Vats of Arsenic
The short car trips dad and I take are frequently interesting. The observations and memories of my 96-year-old dad give me pause and the shared stories occupy my mind long after the drive. These intriguing stories would have never been heard without the idle time provided by a road adventure.
A few months ago, Dad and I left his house headed toward the musical round robin in Cedar Point. Neither of us are musicians but we share a love of live music and live music performers. The group of musicians at this small weekly event are mostly closer to dad’s age than mine. The musician’s enthusiasm and sheer enjoyment is contagious as we listen to the greatest hits of their generation.
On the drive to the music, about 3–4 miles up the Paluxy road, Dad remarked, “There used to be a dipping vat over there”. The only things visible from the road were an old mobile home in a state of advanced disrepair and a few acres overgrown with brush. However, my interest was piqued in the history of cattle dipping vats. If we are together and I start discussing and speculating about this new obsession, you will likely discreetly glance around the room looking for a more interesting conversation as your eyes begin to glass over.
Perhaps my interest is related to a recently read book about the polio epidemic in the 1900s. The book discussed the use of arsenic compounds to control invasive insect species in gardens and on fruit trees, mostly in the northeastern US. Arsenic is of course very poisonous to all other animals including human animals as well as insects. There were many who were sickened and died from arsenic exposure at this time. The book, however, tries to make the case that many if not most of the polio cases of this time were caused by arsenic and not a virus. I suppose for the conspiracy theorists among us this might ring true or even make sense. The evidence and actual scientific proof are lacking.
Or perhaps my interest was the memory of a couple of people from my teenage years who were known to be especially careless with the insecticide dusts made for cattle. These two men died in early middle age of leukemia. Maybe a coincidence but probably not. I remember as a child the clouds of dust sprinkled on the backs of cattle through a narrow chute or standing on the sides of a trailer filled with cattle. And I also recall the mist from the pesticide spray as the liquid was applied to pens of cattle. Every fly, tick, spider, grasshopper, wasp, etc. met their demise if anywhere near the vicinity of this spray.
Or maybe it was the arsenic poisoning of a relative. She became ill and went through extensive testing with no definitive diagnosis. It then came to her attention that the blueberries she was served by her husband each morning were not washed before serving. These were the source of arsenic poisoning. I don’t know the origin of the blueberries, but you can safely bet I am washing berries even more carefully after learning of her fate.
My thoughts are of the workers manning the dipping vats deep enough to completely submerge cattle in an arsenic solution. It was a federal law for several decades that all cattle be dipped to control a few species of ticks and the diseases they caused. These were local men, probably the poorest of the communities working all day with likely no concern for their own safety. I imagine them sitting around between groups of cattle, rolling cigarettes, eating lunches brought from home, dipping drinking water from open buckets, etc. with no concern for the poison that had splashed on their hands and clothes as the cattle were pushed through the vats. There were likely thousands of illnesses resulting not only of the workers but of their families as well. They arrived home each day with arsenic coating their clothes and skin.
The limited literature I find about the vats confirms there were thousands of them across the country mostly below the Mason Dixson line. In some States the sites of the vats have been recognized as hazardous to this day. But most are completely forgotten. Nothing I find says anything about the health hazards and resulting diseases of the human workers. There was mention of all aquatic life being killed when the cattle would walk through streams near the vats. But no one seemed concerned at the time. There is much information about the resistance to dipping because it was dictated by and enforced by the government. To read about this time you would think the only hazard was to the government employees enforcing dipping regulations and or inspecting the vats. Some were injured and had property destroyed. And the government employees seemed to be very looked down upon members in the local communities. But I think there is a far darker legacy.
I am still on my quest to find out what happened to at least a few of the workers and their families. This seems to be a story mostly forgotten and never told.
More of the story
While searching for pictures for this post I found a photo from a group in Apopka, FL. It seems there is a residential neighborhood built on the site of a former dipping vat. There is a significant increase in the number of cancer cases in this neighborhood and the speculation that the vats and the solutions dumped on the ground in the immediate vicinity of the vat site are the cause.
