the dark history of mercury in the fashion industry

When we think of Alice in Wonderland one of the most recognized characters is ‘Mad Hatter’‘, an eccentric character with a top hat and a label that says 10/6. And although it may seem that the author of this story wanted to give that characterization to the famous rabbit, the truth is that all hats at that time had a serious problem which made them look too much like the classic rabbit.

What’s behind. And the reality behind the character is much murkier and less colorful than in Disney or Tim Burton films. The expression “mad as a hatter” was not a literary invention in this case, but a quite popular medical diagnosis for the timesince for centuries the hat industry suffered a silent epidemic that led to serious neurological damage. and the culprit it was mercury.

The ‘carroting’. To understand why hatters fell ill, we must look at how the felt was made between the 17th and 20th centuries that would give rise to hats. The raw material was usually rabbit, hare or beaver fur, and in order for these furs to become a high-quality, rigid and durable felt, they were subjected to a chemical process called “carroting”.

This name came from the orange color of the carrots that the skins acquired when treated with a hot solution of mercury nitrate. But logically it was a death trap for the workshops of the time, just as collect NIOSH historical archives.

Security issues. Although there are now strong regulations regarding safety at work, if we look back it was not like that. And the treatment was carried out in a poorly ventilated space, which caused mercury vapors to be released when the acid mixture was heated with the skins.

By not being able to escape through any ventilation slits, the professionals who were constantly working with the skins ended up inhaling the mercury vapors. It was not a one-time accident, but rather a chronic exposure that accumulated in the body and directly attacked the central nervous system.

A new reality. Although in the popular culture of the time the profession was directly related to being completely crazy, the truth is that current toxicological reviews indicate that chronic mercury poisoning produces a devastating and very specific clinical picture.

And the hatters did not simply become ‘eccentric’, but also had Danbury tremorswhich are uncontrollable muscle spasms and intentional tremors that prevented fine movements. But there were also personality changes making pathological shyness, extreme irritability, depression and emotional lability the norm.

The countries took note. Logically, this is something that had to be regulated to guarantee the safety of workers. France was one of the pioneers by prohibiting the use of mercury in the manufacture of hat boxes in 1898, but in Anglo-Saxon countries the industry was quite resistant to change.

And the resentful. In the United States the process remained in force for decades. In this case, it took World War II for the tables to turn and it was not until 1941 when the use of mercury was definitively abandoned in key states such as Connecticut.

But the reason was not the safety of its artisans, but rather that the war required a large amount of mercury to manufacture detonators, which forced the hat industry to look for substitutes such as hydrogen peroxide, as detailed in the industrial records of the time.

Alice’s Hatter. It’s tempting to think that Lewis Carroll designed his character as a textbook case of erethism, but the evidence suggests otherwise. A classic analysis published in BMJ puts the dots on the i’s in this case, pointing out that Carrol knew the popular expression “mad as a hatter”, since he lived in a time where hatters with tremors were a visible social reality.

However, the character of Alice in Wonderland It doesn’t quite fit the medical profile. The Hatter in the book is hyperactive, talkative, euphoric and a lover of riddles. Mercury erethism, on the other hand, is characterized by extreme shyness, social anxiety, and depression. It is likely that Carroll took the figure of the hatter and the idiom to create a caricature, but the identification of the character as “mercury poisoned” is a reading that we have made a posteriori.

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