MEN WITH GREEN HAIR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 52, 2 March 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

MEN WITH GREEN HAIR.

According to Professor L. Lewin, Berlin,* a distinguished German scientist, the hair of some copper workers is almost certain to turn green sooner or later. The Professor has been studying the subject for the last few years, and he tells the result of his investigations in the current number of the "Deutsche Medizinische W T ochenschrift."

"For nearly two hundred and fifty years," he says, "scientists have known that the hair of persons employed in copper works is apt to become green—a curious fact and one which is especially interesting from a biological point of view. The general belief, however, that the hair becomes green after a few days' work in summer is erroneous. Workmen perspire freely during the summer and the dust from the copper naturally clings to their skin and tends to give their hair a greenish hue. This green, however, can be easily washed off.

"The true green does not appear in the hair of workmen until they have been some years at the business, arid neither by washing - nor by the use of chemicals can they ever wholly rid themselves of it. I have examined over three hundred workmen and yet I found that only eight of them had any trace of green in their hair. I examined one man, a brass polisher, who had been twenty-seven years in the factory, and I found his hair of a natural colour. On the other hand, I found another polisher, who had a green beard. Even animals' hair becomes green under such conditions. This was clearly proved to me by the discoloured hair of a goat which used to frequent a certain copper factory and which used to drink daily without any evil results the water in which the copper was washed.

"In the case of workmen the hair of the head and beard changes colour more often than that of the eyebrows, and, as a rule, the beard changes first. On men with white or fair hair the change can be noticed more readily than on those with dark hair. Another peculiar fact is that after some years the green may disappear from the hair, provided the workman is no longer employed at this trade. I knew one old man whose hair, which was very green while he was working at copper, became snow white soon after he ceased to work. Ou the other hand, a story is told of a workman whose hair, which Avas white while he was at work, became green within five months after he had stopped working.

"In the cases which I studied the green was spread evenly over 4he whole hair, which is curious in view of the fact that two other scientists who have been studying this subject discovered more green at the roots of the hair than anywhere else. The colour itself, I found, varied from the lightest green to the very darkest."