Phoebe Judge

Support for Criminal comes from Squarespace.

If you're a business owner, you know that it matters how you present your business online.

Squarespace has the tools you need to customize your website and advertise all the kinds of services you provide.

Plus, you can choose the colors and fonts you like.

Go to squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial.

When you're ready to launch, use the offer code criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Journalist Deborah Blum.

During the later half of the 19th century, more and more Americans were moving from farms to cities, where they were beginning to rely on industrially produced foods.

Manufacturers found all kinds of ways to stretch their products with unlisted additions.

At the same time, 19th century canning and food processing methods were often unsanitary, and there wasn't any widespread refrigeration.

Sometimes dairymen would add pureed calf brains to the top to make it look like there was cream floating on the watered-down milk.

It wasn't only formaldehyde.

Manufacturers were starting to add all kinds of chemicals to food.

borax to meat, salicylic acid to beer, sulfurous acid to dried fruit.

And none of it was regulated by the U.S.

government.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a government chemist named Harvey Washington Wiley decided to find out what all these chemicals were actually doing to Americans.

He found 12 volunteers who would eat foods laced with formaldehyde, borax, and salicylic acid every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to see what happened.

They were called the Poison Squad.

I'm Phoebe Judge.