The Emerging Role of Titrimetry in Late Nineteenth-Century Industrial Problem Solving: The Example of Trace Analysis for Perchlorate in Chile Saltpetre

Abstract

Trace analysis is usually associated with high-sensitivity analysis instrumentation. It became fully established from the 1960s following consensus among different groups of practitioners over protocols, reference materials, sensitivity, and accuracy and precision. As a consequence, wet chemical methods have been relegated to a secondary role, contrasting with their tremendous historical significance in detecting, identifying, and estimating small amounts of material. This is particularly relevant to the state-of-the-science analytical determinations stimulated by the effect of minor components in commodities of commercial importance. Here, I select a single example: attempts made during the 1890s to determine the amount of potassium perchlorate (KClO₄) that occurs in Chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate). The application of titrimetry, particularly the adaptation of Volhard's method for chloride analysis, was crucial in the efforts to estimate perchlorate in the nitrate used for explosives and to track the impact of perchlorate concentrations on certain important agricultural crops.

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank the two anonymous referees for their suggestions and valuable insights; one of whom went far beyond the call of duty by restructuring, to a great advantage, an earlier draft. Thanks are due also to the staffs of the Harman Science Library, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Edelstein Library, the Israel National Library, and the Wellcome Collection, London.

Notes

1 A. Zaharia, abstract of “Perchlorate in Chile Saltpetre, and its Injurious Effect on Cereals and Sugar-Beet,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 18 (1899): 846; B. Sjollema, abstract of “Perchlorates in Chili Nitrate of Soda as a cause of Injury to Rye,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 16 (1897): 152.

2 For the early development of water analysis, as an example, see Colin A. Russell, Edward Frankland: Chemistry, Controversy and Conspiracy in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

3 Joseph C. Shumacher, Perchlorates: Their Properties, Manufacture and Uses (New York: Reinhold, 1960), 1–3. The term perchlorate came into general use as a result of Georges-Simon Sérullas' studies in the 1830s.

4 Heinrich A. Beckurts, “Ueber den Gehalt des Salpeters an chlorsaurem Salz,” Archiv der Pharmazie 224 (1886): 333–37.

5 From the 1880s formation of potassium perchlorate was used in estimating potassium in fertiliser, as a cheaper alternative to the platinum chloride (chloroplatinate) method, though mainly in Europe, where during 1887 French chemists agreed on a standard method. Harvey Washington Wiley, Principles and Practice of Agricultural Analysis: A Manual for the Study of Soil, Fertilisers, and Agricultural Products; For the Use of Analysts, Teachers, and Students of Agricultural Chemistry, vol. 2 Fertilisers and Insecticides (Easton, PA: Chemical Publishing Company, 2nd ed., 1908), 593.

6 For the role of guano in agriculture until the late 1860s, see, e.g. Robert Hoffmann, ed., Jahresbericht über der Fortschritte der Agriculturchemie, Dritter Jahrgang 1860–1861 (Berlin: Springer, 1862), and Robert Hoffmann (founder) and Eduard Peters, eds., Jahresbericht über der Fortschritte dem Gesammtgebiete der Agricultur-Chemie, Zehnter Jahrgang: Das Jahr 1867 (Berlin: Springer, 1868). In Europe, some guano was converted into murexide, the basis of a popular and brilliant purple textile dye during the 1850s, before it succumbed to the first stirrings of industrial aromatic chemistry that would become critical to the production of explosive nitro compounds.

7 D. W. F. Hardie and J. Davidson Pratt, A History of the Modern British Chemical Industry (London: Society of Chemical Industry/Pergamon, 1966), 48; Edward D. Melillo, “The First Green Revolution: Debt Peonage and the Making of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Trade, 1840–1930,” The American Historical Review, 117, no. 4 (2012): 1028–60.

8 Vaclav Smil, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 41–48.

9 Oscar Guttmann, The Manufacture of Explosives. A Theoretical and Practical Treatise on the History, Physical and Chemical Properties, and the Manufacture of Explosives, 2 vols. (London: Whittaker, 1895), vol. 1, 41–42.

10 For the emphasis in agriculture on guano, rather than Chili saltpetre, until the late 1860s, see, e.g. Hoffmann, ed., Jahresbericht; and Hoffmann and Peters, eds., Jahresbericht.

11 Hardie and Pratt, A History, 48.

12 Oscar Guttmann, Manufacture of Explosives, vol. 1, 36–38.

13 Gustav Müller, Die Chemische Industrie (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1909), 201–203, gives annual exports, in tons, as follows: 1830, 934t; 1840, 11,368t; 1850, 25,592t; 1860, 68,512t; 1870, 147,172t; 1880, 226,090t; 1890, 1,065,277t; 1900, 1,432,000t.

14 Wiley, Principles and Practice, 294.

15 “Nitrate Production and Trade in Chile,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 22 (1903): 1266.

16 R. C. Chirnside and J. H. Hamence, The ‘Practising Chemists’: A History of the Society of Analytical Chemistry, 1874–1974 (London: The Society for Analytical Chemistry, 1974), 90. The Society of Public Analysts was the forerunner of the Society for Analytical Chemistry.

17 Ferenc Szabadváry, History of Analytical Chemistry, trans. Gyula Svehla (Yverdon, Switzerland: Gordon & Breach, 1992; first printing London: Pergamon, 1966), 237, 251.

18 Szabadváry, History of Analytical Chemistry, 227; see also 216, 217, 225, 229, 251, and, for microanalysis, 185, 188–89. Szabadváry noted that in 1870 Charpentier published almost the same method, but in an obscure journal (on 255).

19 See for example, P. W. Hammond and Harold Egan, Weighed in the Balance: A History of the Laboratory of the Government Chemist (London: HMSO, 1992).

20 Szabadváry, History of Analytical Chemistry, 190.

21 For Volhard's method see, for example Alexander Charles Cummings and Sydney Alexander Kay, A Text-Book of Quantitative Chemical Analysis (London: Gurney & Jackson, 7th ed., 1939), 170–73.

22 C. M. Aikman, Manures and the Principle of Manuring (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1894), 342–43.

23 Aikman, Manures, 32–33. For German agricultural institutes and experiment stations, see for example, Jonathan Harwood, Technology's Dilemma: Agricultural Colleges between Practice and Science in Germany, 1860–1934 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005); Mark R. Finlay, “Science and Practice in German Agriculture: Justus von Liebig, Hermann von Liebig, and the Agricultural Stations,” in Scientific Discipline Formation: Science Studies in the German Democratic Republic, ed. William Ray Woodward and Robert S. Cohen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 309–20; Paul Brassley, “Agricultural Research in Britain, 1850–1914: Failure, Success, and Development,” Annals of Science 52 (1995): 465–80. For the European influence on the United States, see Harold C. Knoblach, E. M. Law, and Werner P. Meyer, State Agricultural Stations: A History of Research and Policy (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, miscellaneous publication 904, May 1962); Margaret Rossiter, The Emergence of Agricultural Science: Justus Liebig and the Americans, 1840–1880 (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1975). The first two U.S. state agricultural experiment stations opened in 1876 in Connecticut and California. The U.S. Association of Official Agricultural Chemists was founded in 1884, and included chemists charged with enforcement of state fertiliser laws.

24 J. A. Perkins, “The Agricultural Revolution in Germany, 1850–1914,” Journal of Economic History 10 (1981): 71–118.

25 Szabadváry, History of Analytical Chemistry, 177.

26 William B. Jensen, “Notes from the Oseper Collection: The Bunge Short-Beam Balance,” Museum News (July/August 2011): 1–3; Fritz Pregl, Die Quantitative organische Mikroanalyse (Berlin: Springer, 1917); V. J. Dubsky, Vereinfachte quantitative Mikroelementaranalyse organischer Substanzen (Leipzig: Veit & Comp., 1917), 8–10.

27 For the state of analytical chemistry in the 1870s, see Chirnside and Hamence, ‘Practising Chemists’, 27–33. I thank Peter J. T. Morris for providing access to the manuscript of his forthcoming book on the history and development of the laboratory.

28 See for example, Samuel S. Sadtler, Elbert C. Lathrop, and C. Ainsworth Mitchell, eds., Allen's Commercial Organic Analysis (Philadelphia, PA: P. Blakiston, 5th ed., 1925), vol. III, 595–713.

29 Sadtler, Lathrop, and Mitchell, Allen's Commercial Organic Analysis, vol. III, 672–99.

30 Guttmann, “The Dangers in the Manufacture of Explosives,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 11 (1892): 203–12, on 204. In 1910, Pierre Du Pont purchased Guttmann's collection of books and pamphlets on the history of explosives, now held at the Hagley Museum and Library.

31 Guttmann, Manufacture of Explosives, vol. 1, 38–45.

32 See, for brief historical details, the Serbian Chemical Society website, http://www.shts.org.rs/history.html (accessed 2 May 2013). The Obilicévo facility is now part of the Trayal Corporation, while the successor to the Royal Serbian Arsenal is the Zastava Corporation.

33 “The Analysis of Potassium Nitrate,” abstracted from A. Hellich, “Beitrag zur Prüfung des Kalisalpeters,” Chemiker-Zeitung 18, no. 27 (1894): 485–86, in Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 13 (1894): 979–80, on 980.

34 The product was not identified. A referee is thanked for pointing out that the hydrate of manganese chloride is pink in colour.

35 [Hellich], “The Analysis of Potassium Nitrate.” See also the abstracts “A. Hellich, Beitrag zur Prüfung des Kalisalpeters,” Chemisches Central-Blatt 65 (1894): 875–76; and Berichte der deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft 4 (Referate, Patente, Nekrologe) (1894): 524. Presence of perchlorate in Chile saltpetre was also demonstrated via fractional separation by crystallization of the nitre (see below for the “nitre refinery”).

36 “Elimination of Potassium Perchlorate from Saltpetre,” abstract of V. Panastovic (sic), from “Dr. V. Panaotovic, Ueber Reinigung des Salpeters von Perchlorat,” Chemiker-Zeitung 18, no. 81 (1894): 1567, in Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 14 (1895): 157. See also the abstract in Chemisch-technisches Reportorium, 1894, part two (Berlin, 1895): 201–202.

37 “The Occurrence of Perchlorate in Potassium Nitrate,” abstracted from C. Haeussermann, “Ueber den Gehalt der Salpeter an Perchlorat,” Chemiker-Zeitung 18, no. 63 (1894): 1206–1207, in Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 13 (1894): 947, and 14 (1895): 35. For Häussermann's method see also “Württembergerischer Bezirksverein,” Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie 21 (1894): 667.

38 “The Occurrence of Perchlorate in Potassium Nitrate,” 35.

39 [Panastovic (sic)], “Elimination of Potassium Perchlorate”; Guttmann, Manufacture of Explosives, vol. 2, 399–400.

40 [Panastovic (sic)], “Elimination of Potassium Perchlorate.”

41 [Panastovic (sic)], “Elimination of Potassium Perchlorate.” The investigations of Hellich and Panaotović are mentioned by Oscar Guttmann in his Schiess- und Sprengmittel (Braunschweig: Friedrich Viewig, 1900) (available on-line). According to Guttmann, in 1897, L. Eebeltz confirmed that the refined, crystalline saltpetre invariably contained perchlorate in varying amounts. (“Endlich hat im Jahre 1897 L. Eelbetz gefunden, dass das Perchlorat im Salpeter nicht gleichmässig vertheilt sei, sondern dass einzelne Krystalle davon eine grössere Menge enthalten als der Rest,” on 13).

42 H. Weber, “Zum Nachweis und zur Bestimmung des Perchlorats im Chilisalpeter,” Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie 37 (1898): 44–47.

43 B. Sjollema, abstract of “Perchlorates in Chili Nitrate,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 16 (1897): 152.

44 B. Sjollema, Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas et de la Belgique 17, series 2, vol. 2 (1898): 94–95.

45 “Perchlorate in Chile Nitrate of Soda; Detection and Estimation of,” abstract of B. Sjollema, “Perchlorat als Ursache der schädlichen Wirkung des Chilisalpeters auf Roggen,” Chemiker-Zeitung 20, no. 101 (1896): 1002–1004, in Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 16 (1897): 163–64. Sjollema, abstract of “Perchlorates in Chili Nitrate,” 152.

46 Francis Austin Gooch and D. Albert Kreider, “The Detection of Alkaline Perchlorates Associated with Chlorides, Chlorates, and Nitrates,” American Journal of Science, 3rd series, 48 (1894): 38–40.

47 F. Winteler, “Ueber quantitative Bestimmung von Perchlorat im Salpetre,” Chemiker-Zeitung 21, no. 10 (1897): 75–76. See also the abstract, “Perchlorate, Estimation of, in Saltpetre,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 16 (1897): 358.

48 H. Weber, “Zum Nachweis und zur Bestimmung des Perchlorats im Chilisalpeter,” Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie 37 (1898): 44–47.

49 M. van Breukeleveen, “Sur la recherché microchimique du perchlorate dans le nitrate de sodium du Chile,” Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas et de la Belgique 17 (1898): 94–95; and abstract, “Chili Nitre, Perchlorates in; Microchemical Detection of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 602–603.

50 Fresenius H. Fresenius and H. Bayerlein, “Zum Nachweis des Perchlorats im Chilisalpeter,” Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie 37 (1898): 501–504. For figures, see plate opposite 500.

51 “On the Occurrence of Perchlorate in Nitrate of Soda and its Injurious Effect upon the Growth of Cereals and Sugar Beets,” Experiment Station Record, vol. X, 1898–1899, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), 834.

52 A. Zaharia, abstract of “Perchlorate in Chile Saltpetre,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 18 (1899): 846.

53 “The rapid detection of perchlorate in nitrate of soda,” Experiment Station Record, vol. X, 1898–1899, 918. Also P. Nyssens, abstract of “Rascher Nachweis von Perchlorat in Chilesalpeter,” Chemisches Central-Blatt 69 (1898): 1281.

54 Wiley, Principles and Practice, vol. 2. Wiley, incidentally, played a major role in the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

55 P. Wagner, abstract of “Chili Nitrate of Soda, Injurious Effect of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 168. See also the response by B. Sjollema, abstracted under “Perchlorate in Chili Saltpetre,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 18 (1899): 593–94.

56 O. Foerster, abstract of, “Perchlorate [or Total Chlorine] in Sodium Nitrate (Chili Saltpetre), Estimation of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 694.

57 F. Freytag, abstract of, “Perchlorate in Saltpetre, Estimation of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 795.

58 N. Blattner and J. Brasseur, “Neue Methode zur Bestimmung des Perchlorates in den Alkalinitrates (Kali- and Chili-Salpeter),” Chemiker-Zeitung 22, no. 59 (1898), 589–90. See also the abstract, “Perchlorate, Determination of; in Sodium or Potassium Nitrate,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 795–96.

59 C. Ahrens and P. Hett, abstract of, “Perchlorate in Chili Saltpetre, Estimation of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 950.

60 M. Maercker, abstract of “Chili Saltpetre, Allowable Quantity of Perchlorate in,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 1160–61.

61 Stoklasa, during 1898–1899 in Austria and Germany, found that of all cereals, rye was the most sensitive to perchlorate, while beetroot tolerated up to two per cent of perchlorate. Of Chile saltpetre analysed, one per cent contained from three to seven per cent of perchlorate, while some sixty-six per cent contained less than one per cent of perchlorate. See the abstract of Stoklasa, “Beetroot, Injurious Influence of Perchlorate in Nitrate of Soda,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 19 (1900): 159. See also M. Maercker, abstract of “Perchlorate in Nitrate of Soda, Permissible amounts of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 19 (1900): 361, which stated that chlorate had been found to be as poisonous as perchlorate, and, as a result, separate estimates of these would not be necessary. Tacke and Immendorf reported that 0.4 per cent perchlorate “had a very injurious influence on winter rye growing on peaty soil.” They suggested that this might result from the action of humic acid, leading to formation of perchloric acid. Tacke and Immendorf, abstract of “Perchlorate in Nitrate of Soda,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 19 (1900): 361.

62 C. Gilbert, abstract of “Perchlorate in Chili Saltpetre, Methods for the Estimation of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 18 (1899): 520. D. Tschernobajeff proposed methods for determination of perchlorate and chlorate, based on reduction and titrimetry, and suggested that if iodate was present it would be in amounts so small that it “may be neglected.” See abstract, “Perchlorates and Chlorates, Determination of … in Sodium Nitrate,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 24 (1905): 561.

63 Freytag, “Perchlorate in Saltpetre,” 795.

64 A. Dupré, “The Determination of Perchlorate in Saltpetre,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 21 (1902): 825–27. Dupré had earlier studied wine and beer, water pollution, and sewage. He undertook research on explosives for the Board of Ordnance, for which body he developed the “Abel Heat Test.” He served as president of the Society of Analytical Chemistry during 1877–1878. See Chirnside and Hamence, ‘Practising Chemists’, 19–20.

65 Wiley, Principles and Practice, 390–91; R. Selckmann, “Methode zur Bestimmung von Perchlorate im Salpeter,” Zeitschrifte für angewandte Chemie 11, no. 5 (1898), 101–102; see also Selckmann, abstract of “Perchlorate in Nitrate of Soda [Chili], Method of Estimation of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 17 (1898): 275.

66 Wiley, Principles and Practice, 391; N. Blattner and J. Brasseur, “Mittheilungen aus der analytischen Praxis. Zur Bestimmung des Perchlorates im den Alkalinitraten (Kali- und Chili-Salpeter),” Chemiker-Zeitung 24, no. 72 (1900): 767.

67 U. Alvisi and M. Orabona, abstract of “Perchlorates and chlorates, nitrates and nitrites; Behaviours of … in some biochemical experiments; and the reducing power of the root nodules of legumes (e.g. Vicia faba),” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 31 (1912): 787.

68 B. Sjollema, abstract of “Perchlorate; Reduction [Determination] of … in the Wet Way,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 23 (1904): 1162.

69 Edmund Knecht, abstract of “Volumetric Process for the Estimation of Chlorates,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 27 (1908): 434–35.

70 V. Rothmund, abstract of “Perchlorate; Reduction and determination of,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 28 (1909): 546; A. Stähler, abstract of, “Perchlorates; Reduction of … by titanium sesquisulphate,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 28 (1909): 834; Edmund Knecht, “The Reduction of Perchlorates by Titanous Salts,” Proceedings of the Chemical Society, London 25, no. 360 (1909): 229 (entry 330). In 1942, chemists at the Noyes Chemical Laboratory, University of Illinois, found that from Rothmund's test there “always remained a small but appreciable amount of unreduced perchlorate.” Sister M. Joan Pressing, Otto F. Slonek, and J. H. Reedy, “Analytical Reactions Involving Ignition with Manganous Nitrate,” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 14, no. 11 (1942): 875–77.

71 Edmund Knecht and Eva Hibbert, New Reduction Methods in Volumetric Analysis (London: Longmans Green, 2nd ed., 1925), 46.

72 W. B. Meldrum, Jr., R. A. Clarke, D. L. Kouba, and W. W. Becker, “Determination of Potassium Perchlorate in Smokeless Powder,” Analytical Chemistry 20, no. 10 (1948): 949–50; Eugene A. Burns and F. C. Muraca, “Volumetric Assay of Ammonium Perchlorate,” Analytical Chemistry 32, no. 10 (1960): 1316–19.

73 Edward W[elday] Scott, Standard Methods of Chemical Analysis: A Manual of Analytical Methods and General Reference for the Analytical Chemist and for the Advanced Student (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 2nd ed., 1917), 118–19; and 6th ed., vol. I, N. Howell Furman, ed. (1962), 388. The Official Methods of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, first published in 1920, served as a model for others to emulate.

74 Wiley, Principles and Practice, 294.

75 Kenneth Bjork, Saga in Steel and Concrete: Norwegian Engineers in America (Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1947) (available on-line).

76 Armin Lauerbach, “Reduction of Perchlorate Levels of Sodium and Potassium Nitrates Derived from Natural Caliche Ore,” in Environmental Impact of Fertilizer on Soil and Water, ed. William L. Hall Jr. and Wayne P. Robarge (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 2003), 45–57, on 50.

77 Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, “The Guggenheims and the Coming of the Great Depression in Chile, 1923–1934,” Business and Economic History 24 (1995): 176–85; R. H. Willbeck, “Chilean Nitrate and the Nitrogen Revolution,” Economic Geography 7 (1931): 273–83.

78 Gilbeart H. Collings, Commercial Fertilizers: Their Sources and Use (Philadelphia, PA: P. Blakiston's Son & Co., 1934), 30.

79 Henry E. Cutts, “Composition of Nitrogenous Fertilizer Salts Sold in the American Market,” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 27 (1935): 1491–92.

80 Robert J. Weaver, “Some Responses of the Bean Plant to Chlorate and Perchlorate Ions,” Plant Physiology 17, no. 1 (1942): 123–28.

81 Ivan Stewart and C. D. Leonard, “The Cause of Yellow Tipping in Citrus Leaves,” Proceedings of the Florida State Horticultural Society 65 (1952): 25–27, on 25 (“A study of a commercial chemical analysis disclosed that the fertilizer contained halogenates — chlorates, perchlorates and iodates.”).

82 R. L. Reese, “Improved Fertiliser Material Gives Reduced Perchlorate Toxicity Symptoms,” Proceedings of the Florida State Horticultural Society 80 (1967): 15–19.

83 H. Tollenaar and Martin B. Carlos “Perchlorate in Chilean Nitrate as the Cause of Leaf Rugosity in Soybean Plants in Chile,” Phytopathology 62 (1972): 1164–66.

84 Arthur B. Lamb and John W. Marden, “The Quantitative Determination of Perchlorates,” Journal of the American Chemical Society 34 (1912): 812–17.

85 W. C. Cope and J. Barab, “‘Nitron’ as a Gravimetric Reagent for the Analysis of Substances Used in Explosives,” Journal of the American Chemical Society 39 (1917): 504–14. Nitron is a nitrogen containing aromatic compound, 1,4-diphenyl-3-(phenylamino)-1H-1,2,4-triazoliumhydroxide, inner salt.

86 Hobart H. Willard and George M. Smith, “Tetraphenylarsonium Chloride as an Analytical Reagent,” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Analytical Edition 11, no. 4 (1939): 186–88.

87 Sister M. Joan Preising, Otto F. Slonek, and J. H. Reedy, “Analyical Reactions Involving Ignition with Manganous Nitrate,” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Analytical Edition 14, no. 11 (1942): 875–77. For other methods of detection and estimation introduced before the widespread introduction of electronically based chemical instrumentation, see references in Demin Wang, “Reduction of Perchlorate by Indirect Electrochemical & Catalytic Hydrogen Processes in Dilute Aqueous Solutions” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, 2007). O. S. Fedorova in the USSR, for example, in the 1920s claimed detection of 0.001% of potassium perchlorate in sodium nitrate.

88 John Karl Böhlke, Paul B. Hatzinger, Neil C. Sturchio, Baohua Gu, Irene Abbene, and Stanley J. Mroczkowski, “Atacama Perchlorate as an Agricultural Contaminant in Groundwater: Isotopic and Chronologic Evidence from Long Island, New York,” Environmental Science and Technology 43, no. 15 (2009): 5619–25; Vida Foubister, “Chilean Fertilizer Leaves Perchlorate Legacy,” Analytical Chemistry 78, no. 23 (2006): 7914–15. See also Purnendu K. Dasgupta, P. Kalyani Martinelango, W. Andrew Jackson, Todd A. Anderson, Kang Tian, Richard W. Tock and Srinath Rajogoplan, “The Origin of Naturally Occurring Perchlorate: The Role of Atmospheric Processes,” Environmental Science and Technology 39, no. 6 (2005): 1569–75.

89 As an example, in 2010 the Israel Water Authority revealed that past pollution, “including large quantities of rocket fuel containing the chemical perchlorate,” from an Israel Military Industries (IMI) facility in the centre of the country contaminated groundwater at more “than 30,000 times the limits allowed by the United States [EPA].” See “Cleanup of IMI toxins in water table could cost up to half a billion shekels,” Ha'aretz (Israel, English edition), 15 December 2010, 4.

90 Dean F. Martin, Barbara A. Martin, and Robert Alldredge, “Arsenic, Nitrate, and Perchlorate in Water: Dangers, Distribution and Removal,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 33, no. 1 (2008): 17–23; see also Edward Todd Urbansky (ed.), Perchlorate in the Environment (New York: Kluwer, 2000).

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Anthony S. Travis

Anthony S. Travis is deputy director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and research fellow at the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was the 2007 recipient of the Edelstein Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry. Address: Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]