Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon by Paul David Blanc (review)

In March 1846 a remarkable discovery was made that had a profound impact on economic life in Britain and ultimately around the world. Chemist Alexander Parke adapted a newly discovered chemical with the pungent odor of rotten eggs to the task of making gooey natural rubber into a material that could be molded and shaped into any one of a thousand products—tires, balls, infant pacifiers, gloves, etc.—in the expanding industrial and consumer markets. The material was carbon disulphide (CS2). By the middle of the twentieth century it would become the basis for a host of pliable synthetics that would transform commercial life: cellophane, rubber goods, rayon, and other synthetic materials and fibers. In the late nineteenth century it was found that CS2, when combined with cellulose, formed a synthetic fiber that was stable, strong, resistant to insects, and safe to wear. Synthetics produced with CS2 and cellulose came to be known as "glos," "artificial silk," and later, "rayon." One major drawback in the use of CS2 was that it was highly poisonous. Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, eye disease, hallucinations, agitation, parkinsonianism, and a host of disorders were documented among workers in Europe and the United States as the uses of the synthetic fibers expanded.

The fascinating history of how this material insinuated itself into the lives of millions is the central issue that Paul Blanc explores with truly awe-inspiring depth. Blanc traces the chemical, political, medical, and social history of this seemingly simple material and, through his biographical approach, details the history of the twentieth century. We learn of numerous case reports of workers who suffered from horrifying neurological diseases in the rubber and automobile industry as industries found ways to exploit Africa, India, and the rest of South Asia in their quest to find the raw material.

While Fake Silk closely outlines the technical history of the modern synthetics industry and its ramification for workers and consumers, the book's heart lies in its deep understanding of the relationship between the politics of the twentieth century and the evolution of the chemical industry itself. Blanc never fails to remind the reader of how closely intertwined was the history of science and the evolution of the industrial state. Some issues he draws out are familiar to readers in environmental science's somewhat tarnished history: When workers in the viscose plants of England were identified in one of Sir Thomas Legge's final writings as victims of severe eye conditions, Legge was attacked by expert witnesses who served as consultants to a Rayon manufacturing concern. They objected that such reports of injuries would result in "crippling of a rising industry" (p. 55).

Blanc details this "rising industry" in exquisite detail, identifying a host of interlocking international concerns that manufactured viscose, the basis for rayon and other CS2 products, despite the growing attention of a handful of researchers and political organizations that saw in the production process an important threat to the health of workers. In fact, during the 1930s, with an economic depression and the rise of German Fascism, both the left and the right saw the products of CS2 as ripe symbols of broader labor and social struggles.

Blanc pays close attention to the cultural meanings of synthetics as they entered into the mainstream of commerce in the industrial world. Did "rayon" or other viscose materials represent progress or regress? Was rayon a symbol of modernity or repression? Was Aldous Huxley's use of viscose as a symbol of the cheapening quality of life in Brave New World the way in which the broader population would understand synthetics or was Dupont's public relations campaign which touted its products as "Better Living through Chemistry" to dominate?

This is a marvelous book that marks, I believe, a new stage of historical analysis. The research is impeccable. Sources from virtually every corner of the industrializing world...