In the 1860s, a British woman suffered an overwhelming series of tragedies: over just a decade, three of her four husbands, a lover, her mother and devastatingly, 11 of her 15 children and stepchildren died. Mary Ann Cotton was left with nothing but measly life insurance payouts for the loss of her loved ones.
It was the weak, bleak Victorian era: nothing seemed out of the ordinary until the death of her last stepson, when a lingering suspicion undid Mary Ann’s life: turns out, she had killed all her family members–including nearly all of her children–for the insurance payout.
It was rather easy. Mary Ann poisoned her victims with a large dose of arsenic: a clean white powder that, when mixed into food or drink, produces no color, odor, taste or textural difference. Luckily for her, it also shows up as symptoms that are very similar to those of gastric or cardiovascular issues, thus leaving behind no visible trace in life or death. Mary Ann Cotton wasn’t the first or the last. In the late 19th century, England’s newspapers were rife with warnings against the common threat that was arsenic poisoning.
This is a true story, and a scary one, too: one of those dreadful Victorian tales that makes you thankful for having been born at a time when diarrhea can’t kill you, or people can’t simply poison you.
But this story is only one historical account of a chemical that still exists and persists around us. The same arsenic–in the same form, of arsenate or arsenite–exists today, even if more regulated than in the past. It rests in our soils, and without fail, it moves into our water and crops. The nature of this chemical, and what it does to the body, remains a little vague to the lay person even today.
However, arsenic is older than us humans, trees and even oxygen on earth. There is an ancient, fascinating history here, that explains exactly why this dangerous chemical makes for the perfect poison, and still pulses through our lives today.
In many ways, the problem with arsenic is that it’s useful. It always has been–and I don’t even mean necessarily to humans. “Arsenic is a byproduct of Earth bubbling from the inside out,” the writer of this article explains. Arsenic is old, so very old that it existed within the crevices of the ancient earth, bubbling out when the slow waves of evolution lapped at the planet. It slowly oozed out because of an inherent quality of this element: it bonds with other elements, and becomes toxic. Arsenic, by itself, enabled the formation of life by helping organisms develop.
Arsenic existed inside of the earth for millions of years and also helped spawn early life.
And then came oxygen. When bonded with oxygen, arsenic becomes oxidized arsenic, and what once helped organisms slowly evolve on the planet became toxic to the same oxygen breathing organisms. We evolved ways to resist and protect ourselves from this oxidized arsenic–and anyway, there was no natural reason for us to consume it in large doses. Though arsenic does occur in the earth in generous amounts, it’s not nature, it’s man: during the industrial revolution in the 18th century, we started sucking up this useful metal from the earth. Turns out, Arsenic was very useful as long as we’re not ingesting it. But who benefitted from its utility and who became collateral damage was decided by–expectedly–colonial and political power.
Arsenic occurs naturally not in large, but concentrated amounts in specific parts of the world. It was silver and gold mining that exposed more arsenic, in more areas. Its benefit as a pesticide exposed even more people to its residues. Access to white arsenic – Arsenic trioxide, another form of oxidized arsenic – widened. But the problem was not merely this: it was the scale. In the 18th and 19th century, European powers spread their plantations so widely across the planet – North Americas for cotton, Caribbean and African lands for sugar and cocoa, tropical lands for coffee. Colonising powers created a profitable market for arsenic.
This also quickly created a poison market.
The newspapers in England were full of stories of parents poisoning children for the burial money, children poisoning parents for inheritance money (arsenic was literally called inheritance powder). Wives poisoned their cruel husbands, political enemies poisoned each other. Poison concoctions were sold by women on the down low! One account even attributes Napoleon's death in 1821 to the arsenic in his wallpaper.
So, while seeped arsenic was ubiquitous in the lives of people through their food and water, it also became a common household item. “Victorian Britain grocery stores sold tea, biscuits, sugar, flour, rice, and arsenic. Wallpaper, beer, wine, sweets, wrapping paper, painted toys, sheep dip, insecticides, clothing, dead bodies, stuffed animals, hat ornaments, coal, and candles—all contained arsenic.” And tragically, this meant that a lot of arsenic deaths happened accidentally: so universal this white powder was, that it was placed regularly next to sugar or flour on a kitchen shelf, and mistaken for them.
How did all of this happen?
Well, one, because at this time–officially speaking–we didn’t understand how dangerous just ingesting a bit of arsenic was. Manufacturers added arsenic to things like wallpaper, thinking: if it's not being consumed, then it's probably harmless. And they were under no obligation to be transparent about it.
Only when chemists and toxicologists dug deeper, did they understand what even being around arsenic can do to you. “Not until the 1880s, as the number of clinical histories mounted, did a consensus emerge: arsenic at any dose was unhealthy.”
It took a while for toxicologists to understand and trace arsenic, but when they did, we finally had global regulations managing arsenic levels in our water and food, in the 20th century. It was also formally recognised as hazardous (in any dose). The potency of this chemical was now known and even used; in Vietnam, Agent Blue (arsenic-based herbicide) was used to kill mangrove forests and paddy fields during the war. Agent blue stays in water and soil forever. It has still not left.
Even as regulations kicked in, a lot of the harm was already done. How arsenic now exists among us has changed a lot, but the history is still useful because it pulls out a pattern – arsenic was useful, made profitable, widely exploited, then ignored, and then realised to be deadly. Now, WHO guidelines recommend that arsenic presence must be as close to zero as possible, in our water and crops.
So, visibly, poisoning with arsenic reduced dramatically. Accidentally ingesting arsenic is much less likely now.
But the same arsenic does still exist among us. It hasn’t gone anywhere from the soils, where it always was. Under the surface, arsenic is still concentrated. We just talk about it differently now. Do you know if your rice contains arsenic? Do you know if your rice brand tests their harvest for arsenic? Do you know if your water filters remove it from the source?
The answers are not simple, but they do exist. More in part 2 of our arsenic series!
