Episode Details

In the early 1900s, a team of young men employed by the United States Department of Agriculture volunteered to eat poison. They consumed borax, formaldehyde, copper sulfate, and other chemical preservatives that food manufacturers were routinely adding to the American food supply, all to scientifically document the health effects that the food industry insisted were harmless. Known as the Poison Squad, their sacrifices helped spark the consumer protection movement and led directly to the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The state of the American food supply at the turn of the century was genuinely horrifying. Without any federal regulation, manufacturers operated with virtually no oversight. Milk was routinely diluted with water and whitened with chalk or plaster. Canned meats contained chemical preservatives that masked spoilage. Coffee was bulked up with sawdust, and honey was frequently nothing more than flavored corn syrup. Consumers had no way to know what they were actually eating, and the companies producing these products had no legal obligation to tell them. Harvey Washington Wiley, the chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture, had been fighting for food regulation for years but lacked the scientific evidence to overcome industry opposition. His solution was characteristically bold. He recruited healthy young men, mostly department clerks and employees, and fed them controlled doses of common chemical preservatives while meticulously documenting every symptom, from digestive distress to weight loss to organ damage. The experiments ran for years and produced damning evidence that the chemicals industry claimed were safe were anything but. The Poison Squad became a media sensation. Newspapers and magazines ran stories about the brave volunteers eating poison for science, generating enormous public sympathy and outrage at the food industry. Combined with the shock of Upton Sinclair's novel exposing conditions in the meatpacking industry, the Poison Squad's findings created irresistible political pressure for reform. This episode tells the story of the men who literally ate poison to protect the American public, and how their willingness to sacrifice their own health built the foundation of the food safety system that protects consumers to this day.