Deborah Blum

But it wouldn't have done that if people hadn't already been so angry, if the fire hadn't already been burning in that way.

And that is a paradigm-changing moment for the United States because there's no food consumer protection laws in the United States until that moment, right?

That's the moment that the federal government says, yes, we're in the business—

of protecting American consumers and that when the Constitution says promote the general welfare, it actually means people in their everyday lives.

And so we're going to pass these two laws, and they're only designed to make American consumers safer.

And if you think about it, every single consumer protection law and agency that follows, eventually the FDA, of course, but also the EPA and OSHA and all of the agencies,

the Consumer Protection Bureau, all of the agencies that work to make us safer, they're based on the precedent set by those two food laws.

It's really amazing.

They had to call it off fairly soon into it because people were getting so sick so quickly.

And it was one of the first compounds that got taken out of the food supply.

I mean, it just got taken out.

Right.

Borax came out.

Salicylic acid came out.

Some of the aniline coltar dyes.

Wiley commissioned a whole study of dyes, and a huge number of the dyes got taken out.

They were toxic.

Not just the metal, metallic dyes like arsenic and lead, but some of these coal tar dyes were really dangerous.

Those got taken out.

He was directly responsible for getting some very bad things taken out of the food supply.