Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked / Disease and Death in the Pot and Bottle

by Anonymous

PICKLES.

Among the poisonous articles daily vended to the public, none are of more potent effect than the pickles sold by unprincipled oilmen. For the purpose of giving a fresh and lively green colour or hue to those stimulants of the palate, they are intentionally coloured by means of copper or verdigris, or at least placed for a considerable time in copper or brazen vessels for the purpose of allowing the articles to be impregnated by the joint action of the metal and the vinegar. The cookery books (save and except “The Cook’s Oracle”) in vogue also direct the “lovers of good cheer” to boil their pickles in bell metal or copper pots, or to boil halfpence or a bit of verdigris with them, in order to impart a green colour! Ought not the authors, whose gender seems “doubtful,” and Messieurs les Bibliopoles, of those pests, to be indited for a nuisance and malice prepense to the loving subjects of our late “good old king?”

The ready way to detect the presence of copper in these articles is to pour a little liquid ammonia, diluted with an equal quantity of water, over a small quantity of the suspected pickle reduced into small pieces, and placed in an enclosed phial or vessel; when, if the pickles contain the minutest quantity of copper, the ammonia will assume a blue colour.

VINEGAR.

Vinegar is adulterated with sulphuric acid, muriatic acid, nitric acid, oil of vitriol, a variety of acrid vegetable substances, and frequently contains metallic impregnations of lead, tin, pewter, iron, and copper, from the stills or vessels in which it is made. Its more harmless adulteration is a considerable dilution with water.

Vinegar is prepared from a variety of substances; but its common preparations are from wine, fruits, malt, sugar, and wood. The vinegar made from wood is the strongest, containing at least eight times the strength of the common preparations. It is perfectly colourless, and its taste is very pungent and grateful. But the vinegar generally prepared for sale in this country is made from malt; which to be good should be of a pale brown colour, perfectly transparent, of a pleasant and rather pungent acid taste, but without acrimony, and a fragrant grateful odour. These are the readiest and best tests of good vinegar. But as a false strength is frequently given to it by adding oil of vitriol, sulphuric acid, or the extract of some acrid vegetable, as pellitory of Spain, capsicum, &c. or metallic extracts, the tests for ascertaining these foreign substances are as follow: If it is suspected that vinegar is adulterated with oil of vitriol, put three or four drops of acetate of barytes into a glass of vinegar; filtrate the white precipitate thereby produced through paper, and heat the powder or residuum remaining in a tobacco-pipe until it is red hot. Then put it into spirit of salt or diluted aqua-fortis; if the precipitate dissolves, the vinegar is genuine; if not, it is adulterated. But if metallic adulteration is suspected, add liquid ammonia to the vinegar, until the odour of the ammonia predominates; if the mixture assumes a blackish tint, it is a sign that copper is present in the article. If the presence of lead be suspected, add water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen to the suspected vinegar; if the mixture becomes black or yields a black precipitate, your suspicion is well founded.

OLIVE, or FLORENCE OIL.

Olive oil is frequently adulterated by mixing with it the oil of poppy seeds or a decoction of cucumbers, which latter ingredients easily unite with the oleaginous substances. It is frequently impregnated with lead, from the circumstance of the fruit which yields the oil being compressed between leaden plates, and the oil being suffered to remain in pewter or leaden cisterns in order to become clear before it is offered for sale. This last injurious quality is communicated afresh to the commodity by the retail venders, who frequently keep a pewter vessel immersed in the oil, for the purpose, as they assert, of preserving the liquid from becoming rancid. It is however proper to state that the metallic contamination by the wholesale manufacturer chiefly belongs to the Spanish produce: the French and Italian manufacture is usually free from the impregnation.

The presence of lead or any metal deleterious to health is detected, by shaking in a stopped phial some of the suspected oil with a quantity of water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, in the proportion of one part of the former to two parts of the latter ingredient; when the oil, if adulterated, will become of a dark brown or black colour. When the oil of poppy seed, or the decoction of cucumber, is supposed to have been made use of in the adulteration, their presence may be ascertained by exposing the mixture to a freezing temperature, when the olive oil will become frozen, while the adulterating ingredient will remain fluid.

The best olive oil is of a bright pale amber colour, somewhat inclining to a greenish cast; free from sediment, bland to the taste, and without smell.