The Toxic History of the Colour Green
From shades of fresh green foliage to the toxic dye Paris green (fashionable at one time for clothing and textiles), the colour green has a fascinating cultural history.
Pender Island. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2023
The sweater took me the summer holidays to knit. I finished it in time for the start of term. At fifteen-years-old, my knitting expertise consisted of a couple of scarves and possibly a bobble hat. My granny knitted often, usually socks which she seemed to complete in a matter of days.
This was my first foray into sweater territory. The pattern, if I remember correctly and there's every chance I don’t, I discovered in one of my mum's magazines. In the picture that accompanied the pattern, a model stood nonchalantly in a blue and black striped version knitted in an acrylic mohair. She looked cool. I wanted to look like her. My mum helped me find the right yarn, something similar and cheaper, that would still give me the right tension and fit the pattern required. I chose a lovely jade green and a deep black for the narrow stripes. The sweater had a loose, relaxed fit, slightly cropped. I loved it. My friends thought it was cool. One of the most fashionable girl’s at my school borrowed it. She looked great, styling my hand-knit sweater with her spiked punk hair, large 80s earrings, tight jeans and long pointed-toe boots. If only I'd had TikTok.
The colour green often symbolises new life. When the sun shines through a canopy of soft new, fresh spring leaves the colour seems to vibrate in front of my eyes. There's a tree on the trail I walk most days which wears a thick, bright green blanket of moss. The moss covers the tree completely on one side from top to bottom. Someone tells me that moss only grows on the north side of a tree. I look it up. Moss doesn't only grow on the north side of trees.
For my fifteen-year-old self, my green and black striped sweater symbolised fashion. And the colour green has long been a colour in and out of fashion. If I am to wear green today it must be bright. No lovely gentle shade of green for me or the helpful neutral of khaki green. Both those shades fade my skin into grey leaving me looking ever so slightly sad and dry. Like I haven't drunk enough water, which honestly, usually I haven't.
Nope. It's the bright pretty green of those spring leaves for me. Nothing more nothing less.
And speaking of pretty green, the song of the same name by The Jam is playing out in my head. Its short sharp staccato beat is now stuck in my brain.
“I’ve got a pocket full of pretty green.
I’m going to put it in the fruit machine.
I’m going to put it in the jukebox it’s going to play all the records in the hit parade...”
Now I want a Mod suit and I'm shocked to discover Paul Weller is 61. Time has indeed marched on.
Where was I?
The Green-Eyed Monster
As is often said, green is the colour of jealousy. But where does this association come from? Many articles I come across reference the Bard himself, Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare most famously used the term ‘green-eyed monster’ in Othello. In Act 3, Scene 3 of the play Iago tries to manipulate Othello by suggesting that his wife, Desdemona, is having an affair. Iago plants the seeds of jealousy in Othello’s mind by saying:
O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”
Helpfully in my wanderings around the internet I find an article where the same question is asked: Why is envy (or jealousy) green? Is it the same colour in other cultures?. The resulting readers answers are a fascinating series of different cultural symbolisms and associations:
In Germany it’s the colour yellow that is the colour of envy, and in Hungary too. In the Philippines, the colour green is associated with sexual thoughts (easy there). In Ukraine, there is white envy and black envy: "White envy means you’re happy for other people and wish you also had what they have. The black variety implies that if you don’t have it, no one should.”
I wonder if the idea of green being associated with jealousy perhaps also implies sickness. You might describe someone as being sick with jealousy. And I mean sick as in about to be sick, to vomit out those feelings.
An aside: Years ago in my art school days, my friend and I, out one night, found another friend slumped against a wall in a nightclub. We were about eighteen. The pulsing lights in the nightclub seemed to exaggerate the paleness of his skin. It had taken on a sweaty, greenish tinge. My friend and I were worried. We prodded him. He smiled an enigmatic smile. Another friend explained he was 'having a whitey' which is British 80s slang for how you might feel after drinking a lot of alcohol and then smoking too much dope.
Basically, our friend was high.
Paris Green
Then there is the colour Paris Green, popular with the Victorians. I'm going to turn to Chuck Palahniuk to describe this particular shade of green. Settle back and enjoy a short history lesson. A little background, he's referencing Gone With the Wind in case you're a bit lost at the start.
“In a forensic unpacking of the era, green was a popular color, deep green, because rooms decorated in emerald green seldom harbored houseflies or fleas, spiders or any other pests. For some miraculous reason, you could leave windows open and green drapes seemed to repel mosquitoes. Families such as the O’Haras could lounge in their deep-green sanctuaries unbothered by yellow-fever-carrying insects. Unknown at the time, emerald green or ‘Paris Green’ dyes contained heavy amounts of arsenic. the deeper the color, the more poisonous the fabric. Up to half the velvet’s weight could be arsenic, thus six pounds of Scarlett O’Hara’s dress might contain three pounds of dissolved arsenic.
Green draperies, wallpapers, upholstery and carpets killed any bug that came near them. Those people who dwelled in those rooms developed the wan, pale appearance the Victorians prized as a status indicator. Now picture Scarlett sashaying off to seduce Rhett, her dress steeped in poison, her face becoming paler by the minute. After she’s rejected, she charms Frank Kennedy and gets caught in an Atlantic rain shower. Soaking wet and coated in arsenic, Scarlett’s least worry should’ve been paying taxes on Tara. She’s not unscrupulous, she’s a walking victim of sick building syndrome.”
I had no idea. Lead is well-known for its use in white paint and skin-whitening cosmetics in previous centuries but I did not know that green held such a toxic history. That beautiful emerald green was a chemical disaster. And yet still, toxic chemicals are being dumped into the products we put on our skin, wash into our hair, dye our clothes, and clean our homes with. Blue pigment is one of the most toxic dyes in the fashion industry thanks to our unrelenting appetite for all things denim.
That green dye, the one that killed all the insects, went on to be used as a very successful pesticide. Historians believe that the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte died through exposure to arsenic, his entire bedroom decorated from floor to ceiling in a beautiful bright green wallpaper dyed, of course, with the deadly pigment.
So now I'm looking at the colour green in a whole new light. From a symbol of new life, renewal, and rebirth through to jealousy, sickness and and death, it seems the colour green means more, much more, than meets the eye.
And for your audio enjoyment here’s Pretty Green by The Jam. Welcome to 1980.
