50 Fun Facts About Arsenic

Heating arsenic in air releases fumes with which telltale smell, also noticed when a hammer strikes arsenic ores?

Garlic is the classic warning sign of arsenic, and the same reek clings to cacodyl, an arsenic compound named from the Greek word for stink.

One theory blames Napoleon's 1821 death in exile on arsenic fumes from which green furnishing in his damp house?

Wallpaper coloured with arsenic green can give off toxic gas when mould grows on it, though most historians now think stomach cancer killed Napoleon.

A 2006 study found which champion racehorse of Depression-era Australia died in 1932 of a massive arsenic overdose?

Phar Lap raced in an era when arsenic tonics were so routine in stables that one vet reckoned 90 per cent of horses carried the poison.

Tube wells sunk to give villagers safe drinking water caused mass arsenic poisoning in which South Asian country?

Bangladesh swapped germ-ridden pond water for groundwater that turned out to be naturally laced with arsenic, and nobody had tested the wells for it.

In the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, the Brewster sisters serve arsenic to lonely old men in which homemade drink?

Elderberry wine in the play hides arsenic, strychnine and a pinch of cyanide, and the curtain falls as the aunts offer one last glass.

In 1900, more than 6,000 people in England were poisoned by arsenic that had tainted which popular drink?

Beer brewed with impure sugar was to blame: the sugar had been made using acid contaminated with arsenic, and more than 70 drinkers died.

Salvarsan, an arsenic-based drug launched in 1910, was the first effective treatment for which infectious disease?

Syphilis was treated with the arsenic drug, also known as compound 606, until penicillin took over in the 1940s.

Arsenic trioxide, the poisoner's notorious 'white arsenic', is now an approved medicine for one form of which cancer?

Leukemia of the acute promyelocytic type is treated with arsenic trioxide, sold under the brand name Trisenox and approved by the US FDA in 2000.

Victorian women swallowed arsenic mixed with vinegar and chalk in the hope of gaining which fashionable look?

Paler skin was prized as proof that a woman did not have to work outdoors in the fields.

The arsenic pigment Paris green is said to owe its name to killing which pests in the sewers of Paris?

Rats in the sewers are the usual story behind the name; from 1867 American farmers sprayed the pigment on potato beetles, and it became the first widely used chemical insecticide.

Before forensic tests existed, the symptoms of arsenic poisoning were easily mistaken for which epidemic disease?

Cholera brings the same violent vomiting and diarrhoea, so a slow course of arsenic could pass for a natural death in an age of epidemics.

Arsenic earned which nickname because impatient heirs were suspected of using it to hurry rich relatives into the grave?

Inheritance powder began as the French phrase poudre de succession, coined when arsenic was the discreet way to remove a wealthy relation.

Which staple grain is particularly prone to soaking up arsenic from the soil and water it grows in?

Rice can shed about a third of its inorganic arsenic if it is cooked in plenty of extra water that is then drained away.

Arsenic is added in small amounts to harden which heavy metal for car batteries and ammunition?

Lead in car batteries is strengthened by a tiny dose of arsenic, and as much as 2% of all arsenic produced ends up in shot and bullets.

Arsenic belongs to which small class of elements, alongside boron, silicon, germanium, antimony and tellurium?

Metalloids sit between metals and nonmetals, and arsenic shows why: its stable form has a metallic sheen yet is brittle enough to crush.

Heated at normal pressure, arsenic never melts but undergoes which change, also seen when dry ice turns to vapour?

Sublimation takes arsenic straight from solid to gas at 614 °C; it will only melt if squeezed to about 28 times atmospheric pressure.

Which British chemist devised the 1836 method that first let courts prove arsenic was in a victim's body?

James Marsh built his detector in anger after a man accused of poisoning his grandfather's coffee was acquitted, then later confessed.

Which classic 19th-century French novel features a debt-ridden country wife who kills herself by swallowing arsenic?

Madame Bovary caused such a scandal that its author, Gustave Flaubert, was tried for obscenity in 1857 and acquitted.

In 1858, about 20 people in Bradford, England, died after arsenic was accidentally mixed into which sweets?

Peppermint lozenges were routinely bulked out with powdered gypsum to save on sugar, but the chemist's shop handed over arsenic by mistake.

Which arsenic-based poison, created in Sicily around 1630, was sold to Italian wives wanting rid of their husbands?

Aqua Tofana was disguised in bottles labelled as the Manna of St Nicholas, and more than 600 victims are alleged to have died of it.

Which medieval German friar, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, is credited with isolating arsenic around 1250?

Albertus Magnus got the element by heating soap with an arsenic sulfide, and in 1941 he was named the patron saint of natural scientists.

The word arsenic traces back to a Persian name for which golden-yellow mineral, once ground up as a painter's pigment?

Orpiment is an arsenic sulfide whose own Latin name means gold pigment, partly because people once believed it really contained gold.

Which Swedish chemist gave his name to the vivid arsenic-based green pigment he invented in 1775?

Carl Wilhelm Scheele saw his green spread to paints, textiles, candles and even children's toys before its dangers were understood.

Which arsenic-based blister agent, stockpiled by the US after World War I, was dubbed the 'Dew of Death'?

Lewisite smells of geraniums, and the antidote invented against it, British anti-Lewisite, became a standard treatment for arsenic poisoning.

In 2010 NASA-backed scientists claimed a bacterium found where in California could build its DNA using arsenic?

Mono Lake's microbe, GFAJ-1, made headlines worldwide, but later studies found no arsenic in its DNA and the paper was retracted in 2025.

Arsenic is so toxic partly because it mimics which element, sitting directly above it in the periodic table?

Phosphorus is vital to the body's energy chemistry, so cells that take up look-alike arsenic compounds find their energy supply sabotaged.

Arsenic poisoning can leave white bands known as Mees' lines across which part of the body?

Nails record the poisoning like a calendar: the bands grow out toward the tip and vanish only when they are trimmed off.

Arsenic is paired with which soft metal, able to melt in a person's hand, to make chips for lasers and LEDs?

Gallium arsenide chips run much faster than silicon ones and can turn electricity directly into light, though they cost far more to make.

Until the 1980s, arsenic was a routine pest-proofing ingredient in which craft?

Taxidermy used an arsenic-laced soap to keep insects off mounted skins, and old specimens remain a hazard to the museum staff who handle them.

Which family of Pope Alexander VI was rumoured to kill rivals with cantarella, a poison thought to be arsenic?

The Borgias supposedly sprinkled the white powder on food or into wine, though no writer of their own day ever mentions the poison.

Which US president's remains were exhumed in 1991 to test a theory that he had been poisoned with arsenic?

Zachary Taylor had not been murdered after all: the arsenic in his remains was several hundred times too low to have killed him.

A 2005 study found high arsenic levels in hair from which British king, remembered for his bouts of madness?

George III may have been harmed by his own remedies: the arsenic possibly came from medicines or cosmetics and could have triggered his attacks.

Which arsenic-based 'rainbow herbicide' did US forces spray during the Vietnam War to destroy enemy food crops?

Agent Blue was aimed at the fields that fed the enemy, because soldiers had found the staple crop almost impossible to burn or blow up.

Before tin became standard, early metalworkers made the first bronzes by alloying arsenic with which metal?

Copper ores are often naturally laced with arsenic, so the earliest such bronzes, made on the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BC, may have been accidents.

Roxarsone, an arsenic-based feed additive pulled from US sale in 2011, was mainly given to which farm animals?

Chickens fed the drug put on weight faster, but FDA tests found raised levels of inorganic arsenic in their livers.

Which Victorian poisoner is believed to have used arsenic to kill three of her husbands and eleven of her children?

Mary Ann Cotton was after the life insurance payouts, yet she was convicted of only one killing, her stepson's, and hanged at Durham Gaol.

In an 1889 Liverpool murder trial, Florence Maybrick was accused of soaking which household item to extract arsenic?

Flypaper from the chemist's shop contained arsenic that came out when it was soaked in a bowl of water; Maybrick's death sentence was later commuted.

Which German chemist, a name known in every school lab, lost the sight of one eye to an exploding arsenic compound?

Robert Bunsen was studying cacodyl, a liquid that bursts into flame in dry air, and he almost died of arsenic poisoning as well.

Which Victorian designer of the Arts and Crafts movement was a director of the world's largest arsenic mine?

William Morris sat on the board of Devon Great Consols from 1871 to 1875, a mine his father had invested in, before selling his shares.

Nerve damage from arsenic among ancient bronze smiths may explain why which Greek deity was imagined as lame?

Hephaestus, the limping smith of Olympus, may preserve a folk memory of metalworkers whose legs and feet were weakened by chronic poisoning.

The 'Angel Makers of Nagyrév', village women who poisoned dozens of people with arsenic, lived in which country?

Hungary's poisoners were supplied by the village midwife, and the killings ran from 1911 to 1929 before 26 women and two men came under suspicion.

In 1955, arsenic that got into Morinaga powdered milk poisoned thousands of infants in which country?

Japan saw more than 100 babies die after an industrial-grade additive carrying arsenic was mixed into the dried milk.

Forensic tests in 2008 showed that which penultimate emperor of China's Qing dynasty died of arsenic poisoning?

Guangxu's remains held 2,000 times the normal level of arsenic, a century after the reform-minded emperor died childless in 1908.

Pteris vittata, which soaks up so much arsenic that it is planted to clean polluted soil, is what kind of plant?

A fern known as the Chinese brake, it stores the arsenic in its leaves, so harvesting the fronds carries the poison off the land.

Arsenic in the hair of which prehistoric European mummy suggests he had helped to smelt metal ore?

Ötzi the Iceman died in the Alps more than 5,000 years ago carrying an axe whose blade was almost pure metal, another clue that he worked ore.

Greeks turned the Persian root of the word arsenic into arsenikon, echoing their own adjective meaning what?

Virile, or male, is what arsenikos meant, a folk etymology that stuck as the word passed through Latin and French into English.

In 2013 the US FDA proposed an arsenic limit for the juice of which fruit, matching the standard for drinking water?

Apple juice came under scrutiny after a television show's lab tests in 2011, and Consumer Reports later urged parents to cut back on it.

Melarsoprol, an arsenic drug so harsh that doctors call it 'arsenic in antifreeze', long treated which African disease?

Sleeping sickness is almost always fatal if untreated, which is why doctors accepted a drug that itself killed up to 5% of patients.

Realgar wine, a Chinese drink dosed with a powdered arsenic mineral, is traditionally drunk on which holiday?

Dragon Boat Festival falls at the height of summer, and children too young for the wine had a protective mark painted on them with its dregs.

Which German Nobel laureate's laboratory created the arsenic drug Salvarsan and coined the idea of a 'magic bullet'?

Paul Ehrlich's laboratory first made the compound in 1907 and proved its worth in 1909, launching the approach he named chemotherapy.