THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1910 WHITE PHOSPHORUS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10089, 10 September 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1910 WHITE PHOSPHORUS.

| Coincidal with the abolition of the wax vesta in New Zealand, there is a movement in the United States to take steps to prevent the use of white phosphorus in match factories. A recent bulletin of the Bureau of Labour points out that a harmless substitute for the deadly material is commercially practicable and readily available. The company owning . the patent rights to sesquisulfid claimed the article to be a remedy for the prevailing trouble in manufacturing matches—necrosis—and expressed its willingness to permit the use of this • substitute by other manufacturers on equal terms, provided the use of, white phosphorus is prohibited by law. The investigators add to their report a summary of Europe's experience with phosphorus necrosis. From this summary we learn that all efforts to safeguard by rules and regulations the workers with white ] phosphorus proved so inadequate - that one country after another put ' a ban upon the use of this substance in the match industry. Finland was the first country to take this step,the prohibition going into effect in 1872. Denmark followed this lead two years later. France in 1897, Switzerland in 1898, the Neth- I erlands in 1901, Italy and Germany in 1906, Great Britain in 1908, fell into line. In Austria, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Russia, the same step-is under consideration, and in the meantime the use of white phosphorus is hedged around with many drastic restric-