The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-01-27

family suffered from sleeplessness
nausea, nervousness, loss of appetite
and various other Affections, from
which they would obtain speedy relic
upon going into the country. Severa
investigations were made, but the cause
of the trouble remained a mystery, I'M
til finally it occurred to someone that
perhaps the costly wall paper contained
poison. An analysis followed, and the
result was the finding of arsenic in such
quantities as to give real cause for
alarm, and to revive the scare which
hobs up at intervals of about two years.
The story is told in the Boston Herald
as follows:
The paper on every wall contained
arsenic; the hall. study and chamber
very large amounts: and the dining
room. an unusually large amount.
Arsenic was also found in dust from
above the door of the dining-rOom
These tests and those to be mentioned
later were all made by the Berzelius-
Marsh process, and the greatest care
was taken that arsenic should enter
no experiment except through the pa
per undergoing examination. The dis
coyery thus made revealed the cause OF
all our trouble. For more than two
years we had been undergoing process
of slow poisoning from arsenic. We
never entered the house without inhal
ing arsenic. We never sat at our tables
to work, never went to bed, never ate
- al A,, ftv fol-
ing in fresh supplies OF arsenic. a
breeze never entered window without
stirring arsenic dust All our
symptoms are now ex |
planned, and our strongest impulse Is |
10 arouse others to the magnitude of al |
evil which threatens us all. That the |
was greatest when the |
furnace was in action may be due to |
several causes, such as the greater |
warmth of the house, the smaller pro-
portion OF fresh air and the constant
notion of the air when heated. After
Iuch a discovery, of course, we are
orced to live elsewhere for time. Our
leep improves at once, though certain
II the evil effects continue, and are
kelly to do so, for months. Then comes
he confusion and expense of stripping
very wall, In order that 1t may be
ossible to live at home again. In the
recess of getting off the papers, so
luch arsenic dust and gas are given off,
nat we feel the effects instantly on
ntering the house. The papers which ,
ere worst in the house, if there can bc
worst where all are so bad, were the
IRA cottas and the blue. The red
ieZes also contained much arsenic.
be old supposition that there is no 7
anger, except IN green papers, is er- ]
neous. G
The owner of the house continued his
vestigations with the dealers and !
anufacturers, and found that these L
re innocent of any wrong intent, the
alers requiring certificates from the n
skers that the papers contained no N
senic, and the manufacturers declar-
3 that they exercised the greatest =,
ution to avoid getting poison into the N
lors. The final conclusion arrived at n
IS that the raw materials used in max N
: the colors contained the poison, and N
a consequence the earth itself must NJ
charged with the criminality in the N
Sc. M
But after all this wall paper fright is Nd
e many others-more sensational :,
IN real. Perhaps five out of six j.
uses in the civilized world have more =
less paper on the walls, millions OF
pile eating, and sleeping all the time in
'ered rooms, and whose death was
T traced to poison from wall paper2
! solitary, well-authenticated case of
l-paper poisoning were established, ~
nervous and imaginary elements V
ng entirely eliminated from it, the
Der industry would be ruined, and W
re would be general return to plas- us
tile or wainscotted walls.