The “Poison Squad” was the nickname of the group of men enlisted by the then Chief Chemist at the US Department of Agriculture to test whether or not certain substances being added to food products were benign, as the producers claimed. However, this book is focused more on Harvey Washington Wiley than on the dozens of people he fed additives to. In fact, the subtitle is “One Chemist’s Single-minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”. The confidence we have that the food on supermarket shelves is not dangerous to our health, that we take almost completely for granted today, was mired in a pitched battle just over a century ago.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, science had discovered, or created, a number of substances that could be used to maintain freshness, or the semblance of freshness, in food. Many of the food manufacturers and sellers liked these substances because they were either cheaper than the real thing (such as saccharin for sugar), or helped their products remain salable for longer. They were not particularly concerned with any potential health impacts for their customers. It took several decades, but eventually the original Pure Food Law was passed to protect consumers. Most industry bigwigs had fought it tooth and nail, unsurprisingly, and used their influence with various politicians to try to prevent the law’s passage, and then to attempt to block enforcement.
The depressing thing about the history described in the book is how it still resonates today. Lawmakers would bend over backwards to protect various companies and industries, but seemed unmoved by documented proof that additives could be dangerous for consumers. What tipped the scales and caused the Pure Food Act to be passed? A combination of factors. First, newspapers and magazines kept publishing articles decrying the state of food products. Second, groups and individuals kept up letter writing campaigns to their legislators. Sadly, another factor was when an additive was shown to be directly responsible for people’s deaths, and of course that made the news.
If this was your family, how would you research them? How would you know if someone in your family died as a result of something they ate or drank? A newspaper article might mention it, especially if others were affected as well. Also, if there is a death certificate, check both the listed cause of death and the numerical code. There is a website (http://www.wolfbane.com/icd/index.html) that lists the International Classification of Diseases by revision. Find the revision before the date on the certificate you are researching, and scroll down until you find the correct number. For example, in the 1909 revision, code number 164 is “Poisoning by food”.