ADUL'TERA'TION (Lat. arlulterare, to de file, to falsify). The act of intentionally debas ing articles offered for sale, by abstracting from them some valuable constituent, or by adding to them some worthless, more or less deleterious, foreign substance. Adulteration has been prac ticed throughout the civilized world since early in the Middle Ages, and unfortunately the meth ods and devices used by unscrupulous men of commerce in adulterating commodities in com mon use have kept pace with the progress of the useful arts. The immediate objects of adul teration are briefly as follows: (1) To increase the weight or the bulk of a given article; (2) to improve the appearance, especially the color, of a low-grade article and thereby to raise its apparent pecuniary value; (3) to impart to a low-grade article the flavor and other properties characteristic of a higher grade, though the quality of the given article may not thereby be really improved; (4) to abstract from a given article of good quality some valuable constituent without apparently lowering the value of the given article. Among the commodities often sold in an adulterated state may be mentioned milk, butter, cheese, bread and flour, confection ery products, coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate, honey, jellies, mustard, pepper, cinnamon and other spices, ale and beer, wine and spirits, oils, vinegar, pickles, drugs, tobacco and snuff, textile fabrics, colors and dyes, etc.
The sale of a spurious article under the name of the genuine article for which it is intended to pass is a common-law cheat, and modern legislation is extending the scope of this crime with a view to the protection of health and the promotion of honest and fair business dealings. By selling an adulterated article under the ordi nary commercial name, the seller breaks his con tract and is bound to take the article back or pay damages, even though he may have been ignorant of the adulteration. The following are ' some of the common forms of adulteration and some of the simpler methods of detecting them.
Milk is adulterated mainly in two ways: by dilution with water and by withdrawal of cream. ' The addition of water may be detected by the use of the lactometer, a form of hydrometer used to determine rapidly the specific gravity of milk. The lowest normal specific gravity is of course known from a large number of experiments in which samples of undiluted milk have been exam ined with the lactometer. In using the lactom eter it must be remembered that skim milk has a specific gravity considerably higher than whole milk; and if the lactometer indicates a normal specific gravity, while the milk has a watery appearance and taste, the conclusion is pretty safe that more or less cream has been removed from the milk. Skimming may also be detected by determining the opacity of milk with the aid of the apparatus called the lactoscopc, the opacity being the greater the more cream is contained in the milk. In using the lactoscope, water is added to a layer of milk of a certain depth until some object, or a black line drawn on a white surface, becomes visible through it. The amount of water thus required depends, of course, on the opacity of the sample under exam ination, and hence shows how much cream is contained in the milk. The dilution of milk with water and the withdrawal of cream are doubtless among the important factors of infant mortality in large cities, and do unspeakable harm to the community in general. The nefari
ous practice of adding water is often aggravated by the fact that the water used is dangerously bad. Thus, in Paris milkmen have been caught using stale water from street fountains, and in New York, water-snakes, frogs, and all manner of dirt have been found in milk brought to the market. It is thus that milk may be a source of typhoid fever and of other dangerous diseases. On the other hand, skimmed milk contains a large amount of blood-making protein matter, and is, as a source of such matter, very cheap. Its sale under a proper label cannot, therefore, be objected to on any ground whatever. Of course. it is unfit for infants and often for invalids. Milk is also sometimes adulterated by the addition of carbonate of soda, common salt, borax, or of coloring substances like arnotto (q.v.). Formaldehyde is the most dangerous of the adulterants used for the preservation of milk and other articles of food, and its use should be strictly forbidden by law. Chalk, calves' brains, and similar adulterants are not known to be used anywhere at present, and have perhaps never been used at all. '11w methods of detecting adulteration which are noted above are rapid and sufficient for ordinary purposes of controlling the supply of milk. \Vhen, how ever, it is required to determine precisely the nature and extent of adulteration, quantitative chemical analysis alone can furnish the desired information. The most important steps in the analysis are the determination of total solids and the determination of fat. To determine the total solids, the chemist weighs out 10 grams of the milk in a platinum dish, adds 30 grams of freshly ignited sand, evaporates on a water bath, and dries the residue in an oven kept at about 105° C. (221° F.). On cooling, he weighs the dry residue and thus finds how 11111(.11 water, and hence how much solids, was contained in the 10 grams of milk employed. To determine the fats, a known quantity of milk is treated with ordinary ether, Mind' is all excellent solvent for fats; on evaporating the ethereal solution, the fats remain behind and may be weighed directly. A qualitative examination for nitrates is useful, because pure milk contains none of these salts, while natural waters, especially if bad, contain them in considerable quantities, and thus the adulteration of milk with natural waters may often ho readily detected. The skimming of milk has often been masked by the addition of foreign animal fats, the detection of which may be a matter of considerable difficulty. The nutri tive value of some such fats is much inferior to that of the natural fat of milk, and hence this form of fraud is usa less damnable than the other forms referred to above.
Butter is adulterated by the mechanical ad mixture of a variety of substances, including water, buttermilk, foreign animal and vegetable fats, cheese, flour, chalk, common salt, gypsum, alum, glucose, borax, boracie and salicylic acids, coloring matters like aniline yellow, butter yel low, and certain natural dyes. The amount of water in unadulterated butter does not exceed 12%; the amount of salt in salt butter should not exceed 5%. Adulteration in butter cannot usually be detected except by chemical analysis, the pri»cipal step of which is the determination of fats by extraction with ordinary ether. Oleo margarine is not a bad product, but should be truthfully labeled when brought to the market. See also BUTTER: lirrrEtt-CoLoa; and lturat