Victims of the Coal Tar Dyes
Perkins’ mauve was so popular, it was joked that there was an epidemic of “mauve measles,”[24] but the joke was not far from the truth. Like Sheele’s green, the coal-tar dyes posed serious health risks. Poorly finished synthetic dyes leached out of fabrics causing mild to sever skin irritations.[25] In the factories that made coal-tar dyes, workers were exposed to deadly chemical such as toluene, aniline, and dinitrobenzene, just to name a few.[26] Perkins’ dye came from experiments with naphthalene and naphthalidine, very dangerous chemicals if handled incorrectly.[27] One of Perkins’ own classmates burned to death in an industrial accident while trying to make a commercial chemical venture of his own. In addition, many synthetic dyes used arsenic in their processing.[28] After the fabric was dyed, the toxic dye baths were often just dumped into the surrounding lakes and rivers.[29] It seemed that the western world had jumped out of the arsenic green pot and into a coal-tar fire.
There was another way the coal-tar dyes posed a risk, however. Despite having its beginnings in England, synthetic dyes quickly became a German game due to favorable patent laws and a superior scientific infrastructure. At first, this was simply an annoyance to other nations, but with the outbreak of World War I, it became a problem of national security. German dye chemists had spent decades learning the ins and outs of the deadly compounds that produced their dyes. Now they would turn that knowledge towards the production of chemical weapons. The Allied forces scrambled to catch up, and by the end of the war most of the allied nations had thriving chemical industries of their own. When the war was over, many chemical weapons manufacturers turned back into dyers.[30] Before long, those chemists would realize the dream that mankind had failed to achieve for 6 millennia; they would master color, or at least they would come very close to it. Once there had only been a few dozen known dyes, but suddenly there were thousands.[31]
https://www.mdhistory.org/an-update-on-arsenic-green-when-the-world-was-dying-for-color/
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