Description
Book Synopsis Although poisonous substances have been a hazard for the whole of human history, it is only with the development and large-scale production of new chemical substances over the last two centuries that toxic, manmade pollutants have become such a varied and widespread danger. Covering a host of both notorious and little-known chemicals, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted. Each study situates chemical hazards in a long-term and transnational framework and demonstrates the importance of considering both the natural and the social contexts in which their histories have unfolded.
Trade Review “Homburg and Vaupel provide an excellent review of the industrial development of eight chemical substances that have emerged as problematic agents to global public health and the environment since the dawn of the industrial revolution…the language here is non-technical, and each chapter provides extensive footnotes and references…Recommended” • Choice
“Overall, the edited collection offers scholars an excellent set of biographical chemical histories… the scholarship is superb.” • Technology and Culture
“Ernst Homburg and Elisabeth Vaupel make an outstanding contribution to historical toxicology by assembling an impressively varied but closely interconnected collection of essays that focus on a number of industrially produced chemical substances. They do so, too, by their own introductory overview of toxicological concepts and developments across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and by a conclusion that addresses the overarching question of periodization in the historiography of the regulation of hazardous chemicals.” • Isis Journal
“This collection is an important addition to the literature and will help the field take the now overdue step from national to global research.” • Labour History Review
“Hazardous Chemicals hopefully also encourages medical doctors to stay alert to signs of toxicity, to conduct good research, and to formulate conclusions so clearly that industry, legislation and the public can actually do something with it.” • Medisch Contact
“These very rich investigations into the history of poison, hazard and regulation contain new insights and empirical findings. Hazardous Chemicals is a very substantial addition to the literature in the field.” • Carsten Reinhardt, University of Bielefeld
“Hazardous Chemicals is a bold contribution to the blooming field of historical studies on toxic products. It includes many excellent chapters that approach the topic from many different perspectives, covering a broad range of harmful substances, geographical contexts, and stakeholders while giving insightful analyses of relevant cases and offering comparative perspectives on toxic risk regulation.” • José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez, Universitat de València
Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Hazardous Chemicals, 1800–2000: A Conceptual and Regulatory Overview
Ernst Homburg and Elisabeth Vaupel
PART I: FROM ACUTE TO CHRONIC POISONING: REGULATING OLD POISONS IN THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
Chapter 1. Schweinfurt Green and the Sanitary Police: The Fight Against Copper Arsenite Pigments
Joost Mertens†
Chapter 2. The Banning of White Lead: French and International Regulations
Laurence Lestel
Chapter 3. Old Situations, New Complications: Lead and Lead Poisoning in a Changing World
Christian Warren
PART II: DISCOVERING NEW HEALTH IMPACTS: CARCIOGENESIS, MUTAGENESIS AND MORE IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY AND NON-KNOWLEDGE
Chapter 4. Discovering Chemical Carcinogenesis: The Case of the Aromatic Amines
Heiko Stoff and Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 5. Cyclamates: A Tale of Uncertain Knowledge (1930s–1980s)
Alexander von Schwerin
Chapter 6. Cadmium Poisoning in Japan: The Itai-itai Disease and Beyond
Masanori Kaji†
Chapter 7. Dioxins: The “Total Poison”
Stefan Böschen
PART III: NEW PRODUCTS, NEW EFFECTS. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE 1960S
Chapter 8. Organophosphates
Frederick R. Davis
Chapter 9. A Tale of Two Nations: DDT in the USA and the UK
Peter J. T. Morris
Chapter 10. War and Peace: The Phenoxy Herbicides
Amy M. Hay
Chapter 11. Raising a Stink: The Short Happy Life of MTBE
John K. Smith
Conclusions
Ernst Homburg and Elisabeth Vaupel
Index
