The high cost of fashion is not always in the price tag. Sometimes the latest make-up trend or the season's hottest colour conceals something ugly. These toxic trends might have been dangerous if you bought them, but they could be lethal for the people who had to make them.
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Accentuating the eyes with black eyeliner is a cosmetic style used around the world and goes back centuries. Ancient Egyptians of all sexes and stations, including Queen Nefertiti, used eyeliner to represent the eye of Horus, the sky god, or the eye of Ra, the sun god, and and evoke their protection. The kohl eyeliner that the Egyptians used was made from powdered minerals such as galena (lead sulphide) or stibnite (containing antimony), both highly toxic. Contact with metals such as lead and antimony can cause long-term damage to the brain and kidneys. You can still find kohl eyeliners at the cosmetic counter today, but thankfully the ingredients of modern kohl are very different and have to meet strict safety regulations.
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Maria, Countess of Coventry, was renowned for her beauty and style. But the cosmetics she used to enhance her beauty disfigured her face and perhaps even led to her death at the age of 28. She was a favourite at the royal court, and her admirers flocked to see her on stage and at social gatherings. Like many wealthy women in 18th-century Europe, Maria used an exclusive skin product called Venetian ceruse to give her a fashionably pale complexion, and vermilion rouge to redden her cheeks and lips. Sadly, the daily application of these toxic cosmetics resulted in horrific side effects. The lead in the ceruse mixed with the moisture on the skin to form acids that ate away at her face. Her skin began to peel off, leaving scars, and the more scars she got, the more ceruse she used. The mercury in the vermilion seeped into her veins and slowly poisoned her. Because of her ill health and rapidly fading beauty, she spent her final year in a darkened room, hiding from her adoring public.
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Who could resist the rich red colour of vermilion in their home? Vermilion has been used as a paint since Roman times. It is made from the powdered mineral cinnabar, also called mercury sulphide. This striking mural adorns the dining room of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. But regular diners would not have realised that their indigestion was probably caused by the painted walls rather than something they ate. The vermilion-painted walls would have emitted toxic mercury fumes and, over time, poisoned the diners. Symptoms of mercury poisoning include a metallic taste in the mouth, nausea and vomiting, numbness and difficulty breathing. Although vermilion was eventually replaced by the much safer pigment cadmium red, mercury could still be found in some paints as a fungicide until the 1990s.
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Mercury also featured in the manufacture of that essential of every gentleman’s outfit until the mid-20th century: the hat. Hats were made from felt, a material made by entangling fibres through friction, pressure, moisture, chemicals and heat. Rabbit fur treated with mercuric oxide was the cheapest source of malleable hat felt. The process exposed hatmakers to dangerous levels of mercury, but there are surprisingly few accounts of hat wearers suffering from mercury poisoning. Felt hats were given a waterproof coating of shellac and lined with cloth or a leather headband, so contact with the wearer’s skin was limited. If hat wearers suffered mercury poisoning, it was insignificant compared to the experience of the poor hatmaker.
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Mercury poisoning was an occupational disease among hatters. They worked in small, airless workshops, and inevitably breathed and swallowed quantities of the mercury-coated fibres. Telltale signs of poisoning were pale, cadaverous faces and often a blue line along the gums. Clubbed fingers indicated chronic oxygen deprivation, and damage to the nervous system resulted in uncontrollable trembling – the “hatters’ shake”. The matted felt fibres were boiled and shrunk in acid, which resulted in corroded and calloused hands that easily absorbed the toxic mercuric oxide. Victims of mercury poisoning also experienced behavioural changes such as depression, delusions and a loss of self-control. The Mad Hatter in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ may not have been ‘mad’, but suffering from mercury poisoning instead.
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Until the end of the 18th century, green pigments were made by mixing yellow and blue together, so had a bluish or yellowish tinge and a tendency to fade. The German chemist Carl Scheele (1742–86) was the first to make a pigment that was a vibrant green and didn’t fade. It was cheap to manufacture and easy to use, but also toxic because the chief ingredient was a copper-and-arsenic compound. Thanks to the new ‘arsenical green’ pigments, green became the fashionable colour of the mid-19th century. Green wallpapers painted with arsenical green paint could be found in many ‘society’ homes and establishments. But the paint reacted with the wallpaper glue and damp walls of Victorian buildings, releasing lethal hydrogen cyanide gas (used as a chemical weapon in the 20th century). The designer William Morris used arsenical green in his wallpapers and furnishings, despite the risk to his workers, and it wasn’t until the 1870s that he bowed to public pressure and began to use arsenic-free greens in his workshops.
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Powdered green pigment was also used in clothing fabrics in Victorian times. Members of the royal household set the trend with emerald-green dresses and wreaths of artificial flowers and foliage entwined in tendrils of their hair. Soon women who wore these fashions began to see painful skin rashes and sores around their shoulders and arms, where the green powder came into contact with the skin. But if it was unpleasant for the women wearing the dresses, it could prove fatal for those making the outfits. In 1861 Matilda Scheurer, a 19-year-old flower maker, died from ‘accidental’ poisoning. She worked in a factory, along with a hundred others, making artificial green foliage for headdresses and wreaths, and slowly absorbed the green arsenic dust into her body. In her final days her vomit was green, the whites of her eyes had turned green and she was having convulsions every few minutes. Her fingertips were green and an autopsy revealed arsenic in her stomach, lungs and liver. Growing awareness of the dangers led to a media campaign against the use of arsenical greens, including this satirical response in Punch magazine.
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The discovery of radium by Marie Curie at the very end of the 19th century was a triumph for science. The intriguing new element with its glow-in-the-dark properties was a symbol of the modern age. Radioluminescent paint – containing radium – was invented in 1908, and widely used for the next 40 years on the faces of watches, compasses and aircraft instruments. Nobody realised that the radiation the paint emitted could damage human tissue, and the women who painted the watch dials were particularly vulnerable. In a notorious case, a group of women, nicknamed the Radium Girls, were told that the paint was perfectly safe and were even encouraged to lick their paintbrushes to keep them pointed. Radium paint was discontinued once the danger was widely known, but sadly not before many of the women received lethal doses of radiation.
About the author
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Ben Gazur
(he/him)
Dr Ben Gazur has a PhD in biochemistry but gave up the glamour of the lab to be a freelance writer. He specialises in history, science, and the history of science. Ben Gazur is a writer and author. His book about food folklore is currently being crowdfunded. If you support it, you will get your name printed in the book. Click here to find out more.