Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    221/600 (page 11)
    trades, for instance, very frequently suffer, and often die, from severe forms of lung disease produced in this way. In coal miners, the lung sometimes becomes impregnated with minute (microscopical) particles of coal dust and smoke, though, in con- sequence of the better ventilation of the pits, this disease—coal- miner's phthisis, as it is technically termed,—is by no means so frequent as it was a few years ago. All measures which prevent the escape of dust particles into the atmosphere, free ventilation, and the use of respirators, are the means by which the diseases due to the inhalation of fine dust particles are to be prevented. Diseases due to Chemical Poisons. In other cases, the noxious material is a chemical poison. Ob- scure cases of illness, for instance, every now and again result from arsenic having been used in the manufacture of wall papers and paints. Bright emerald greens, which owed their colour to arseniate of copper (Scheele's green), were at one time largely used in house decoration; but it is not only greens which are injurious, white grounded papers sometimes contain large quantities of arsenic. So recently as six years ago, my own children suffered from very anomalous symptoms which I could not explain, until I detected arsenic in the wall paper of the nursery—a white grounded paper with a blue pattern. Dr Stevenson Macadam, who was kind enough to confirm the analysis, found that the quantity of arsenic in this paper was very great. For the first few months after a paper which contains arsenic is put up, there may be no injurious effects ; it is only after the surface of the paper gets rubbed and its gloss taken off, that the poisonous particles are thrown into the atmosphere, and are absorbed into the system chiefly through the air passages. I understand that the best manufacturers are now fully alive to the danger; but it is as well in choosing a paper, more especi- ally a cheap paper which contains bright green colours, to have a guarantee from the paper-hanger that it is free from arsenic.