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- Title
Giftgrönt och zinkvitt.
- Authors
Stålbom, Göran
- Abstract
With the onset of industrialism in the 19th century, synthetic substances with unknown properties acquired an unprecedented reach in society at large. Paris green, an arsenic-containing pigment used during the 19th century in paints and wall hangings, is a case in point. Paris green and other arsenic-polluted pigments came to be associated with toxic indoor air and became the centre of attention in one of the most publicised "domestic poisonings" history has known. The article gives a chronological and descriptive account mainly of Swedish professional actors' notions of these hazards. The article reproduces the representations as manifested in narratives and written sources such as handbooks, works of reference, research reports, newspapers and other reading matter, and also in official rules and regulations, but without taking sides on their validity. An anthropological approach is applied to the risk assessments in a controversy illustrating the toxic reputation of arsenic and the deep-rooted 19th century fear of foul air.
- Subjects
ARSENIC poisoning; PAINT research; WALL hangings; INDOOR air pollution research; AIR pollution
- Publication
Bebyggelsehistorisk Tidskrift, 2015, Issue 69, p24
- ISSN
0349-2834
- Publication type
Article