lpetrich
Contributor
The Terrifying Ways Edwardians Wired Their Houses | Hidden Killers | Absolute History - YouTube
In its early days, home electricity did not have very safe wiring. Like bare wiring and several appliances hung off of a single wire. Before good insulation and fuses and circuit breakers, this caused a big risk of fire and electrocution. Before electric lighting, there was gas lighting, using coal gas (from baking coal with a little air and water, making hydrogen and carbon monoxide). That persisted for a while, and it could be set on fire with a spark from the electricity. Some early electric stuff was rather dumb, like electric tablecloths.
Asbestos was common in insulation for a long time, but asbestos dust gets into lungs and causes nasty things.
Refrigerators used a variety of coolants, some of them flammable like light hydrocarbons, some of them toxic like ammonia and sulfur dioxide. We've developed other coolants, though we still use some of the old ones in some applications. We've gotten better at containing them, so they are much less of a threat.
Makeup sometimes used toxic stuff like lead and arsenic compounds for making skin look pale and mercury oxide for rouge -- stuff that was often advertised with lots of false claims.
Also bad was hair perming - it often caused women's hair to fall out.
When radium was discovered, it was sometimes sold as a great medicine. But it has a problem - it's a chemical analog of calcium, and it accumulates in bones, causing aplastic anemia and bone cancer. It was good for making glow-in-the-dark paint, like for clocks and watches, and while it is safe for its users, it was not very safe for those who had to paint it on.
Nice documentary.
In its early days, home electricity did not have very safe wiring. Like bare wiring and several appliances hung off of a single wire. Before good insulation and fuses and circuit breakers, this caused a big risk of fire and electrocution. Before electric lighting, there was gas lighting, using coal gas (from baking coal with a little air and water, making hydrogen and carbon monoxide). That persisted for a while, and it could be set on fire with a spark from the electricity. Some early electric stuff was rather dumb, like electric tablecloths.
Asbestos was common in insulation for a long time, but asbestos dust gets into lungs and causes nasty things.
Refrigerators used a variety of coolants, some of them flammable like light hydrocarbons, some of them toxic like ammonia and sulfur dioxide. We've developed other coolants, though we still use some of the old ones in some applications. We've gotten better at containing them, so they are much less of a threat.
Makeup sometimes used toxic stuff like lead and arsenic compounds for making skin look pale and mercury oxide for rouge -- stuff that was often advertised with lots of false claims.
Also bad was hair perming - it often caused women's hair to fall out.
When radium was discovered, it was sometimes sold as a great medicine. But it has a problem - it's a chemical analog of calcium, and it accumulates in bones, causing aplastic anemia and bone cancer. It was good for making glow-in-the-dark paint, like for clocks and watches, and while it is safe for its users, it was not very safe for those who had to paint it on.
