December 1, 1915.1 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



109 



a severe case may occur among the men employed in the naphtha 

 churning rooms ol a rubber factory, for when many different 

 kinds of cement are used tlie churns have to be cleaned out. and 

 tlie fumes of naphtha may he heavy enough to overcome the 

 workmen who do this. .-vnotiier place where severe naphtha 

 pni^oning may occur is in tlu d'.pping room. The men here work 

 • >\K-r large tanks filled witli thin rubber cement and the tenipcra- 

 lurc of the room 

 IS kept at 90 to 

 98 degrees R, to 

 hasten the evap- 

 oration of the 

 naphtha. A case 

 of this sort from 

 a dipping room 

 was reported to 

 us by a physician 

 in an Ohio town. 

 The patient, a 

 strong man, was 

 found by the phy- 

 sician lying in bed 

 comatose, with 

 cold skin, pale, 

 and almost pulse- 

 less. He had been 

 dipping wooden 

 forms of gloves 

 into the tank of 

 cement and had 

 felt so dizzy and 

 ill that he was 

 obliged to leave 

 work and go 

 home, but on the 

 way he began 

 t o stagger and 

 would have fallen 

 had not two men 

 half carried him 

 home. He was 

 put to bed and 

 not till then did 

 he lose conscious- 

 ness. His illness 

 lasted several 



days, but he re- Acid Cuking or Coi. 



covered com- 

 pletely, never, however, venturing U' gn back to the same sort 

 of work. 



The author, after referring to British records, turns to a report 

 of tlie Massachusetts General Hospital. 1913-1914. A number of 

 rubber workers applied for treatment for various disorders. The 

 supposition was that they were caused by benzine poisoning, 

 but the records are not regarded as being beyond doubt. Several 

 cases of rubber workers who made or used rubber cement are 

 cited, however, by Dr. Hamilton, which would seem to prove the 

 poisonous efifect of the fumes on certain workmen. She says : 



As for symptoms, the workpeople claim that they taste naphtha 

 all the time and that this destroys their appetite for food. .\n 

 attack of "naphtha jag" is succeeded by a stage of depression 

 and dullness, with clouded memory, and on the following day 

 headache, loathing for food, and a feeling of exhaustion. 



CARBON DISULPIIIDK. 



The extremely dangerous character of this couipound is dis- 

 cussed at some length, the facts being gathered in European rub- 

 ber factories. Few physicians in the United States seem to have 

 recognized this poison or its properties. Dr. Hamilton gives 

 several cases of poisoning from this solvent, the following being 

 typical : 



The two most dangerous poisons which are encounten-d in the 

 rubber industry are used in the so-called acid cure or cold cure 

 and in the vapor cure, processes by which sulphur in the form of 

 the monochloride is introduced into the rubber. It is not the 

 monochloride itself that is dangerous, for, according to Lehmann, 

 who tested it experimentally, sulphur monochloride causes 

 nothing more than an irritation of the conjunctiva and of the 

 mucous membranes of nose and throat. The danger is in the 



addition of carbon disnlphide or carbon tetrachloride or benzol, 

 and these are poisonous in the order mentioned. 



Most of the physicians in our rubber-manufacture towns do 

 not seem to have even heard of the use of carbon disulphide in 

 the rubber industry, nor are they familiar with its toxic proper- 

 equcntly it is very hard to determine whether or not 



of using it results in serious trouble. It is certainly 

 possible that the 

 insane asylums 

 have received 

 cases of unrecog- 

 nized carbon di- 

 sulphide psychos- 

 is, since insane 

 rubber workers 

 are committed 

 from these towns 

 without any in- 

 quiry being made 

 as to the exact 

 occupation of the 

 patient and the 

 possible i n d u s- 

 trial source of 

 his disease. Most 

 of the cases of 

 poisoning discov- 

 ered in the course 

 of this inquiry 

 w ere described 

 by foremen of 

 factories, only a 

 1 f w 1) y physi- 



The foreman of 

 the cold-curing 

 department of a 

 dipped-goods fac- 

 tory was very elo- 

 quent on the sub- 

 ject of carbon di- 

 sulphide poison- 

 ing. He said his 

 men used to go 

 crazy from the 

 fumes until he 

 made them work 

 for short spells 

 only, alternating with other work. During the preceding year 

 he had had 12 men under him and all had felt the effects in 

 some way, complaining of headache and dizziness, or indiges- 

 tion, or loss of mental power, or loss of memory, or muscular 

 weakness, especially in the legs. He himself suffered a good deal 

 from dizziness and severe occipital headache, and had lost 

 strength. He said he always felt the effects of the fumes most 

 at the beginnii'ig of the week or after a vacation. Sleeplessness 

 was one of his chief complaints, while one of his workmen said 

 that the fumes made him drowsy all the time — he could drop off 

 to sleep whenever he sat down. 



C.\KI!ON TKTR.\CHI.OUIDl:. 

 This, as a rule, has been thought to be not particularly harmful. 

 Investigation in European factories, however, proved it to be dis- 

 tinctly poisonous. The report on the American factories is as 

 follows : 



In the effort to avoid the fire risk from carbon disulphide fumes 

 :;everal American rubber factories are now using the non-inflam- 

 mable carbon tetrachloride, which is. however, not as powerful 

 a rubber solvent as carbon disulphide and is more expensive. 

 Superintendents and chemists in the factories where the former 

 is used are apparently ignorant of its harmfulncss, and this is 

 liardly to be wondered at since the ordinary textbooks of toxic- 

 ology do not even mention it, and the few that do have very 

 little t(] say about it. Von Jaksch speaks of severe nervous dis- 

 turbances having occurred among workmen wdio used a mi.xture 

 containing carbon tetrachloride on the inside of boilers to prevent 

 incrustations. Gadamer simply states that this substance is used 

 in industry and may cause poisoning with symptoms like those 

 of chloroform. 



Carbon tetrachloride was found actually in use in only three 

 factories. In one of them a man who had dipped rubber goods 

 in a solution for seven months complained of nausea and loss 

 of appetite, which he attributed to his occupation. In another, 



LOONS, 



