“Contains Inert Material: Water 84.0%. Sodium Chlorid 4.8%. Calcium Chlorid 0.3%.”
This statement is obviously made to meet the requirements of the federal Insecticide Act. This law requires either that the identity and the amounts of potent ingredients in disinfecting preparations be declared or else that the percentage of the inert ingredients of such preparations be given. The omission from the label of all statements with regard to the potent ingredients of the preparation and the absence of such a statement in recent advertising matter suggests either that the older statements about its composition were false or else that the composition has been changed.
Tscheppe published (Pharmaceutische Rundschau 8:109, 1890) an analysis of Platt’s Chlorides which has been quoted in other publications as indicating the composition of the preparation. He reported that he found each quart of the preparation to contain aluminum sulphate 6 ounces, zinc chlorid 11⁄3 ounces, sodium chlorid 2 ounces, calcium chlorid 3 ounces.
Some years ago (about 1911) the company made the following statement relative to the germicidal power (phenol co-efficient) of Platt’s Chlorides:
“... for some time the carbolic acid co-efficiency of our output has been from 2.5 to 4.3, the average being about 3; namely about three times stronger than pure carbolic acid.”
In 1912, the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service reported (Bulletin 82, Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, p. 69) that the phenol coefficient of a sample of Platt’s Chlorides was so low that it could not be determined and also that the sample was found to contain some mercuric chlorid. In 1913, the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station reported (Bulletin, July, 1913, p. 292), that Platt’s Chlorides contained principally zinc chlorid, also some aluminum chlorid, calcium chlorid, and traces of mercuric chlorid. The phenol coefficient, determined by the Hygienic Laboratory method, was found to be 0.05.
The preceding suggests that the composition of Platt’s Chlorides had been changed (without notice to the consumer) and that it had been fortified by the addition of mercuric chlorid. Years ago part of the advertising of this product was a testimonial from a health official which declared that, for disinfection, “bichlorid of mercury is useless in disinfecting sputum or discharges from the bowels, being rendered inert by the albumin present” and it lauded Platt’s Chlorides as devoid of such drawbacks.
RECENT ANALYSES OF PLATT’S CHLORIDES
To determine the present composition of Platt’s Chlorides and to compare it with that sold formerly, the A. M. A. Chemical Laboratory has made an analysis of a specimen purchased in 1919 and also of one purchased in 1911 and since kept unopened in the files of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry. The following table contains the results of these analyses (all quantities given are Gm. per 100 c.c.):