Phoebe Judge

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.

This is Criminal.

Who was Harvey Washington Wiley?

He was also a farmer.

By the time Harvey was six, he was helping bring the cows in to be milked.

When he got older, he decided to study chemistry and eventually became the first chemistry professor at Purdue University.

He'd been working there for seven years when the Indiana State Board of Health asked him if he could help them with something.