coal-tar dye

The Bayer team believed that coal-tar dyes which are able to bind preferentially to bacteria and parasites might be used to attack harmful organisms in the body.

Cochineal is regaining its favour as a food colouring because the cheaper coal-tar dyes that replaced it earlier in the century have been implicated in causing CANCER.

According to Marilyn Brakhage, Mr. Brakhage's doctors believed that the coal-tar dyes that he used in making those films may have contributed to his bladder cancer, which was diagnosed in 1996.

As the story closes, Stoner is recalling the history early organic dyes leading up to the Mauve Decade, when coal-tar dyes such as Perkin's mauve were developed and generated huge fortunes for the ready market existed in the mindset of status-conscious Europeans of the day, as they did in 1631-32 Germans.