“NICKEL PLATE POLISH”

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3250, 3 November 1932, Page 5

“NICKEL PLATE POLISH”

LOCAL HOUSEWIVES DEFRAUDED. From time to time we have published warnings to housewives against accepting the statement of itinerant canvassers who call from door to door in an effort to sell goods. Housewives, perhaps disliking to appear discourteous in administering a rebuff, listen to the wily canvasser, and soon he has established an interest that rarely fails to result in a purchase. An instance of this in Te Awamutu during the past few days has come to our notice. A canvasser disposed of a “fully guaranteed” liquid that was alleged to be a wonderful polish for all sorts of metals, especially nickel and electro-plate. It is pretty safe to conclude that the salesman found several “victims” in and around Te Awamutu. Demonstrations were given of the polishing effect and sales resulted; but the housewives have since found that the polish had a corrosive action, and the articles treated are now in far worse condition than before the liquid polish was applied. The canvasser or canvassers of this article have evidently been ranging over the Dominion, for reports from Canterbury give the same story. Let us qdote from the Christchurch Press:— “The way in which Canterbury housewives have been imposed upon by an itinerant vendor selling what he claims to be a “nickel plate polish” was revealed when a sample of the so-called plating liquid was submitted, by the Press to two qualified chemists for analysis. Both of them found after tests that it consisted of corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride), which besides being positively harmful to any metal surface it is placed upon, is also a dangerous poison. “The investigation was carried out following the receipt of a complaint from a correspondent who forwarded the remainder of the contents of a small bottle for which she paid 2s 6d. She found that instead of producing the lasting, silvery effect claimed for it, objects treated lost their brightness after an hour. “One of the chemists stated that there was a more serious side to the question. Cori-osive sublimate, they pointed out, was not a safe thing to have distributed to households all over the countryside for use as a polishing material. Buyers were told that it was good for nickel-plated cutlery, and that meant it would be likely to come in contact with food. Mei - - eury itself was not so harmful as the chloride.

“Besides this, there was the fact that the liquid would ruin any cutlery it was placed upon, and would injure any other metal or plated objects to which it was applied. The alloys of spoons would be damaged by mercury, while if any of the sublimate were placed upon aluminium objects it would eat a hole right through them.”