S11:E06, “The Poison Squad” edition, with Deborah Blum (audio)




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Summary: Streamed live on 4 October 2018. By the end of nineteenth century, buying food in American was dangerous–sometimes deadly. “Milk” might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This didn’t happen by accident; […]