue-made-up-o...
For example, it's fairly common to use eyeliner on the "waterline" of your eye where it will wash off into your eye over time. You need to reapply lipstick periodically; partially because some of it ends up getting washed off and swallowed. A lot of these eye and lip makeups contain (cosmetic grade) glitter. A lot of makeup is in the form of sticky sprays or powders that presumably get partially inhaled.
I don't mean this as some sort of hysterical "makeup is a conspiracy to kill us!!1!1" sort of thing. I know that it goes through extensive testing and is probably mostly safe. However, I do wonder if some of these might eventually be found to be less safe then we originally thought.
To be honest, the best really is to just use retinol creams? and take care of your diet. This way you can get away using hardly any make up. Bonus is that you don't need to wash it off afterwards.
But beauty treatments and knowledge is expensive, that's why poorer or less informed people have to make do with make up. Don't quote me on this, but usually the most advertised brands are also the ones that are most toxic (just repeating what I've learned from my wife).
It might be the ADD or whatever, but I really detest the feeling of being caked in grease. I've often wondered what kind of damage its doing to people's skin to block gas exchange, clog pores, soak in weird chemicals, etc.
Gotta say though, it never occurred to me how much goop is going in people's eye holes, or how much lipstick they're ingesting. The inhalation I've thought about a lot... It's not easy to get shit out of your lungs once it goes in there. High hopes for earth-friendly (and lung friendly) glitter to become more of a thing.
All that said - I get it. We're incredibly shallow, generally, and I've seen in myself and others the difference a little makeup can make in how you're treated.
If they've always been toxic, I'm kind of surprised that it wasn't noticed at the time. And presumably, there was a point when we stopped using these dyes. Was that because we knew the risks they posed, in which case why did we lose that knowledge, or was it just that we switched to cheaper processes that just happened to be safer?
Sometimes things are weird like that. Like how lead was put in petrol even when the toxicity of lead was known.
If you want a modern take on it observe our obsession with stranger danger for children while we happily fill them up with plastic.
>presumably, there was a point when we stopped using these dyes
The discovery of toxicity and phasing out depends on the individual chemical, not really all at once.
In the past, it was often quite widely known how toxic these things were and they were used anyway.
Paris green was used as a rat poison, insecticide, and a pigment all at the same time, factory workers were often poisoned with it.
Today we are really paranoid about these kinds of things, sometimes maybe a little too much, but the comfort levels with known dangers in the past was surprisingly high.
The green glow used in pop culture has its origin in the widespread use of radium paint to achieve a glow-in-the-dark effect (e.g. on watch faces) in the early 20th century. I still own a radium watch. The paint was always fluorescent green. And it did glow.