Thirty-eighth annual report [of the] Local Government Board. Supplement in continuation of the report of the Medical Officer of the Board for 1908-09, containing Reports and papers on the nature, uses and manufacture of ferro-silicon, with special reference to possible danger arising from its transport and storage / by S. Monckton Copeman, Samuel R. Bennett and H. Wilson Hake.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thirty-eighth annual report [of the] Local Government Board. Supplement in continuation of the report of the Medical Officer of the Board for 1908-09, containing Reports and papers on the nature, uses and manufacture of ferro-silicon, with special reference to possible danger arising from its transport and storage / by S. Monckton Copeman, Samuel R. Bennett and H. Wilson Hake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    died on a canal boat between Hull and Keadby, and tbeir father and mother suffered severely, though they ultimately recovered; and in March, 1906, from the same cause, two children died on a Rhine boat. In September, 1907, the Board of Trade issued a memorandum received from the Home Office as to the circum- stances under which five passengers died on a Swedish steamship as the result of poisonous gases given off from ferro-silicon. A further considerable number of persons were also taken ill, but recovered after they had gone on deck. One of the persons who died was a Russian revolutionist, and it was erroneously supposed at the time that a treacherous crime had been committed. In May, 1908, from the same cause, nearly all the crew and passengers of a steamship voyaging from Stockholm to St. Petersburg were taken ill, and two died. In October, 1908, a consignment of ferro-silicon was discharged from a vessel coming from Antwerp on to a barge for transport to Sheffield. All three persons in charge of the barge were taken ill, two dying. The symptoms, as in some of the other accidents from ferro-silicon, were ascribed to gastro-enteritis from ptomaine poisoning. Accidents of a similar but less serious character are known to have occurred on other barges, and the recent accident on board the s.s. “Ashton” led to the present extensive investigation of the subject. The deaths on this ship had been suspected to be due to cholera, and on this supposition post-mortem material was sent to the Board, whose bacteriologist negatived the presence of cholera. A relative of the victims in the above canal case appears to have first suggested, in a letter to the medical officer of health of Grimsby, the possibility that the deaths might be due to the same cause as those on the barge, the cargo of which consisted mainly of ferro-silicon. A very full account of the functions of ferro-silicon in steel manufacture, of its manufacture, of its composition and struc- ture, and of chemical investigations regarding it, is given in Dr. Copeman’s report, and in the sections of the report contri- buted by Mr. Bennett and Dr. Hake. Ferro-silicon is an alloy or eutectic mixture of iron and silicon, of which the low-grade variety, containing not more than 15 per cent, of silicon is made in blast furnaces to a considerable extent in this country; while the high-grade class, containing from 25 to 95 per cent, of silicon can only be made at the very high temperature of the electric furnace. The latter variety is imported from parts of France, and to a less extent from Austria,