Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the longue durée history of how carbolic acid (Phenol) became a leading disinfectant from the 19th century, and how, in the process, led to a series of toxicities—on humans, animals, and the environment that persist today.

Paper long abstract:

Chemical-based disinfection arose as a western public health strategy in the middle of the nineteenth century. Initially fueled by the doctrine of destroying fermenting miasmas in the environment, disinfection was justified in the early twentieth century through laboratory-based experiments which proved that carbolic acid could kill disease-causing microorganisms. A byproduct of the coal industry, carbolic acid was the first household disinfectant. It prevented infection in surgery, and was the central armament of human and animal public health. Barreled and shipped throughout the world by British and German factories, carbolic acid was the first global western industrial public health chemical. As this paper explores, however, carbolic acid had a series of toxic effects. It quickly destroys human skin tissue and is lethal if ingested even in small quantities. While European chemists, coroners and toxicologists clamored for regulation and reform, it took decades for politicians and manufacturers to agree on legislation to mitigate phenol-related deaths. Even after legislation, in the twentieth century phenol accidents became commonplace “everyday” environmental disasters through leaks and spills associated with the chemical’s use in the plastics, explosives, and dye industries. Thinking across the longue durée history of carbolic acid, this paper rethinks the afterlives of the most important chemical used in the public health fight against infectious disease. Bridging the fields of the history of disease and public health, environmental history, and disaster studies, this paper shows the commingled ways that the long arc of industrialization, chemistry, and health practices led to a variety of environmental toxicities.