‘The workers will serve as experimental animals’, noted Alice Hamilton, the renowned American industrial hygienist and activist for labour protection, in 1929 (quoted on p. 81). Hamilton, who had made her name investigating industrial toxins while working at the Chicago-based social reform initiative Hull House and later as the first female member of faculty at Harvard, was referring in this instance to the pernicious threat of carbon disulphide. As Paul David Blanc demonstrates in his excellent Fake Silk, this chemical behind the manufacture of viscose rayon (the affordable, mass-producible fake silk of the book’s title) and cellophane held debilitating, and potentially fatal, consequences for the workers involved in making it. Meanwhile, consumers could blithely enjoy the product’s benefits without suffering any of its harms.

As early as the mid-nineteenth century it had become clear to French physicians investigating workers in the rubber industry, where carbon disulphide was first used as a solvent, that the chemical could lead to woeful results, including impotence, nerve damage, eye damage and insanity. Suicide attempts – and threats of violence against others – were not uncommon amongst afflicted workers. Over time, medical reports stretching from France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia to, slightly later, Japan, went on to cite dangers associated with the chemical in its various manufacturing uses. Nonetheless, carbon disulphide proved an invaluable component in making ‘fake silk’ and its cousin cellophane, alongside the production of numerous other products from pesticides to a treatment for alcoholism. As a consequence, its harmful side effects often went unreported, unrecognised and, for those workers who had been made ill by exposure to the chemical, uncompensated. In fact, despite the vast medical evidence contraindicating the use of carbon disulphide, it has grown in demand into the twenty-first century. As Blanc notes, rayon production increased twofold between 1990 and 2010 (p. 214). Production may have shifted focus from the United States and Europe to China, Indonesia, India and Thailand, but the effects of the chemical have certainly not dissipated, even amidst safety innovations to protect workers from its fumes.

The story Blanc tells is both thrilling and devastating. He pieces together a complex puzzle that takes the reader across the globe, tapping archival and primary printed sources, together with interviews with former workers, in various languages and countries around Europe, the US and Japan. Blanc’s aims in the book are twofold. First, he seeks to cast a spotlight on a neglected but endemic industrial – and environmental – illness. Second, in doing so, he seeks to ‘memorialize the terrible suffering that has occurred’ (p. ix). He is successful in achieving both aims. The story unfolds over seven chronological and thematic chapters, beginning with the initial discussions in France of health problems amongst rubber workers. By the late nineteenth century, German psychiatrists and British industrial hygienists picked up the trail of carbon disulphide toxicity. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, American physicians began noting problems amongst workers using new chemical pesticides with carbon disulphide in order to clamp down on gophers and ground squirrels. By the 1890s, the chemical became the mainstay of a new invention: viscose. Due to its properties as a solvent, carbon disulphide could eat through plant-derived cellulose, breaking it down into fine filaments that could then be woven like silk or cotton.

This invention of synthetic cloth proved revolutionary, not only changing the manufacturing process for clothing – and destroying the health of workers in its wake – but also the consumer culture of fashionistas. By the interwar period, Blanc shows, ‘fake silk’ had come to be prized amongst working-class and lower middle-class women who could now afford fine stockings and fashionable clothing. Although frowned upon by those who favoured actual silk and natural materials, and by those like Legally Blonde’s fictional Elle Woods for its frailty, the material took off. It continued to boom during the Second World War and even played a special role in propaganda, evidenced by the production of children’s kimonos in Japan featuring airplanes, bombs and the Japanese flag side-by-side with those of China and occupied Manchuria. Behind the cheerful fashion scene lay a grimmer picture. In Germany, for example, forced labour – often drawn from nearby concentration camps – helped to fuel the country’s ‘fake silk’ factories.

The effects of carbon disulphide in manufacturing viscose rayon and associated products were downplayed during the war, but came to the forefront again in 1966, at the first international conference devoted to the topic. However, despite growing international recognition of the chemical’s hazards, little was done to regulate it. For example, in 1977, the US National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health proposed stricter limits of accepted exposure levels, but its proposal was not binding. The following year, the UK’s Industrial Injuries Advisory Council dismissed the possibility of recognising coronary heart disease as a risk associated with carbon disulphide manufacture – despite ample evidence to the contrary. As Blanc shows throughout Fake Silk, official reluctance to intervene in manufacturing, the lobbying efforts of major multinational firms and the internationally scattered scientific evidence about carbon disulphide combined to militate against regulation. As a consequence, companies sometimes closed their doors after enough workers became ill – or after the local water supply grew tainted, and relocation to outposts across the world grew increasingly common. The manufacture of ‘fake silk’ did not, however, go away.

Blanc’s study is compelling in its ability to intertwine what could be a challenging history of the chemical industry with social, business and labour history. It is unusual to find a book that successfully combines a discussion of contemporary pop culture, a detailed analysis of chemical production and a sweeping narrative of the pitfalls in regulating multinational businesses. The book is well paced and well written and will appeal to medical, business and labour historians as well as to those with an interest in writing the global history of a particular product or illness. The only small quibble one might cite is the lack of images. One could imagine a richly illustrated version of this story, including photos of now desolate factories, 1930s magazine advertisements for stockings, kimonos with airplanes and the faces of afflicted workers. This absence is, of course, a minor issue, and Blanc illustrates the volume well with his precise prose.