Rayon Will Be with Us

This chapter discusses the continued production of viscose rayon, suggesting that it may not disappear from our everyday lives anytime soon despite the emergence of new knowledge about the toxicity of carbon disulfide. Viscose was a pacesetter at the start of the twentieth century, the first major synthetic-fiber success story. Even as rayon went offline in much of Europe and North America in the last decades of the twentieth century, carbon disulfide is still very much a part of an ongoing and indeed expanding viscose-manufacturing industry. Indeed, carbon disulfide has made another comeback, not through pharmaceuticals but via agribusiness. Both viscose rayon and cellophane have retained a symbolic presence in society. Viscose remain very much in existence, thanks to technological innovation and savvy green marketing. Today rayon is marketed as an eco-friendly, nearly green product. As Halston aptly expressed in an advertisement made for ITT Rayonier, Inc., “Rayon. It's going to be with us a long, long time”.

The Heart of the Matter

This chapter considers the evidence linking carbon disulfide and heart disease. It first examines how the viscose rayon industry fared in the aftermath of World War II, paying attention to changes in the landscape for rayon and cellophane, including the growing presence of synthetic polymers. It then discusses carbon disulfide poisoning cases, including cases of central nervous system disease consistent with vascular insult. It also looks at Enrico Vigliani's 1955 publication that included experimental laboratory studies evaluating potential mechanisms by which carbon disulfide might induce atherosclerosis, zeroing in on lipid metabolism; John Tiller and Richard Schilling's study of possible heart disease deaths among the workers of the three Courtaulds factories in North Wales; and Dr. Thomas Mancuso's investigation of the neuropsychiatric toxicity of carbon disulfide—his analysis concentrated on death by suicide.

The Crazy Years

This chapter examines various incidents attesting to the toxic health effects of artificial silk production on workers employed in factories. The British Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, published in 1925, was the first to capture carbon disulfide poisoning as a reportable disease. Fifteen cases of carbon disulfide toxicity were identified in that year. In that same year, La Medicina del Lavoro published a very brief notice of a British report on carbon disulfide exposure under the heading “Cause of poisoning in the artificial silk industry.” While the Italians were amassing important new information on the health risks of viscose rayon, a representative committee of U.S. textile manufacturers voted to discard “glos” and adopt “rayon” as the commercial term of choice for artificial silk. In 1931 the Statesman and Nation published a report by Sir Thomas Legge, “An Industrial Danger,” devoted to the subject of the artificial silk industry.

Body Count

This chapter considers the growing body of evidence confirming the health hazards of carbon disulfide in the viscose rayon industry. In her report Industrial Poisons Used in the Rubber Industry, Alice Hamilton, a leading U.S. expert on the toxicity of carbon disulfide, provides a technical primer on the rubber manufacturing process, including the carbon disulfide–based cold curing method for vulcanization. Hamilton's report also details the toxic materials used in the rubber industry, with particular emphasis on the toxic effects of carbon disulfide. In a June 1940 meeting of the American Medical Association, Friedrich Lewy presented an overview of nervous system damage from carbon disulfide, based on experimental animal research along with the limited human pathological data that were available. Lewy covered carbon disulfide's past uses in rubber vulcanizing but pushed the viscose rayon industry to the forefront.

Wrapped Up in Cellophane

This chapter examines how cellophane, viscose rayon's sister industry, caught the fancy of the elites during the 1930s. It first considers how cellophane enabled the concentration of corporate power in the global viscose trade. In her 1929 book Labor and Silk, Grace Hutchins probed the interlocking corporate spheres of rayon manufacturing interests. In August 1931 Frank William Taussig and Harry Dexter White published “Rayon and the Tariff: The Nature of an Industrial Prodigy,” an essay addressing the financial advantages the viscose rayon industry had obtained through tariff protections. Over the 1930s, viscose rayon and cellophane, despite being chemically identical and produced by the same technology, traveled widely divergent paths in the public imagination. Cellophane became emblematic of something entertainingly novel, the camp chic of its day. In contrast, rayon assumed a tawdry, even sinister aspect. Viscose even became the stuff of medical quackery, with a special flourish of imitation hucksterism.

In the Beginning

This chapter examines the nature of viscose manufacturing and the known or suspected toxic effects of carbon disulfide. It begins with a history of carbon disulfide, which was first synthesized in 1796 by a German mining and metallurgical chemist named Wilhelm August Lampadius. Soon the potent anesthetic effects of carbon disulfide were revealed in various experiments. An outbreak of disease due to carbon disulfide in a prerevolutionary Russian viscose factory was an important early report of worker ill health and only the second one specific to the nascent viscose rayon industry. In 1892 it was discovered that carbon disulfide was uniquely capable of liquefying cellulose without fundamentally changing its structure, which became the basis for producing artificial silk. However, treating cellulose with large quantities of carbon disulfide was a highly dangerous process. This chapter considers the evidence showing that viscose rayon caused worker disease and death in factories.

Rayon Goes to War

This chapter examines the use of viscose rayon as a strategic maté by both sides during World War II. Viscose may have been coming into its own in World War II, but the military roots of the viscose rayon industry go much farther back than that. In fact, in the 1920s a recurring critique of the rapidly expanding artificial silk industry was rayon's potential use as a platform for rapid conversion to munitions manufacturing. This concern was driven in large part by the close chemical and manufacturing links between artificial silk made through the nitrocellulose process and the production of explosives. The United States entered the war after the initial European epidemic of toxic jaundice from tetrachlorethane. For Germany and Italy, rayon meant textile independence. In Japan, silk played this role. In the United States, the rayon production boom of the World War II era was only one small part of a far larger mobilization effort. Unfortunately, there was no parallel war time expansion in experimental research into the dangers of carbon disulfide.