Do not lick this icon. It is the symbol for arsenic. It will kill you.

I came across a review on the Guardian of James C. Whorton’s new book, The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain Was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play. The book details how the vast majority of deaths in Victorian England from arsenic weren’t perpetrated by sinister poisoners but resulted from incidental contact with a substance that permeated nearly every aspect of British life at the time.

In Kathryn Hughes’ review, she details how an interior decorating trend proved lethal because of arsenic’s use in the creation of green dye. An excerpt:

“Even more fateful was the craze for deep green wallpaper, which led to thousands of families meeting their deaths as a result of their taste in home furnishings. Not that they actually licked their walls: the dye was very unstable, so the slightest breeze could dislodge a puff of toxic dust. Queen Victoria herself was so appalled by the homicidal tendencies of green wallpaper that she ordered every room in Buckingham Palace to be stripped of the stuff.”