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By Meghan Holohan. The history of scientific discovery is full of missteps. Sometimes iffy ideas lead to stronger theories. Other times, a good idea becomes a bad idea. And still others seem like they were always bad ideas (if scientists don’t understand why something glows in the dark, maybe you shouldn’t paint your face with it).
1. Fire-proof Aprons!
The bright idea: In the early 1900s, designers offered the perfect solution for women who hated seeing a dirty ashtray on the kitchen table—asbestos tablecloths. In fact, housewives (and magicians) were delighted to find out that asbestos materials came with a neat cleaning trick: if you set an asbestos tablecloth on fire, stains would come out, and the things would look brand new! No more washing and drying. Of course, with such a novel, fireproof material in their hands, suppliers didn’t want to limit asbestos’ potential to the kitchen table. So, they expanded to kitchen clothing. “Careless ladies” who leaned against the stove and caught aflame didn’t have to worry anymore thanks to asbestos aprons and oven mitts. In fact, a 1936 article from The Monessen Daily Independent reported that the only disadvantage to the aprons was that they felt a little “starchy.”
The downer: Although humans had used asbestos since the Greek and Roman empires (and even though physicians back then noticed that exposure to the fibrous material caused lung ailments), the United States didn’t start investigating asbestos’ negative affects until the 1970s. While it took governments centuries to ban asbestos, lawyers caught on much faster and mesothelioma attorneys have been suing companies ever since.
2. Glow-in-the-dark Paint
The bright idea: In 1889, Marie Currie and husband Pierre discovered radium and coined the term radioactive. And while little was known about the alkaline earth metal, one thing was for sure: it glowed in the dark! Suddenly, the public was captivated by raduim’s luminescence. Manufacturers painted airplane dials, instruments, and watch faces with radium, spawning a huge glow-in-the-dark fad. Women began painting their nails with it to impress suitors, for Halloween, people even coated their faces with the stuff to get that oh-so-ghoulish look.
The downer: A dentist in New Jersey noticed that many of his patients, who worked at U.S. Radium, suffered from deteriorating jaws or phossy jaw. Worse still, the Essex County coroner discovered that women from a plant were dying of severe anemia and leukemia. By 1925, he’d collected enough data to prove that radiation was so high in the women’s bodies that it was likely the cause of death. As if exposure to the material wasn’t bad enough, many of the watch-painting women had been dipping the tip of their paintbrushes in their mouths to make a finer point for painting tiny numbers on watches. Unfortunately, it took physicians a little while to officially link the substance with cancer.
3. An Automatic Flosser
The bright idea: It’s tough reaching those back molars with dental floss, and it’s even harder to floss them. That’s why Oral-B created the Hummingbird flosser, the Cadillac of dental aids. The ergonomically designed, vibrating electric flosser was made to gently massage those hard to reach spots and turn the flossing experience into a dream.
The downer: Oral-B investors had no idea the Hummingbird flosser would make picking padlocks a dream, too. With a few modifications—mainly changing the power source from a AAA battery to a D battery and replacing the floss with a pick—nefarious MacGyvers can create a vibrating pick that will pop open most padlocks. Even those inept at building can follow the step-by-step directions on the Web (not that we’re encouraging it!).
Comments (26)
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As a child in kindergarten(back in the early 60’s, we were given ground asbestos to mix with water to make modeling materials. We used this until about grade two when suddenly, the supply of this stuff stopped and we started using clay. This was in the school board of North York, now mart of Metropolitan Toronto.
posted by Chris Thorpe on 7-28-2008 at 11:26 am
This will likely get deleted, but man-made global warming will soon be #4.
The “science” is much too contradictory to justify all the forward motion of installing communism/fascism to deal with the “problem.”
It’s an arbitrary assertion that is tantamount to claiming that gremlins in the 8th dimension will kill us all if we don’t immediately shave our heads (women too) in the next 10 years.
posted by JP_Rational on 7-28-2008 at 12:23 pm
My dad, who grew up in the 40s, was recently telling me stories about how much fun they had with glow-in-the-dark paint when he was a kid. To JP_Rational: lighten up, this is just for fun, and it’s no place for your political views.
posted by Craig on 7-28-2008 at 1:32 pm
Could be JP, but so far the majority of the world’s scientists think that you’re insane.
posted by Daniel k on 7-28-2008 at 2:08 pm
at least #3 doesn’t cause cancer. the rampant use of pesticides in the latter half of the last century could also be on the list. Because as it turns out DDT does more than kill pests…it kills everything that feed off the pests too. and the insects that don’t die become resistant and require more powerful pesticides. and personally i don’t want that in my food.
posted by Claire on 7-28-2008 at 3:20 pm
New Jersey wasn’t the only radium-based painting plant where women were encouraged by the administration to point their paintbrushes in their mouths. This also happened at Radium Dial in Ottawa, Illinois. My grandmother worked there, and somehow she didn’t get leukemia or phossy jaw — but only because she thought putting the paintbrush in her mouth was gross and dirty.
posted by lleachie on 7-28-2008 at 5:27 pm
Regarding #3, it’s amazing to me that criminals can find ways to turn an innocent object into something with which to commit their crimes. I only wish such people would put that mental power and innovative thought to something better, because I don’t doubt that they could probably do something incredibly useful for our society…
posted by Brandy on 7-28-2008 at 6:28 pm
Like the x-ray machines they used to have in shoe stores to view the foot. Nice dose of radiation there.
posted by Rosie on 7-28-2008 at 9:12 pm
Africans are dying by the scores because of America’s fears over DDT. Applied in a controlled manner, DDT poses few risks but does a good job at eliminating mosquitos and in turn malaria. Unfortunately, US governmental policies forbid these countries from getting aid if they allow DDT to be used.
It reminds me of how saccharine developed its “cancer-causing” reputation… they fed the mice proprotionally obscence quantities. Use most anything in success and it will have negative ramifications.
lol reCaptcha: Doing time
posted by Tom on 7-28-2008 at 11:01 pm
Yikes.. big error in that last sentence… meant to say:
Use most anything in EXcess and it will have negative ramifications.
posted by Tom on 7-28-2008 at 11:03 pm
The Hummingbird seems to be out of place on this list; essentially any hand tool could be used to facilitate burgling, and nearly any hand-held vibrating device could be converted into a lockpick.
posted by El Tigre on 7-29-2008 at 12:41 am
Speaking of Radium, I was in a great play called Radium Girls, which was based on the story of the girls who worked in the New Jersey factory using radium paint to make glow in the dark watches. It was actually a company rule for the women to tip the paint brushes by putting them in their mouths. The company let them use cloths to do it for a while, but found that that method wasted too much paint. And despite receiving convincing evidene that they were poisoning their employees, the company kept right on with the practice.
The surviving women sued the company, having to fight the statute of limitations, the company, and their families every step of the way, but they won their case. And it established the right for individual workers to sue companies for labor abuses. Unfortunately, by the time the case was decided most of the original Radium girls had died of cancer of the mouth.
posted by Julia on 7-29-2008 at 6:36 am
JP_Rational your mother should be #4 for inventing you. She made a blunder there!
Your close minded rhetoric will kill more people, land, and even civilizations than gremlins from the 8th dimension ever dreamed possible. And what does communism/fascism have to do with anything? Arrogant rhetoric at it’s worse.
posted by JeremyO on 7-29-2008 at 10:03 am
@JeremyO: He’s closed-minded for having a view other than yours? Sounds pretty closed-minded of yourself!
Well, I’m off to go tie-dye my asbestos shirt with some radium paint!
posted by jon on 7-29-2008 at 10:31 am
Lock Pick needs a 9 volt, not a D Battery.
AA, AAA, C and D are all 1.5V batteries. The 9V is what makes it work. The rest are just different sizes/last longer.
posted by Eric E on 7-29-2008 at 11:07 am
JeremyO: Lectroids come from the 8th dimension, not gremlins. Sheesh.
posted by Arghblarg on 7-29-2008 at 11:20 am
Add electric (and gas) lighting, which whacks our ipRGCs and our whole hormone system… see photoperiodeffect.com
posted by Joe Thorpe on 7-29-2008 at 12:59 pm
Speaking of radium, that watch factory was all of a 1/4 mile from my childhood home. Between the ages of 10 and 20, the EPA dug up the ENTIRE neighborhood. I mean everything that a house wasn’t right on top of. They knocked down garages, they dug out basements, they moved out families for months at a time. They had to get out all the radon that the factory just dumped in the soil- tons and tons of it.
We got to stay in our house, but while we were on a 3 week vacation they dug up our entire backyard, pulled down our garage and replaced the lawn. It was actually great, they dug like 20 feet down, so we got new sod, a new garage and a new backyard patio out of the deal. In a few instances they actually tore houses down. The newighborhood looks great to this day.
posted by Scott on 7-29-2008 at 1:46 pm
JP is merely commenting on all the sudden wackiness to “go green” which, while it certainly IS better for the environment, doesn’t justify all the demands that the tree huggers are imposing on the rest of the normal thinking world. It’s very elitist to think that we could cause that amount of damage in 200 years to a planet that has been around for 4.5 billion years
posted by Salti on 7-29-2008 at 4:35 pm
It takes a special kind of stupid to put unknown hazardous chemicals in your mouth … [ADDENDUM] Science and the marvels that come with invention are merely tools and morally neutral — its how we use and/or modify these tools that determine any ethical aspects …
posted by AvangionQ on 7-29-2008 at 4:42 pm
Mind that being ‘green’ is part of the larger issue of sustainability. Whether we’re at fault for the climate is beside the point when you consider the resources that will be used as China, India, other places, further develop.
Another way to put it is that there are too many people on earth, so maybe the aprons and paint aren’t so bad?
posted by anonysumo on 7-29-2008 at 5:25 pm
When good science goes bad, 2050 edition:
50 years ago people started holding radiation emitting cell phones next to their heads for up to hours a day. The resulting long term radiation concentrations caused genetic brain tumors in addition to the prehensile ear lobes.
(captcha for this post: matter radio)
posted by Billy Fikes on 10-15-2008 at 1:03 pm
Am I the only one to notice that is was Marie CURIE (not Currie) and her husband Pierre who discovered radium? And things didn’t turn out too well for Marie either; she died of aplastic anemia due to radiation poisoning and had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin.
posted by Tamsyn on 9-4-2009 at 5:49 am
Actually, tens of thousands of scientists, many of whom specialize in climate science, have already signed a petition to Congress stating that there is insufficient evidence for anthopogenic global warming. The entire global warming hysteria is largely politically-motivated. The media reports on every study that draws unsubstantiated conclusions (because researchers want more money for research), but never report on the studies that find the exact opposite.
I’m all for a clean environment, but even a tiny bit of skepticism is enough for anyone to see that anthropogenic global warming is complete nonsense.
posted by Ryan on 9-4-2009 at 2:37 pm
DDT also kills bedbugs, which have made a huge comeback due to all the globetrotters.
Sleep tight…
posted by Teresa is amazing on 9-5-2009 at 12:49 am
Ryan: Your “tens of thousands of scientists” that have purportedly signed a petition saying there’s no evidence to global warming is a sham. It has already been proven that this “petition” was set up by anti-GW lobby, that most of the names on the list were either fake, were not scientists, were dead scientists who couldn’t have signed it, or were forgeries of real scientists who were outraged that their name was put on the petition.
posted by That Jeff on 9-5-2009 at 11:08 am