# The Poison Squad

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663/the-poison-squad
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663/the-poison-squad.md
Podcast: [History Shorts](https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663)
Published: 2026-09-12T04:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://2c68e044-1b71-48bf-a5c5-2792f5a14f4c.libsyn.com/the-poison-squad
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdcn.co/e/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/2c68e044-1b71-48bf-a5c5-2792f5a14f4c/Poison_Squad.mp3?dest-id=4947215
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/history-shorts-6691663/episodes/the-poison-squad
Duration seconds: 821

## Resource

At the turn of the twentieth century, America's food supply could be terrifying. Manufacturers routinely added chemicals and preservatives to food—with little regulation and few requirements to tell consumers what they were eating. So government chemist Harvey Wiley conducted an extraordinary experiment. Beginning in 1902, a group of young men volunteered to eat meals deliberately laced with substances like borax, formaldehyde, and salicylic acid. Newspapers gave them an unforgettable nickname: the Poison Squad. The volunteers were carefully monitored as Wiley gathered evidence about what these additives did to the human body. The experiment became a national sensation and helped build public support for federal food regulation. In this episode of History Shorts , we tell the bizarre story of the men who volunteered to eat potentially dangerous chemicals—and how Harvey Wiley's Poison Squad helped pave the way for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the modern FDA. SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast ADVERTISE : https://www.historyshortspodcast.com/advertise LEARN MORE: https://www.historyshortspodcast.com/ SPONSORED BY: https://www.podcastrepublic.net/get-it-now

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## Transcript

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