Secret Lives of Words

Prussian Blue March 20, 2009

Prussian Blue.

I always loved saying  Prussian Blue, it made a wonderful sound in my mouth,  and I pronounced it as a single, continuous word:  prussianblooo.. The labial sounds p and b that began each word, and the transient, unrolled RR make it sound soft and hushed like someone whispering a special secret. Or, at least that’s the way the phrase sounded to me, long before I even knew what it actually meant.

I had fallen in love with the phrase Prussian Blue during high school days. Back then, I had similarly fallen in love with Lapis Lazuli, Terracotta, Alluvial Soil, Elopement, Blueprint, Osmosis and several others. Some I liked for euphony, others for what they conveyed to me at an intuitive level.

My love for the term Prussian Blue began with my fondness for chemistry – the mystery of it all – the hidden powers of liquids and powders, the subtle changes in colors, the sudden transformations of materials – that is, the sheer transformational nature of things.

Chemistry days also found me in awe of Bessemerization, Blast Furnace, Allotropy, Plumbum, Hydragerum, Cuprium and, of course, the Periodic Table, wherein I had a special soft spot for Rare Earth Metals.

Prussian Blue.

I liked the term long before I saw the actual color swatch. First thing I learnt, that it was the first modern pigment resulting from Industrial Revolution. Till then, stains and pigments came from natural substances like earth, plants and flowers. Prussian Blue was the first pigment color chemically discovered. Once discovered accidentally during tests with Iron Oxides, its use spread like wild fire, or like a blitzkrieg if you will.

Artists and painters greeted it with great cheer. Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, all used it. Before long it was the source of choice for all shades blue. It’s been used in typewriter ribbons, carbon papers and to treat insect bites.

Prussian Blue or Ferric Ferro-cyanide (and related formulae) is an insoluble crystalline powder used as basis for pigments of various shades of blue-green.  The molecule has a cuboidal structure seen in this model.   It became famous as the main dyeing agent for the early German army uniforms, hence the name. It’s early history is a remarkable confluence of the serendipity of discovery, the explosion of applications and opportunities in manufacturing. A terrific tale which I did not know when I first fell in love with the term.

Remember Laundry Blue?

Another little known use of this substance is laundry blueing. It makes white cotton fabric come alive. Laundry Blue is used extensively in India and nearby Indic countries. The brand name Robin Blue comes to mind.
The dirt and grime ground into cotton fabrics gets a last send off with Laundry Blue. White saris, shirts, pants, dhotis etc. are given a final soak in blue solution, after they have been washed regularly first. The whites come out less dull and more bright than otherwise. Prussian Blue is the basis for a number of commercial Laundry Bluing brands. In other countries nasty bleaching agents are used, more effective, less benign. However, in some sections of the US, Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing is quite popular.

It was not until Biology Days in college that I learned that Prussian Blue was used as a ‘stain’ to colorize tissue sections for study under microscope. Iron granules soaked up Prussian Blue and showed up blue-green while the cell nuclei stained ruby-red due to the counter-stain Safranin O. I liked those colors, the tissue sections looked so pretty, it was almost sad to think they were diseased!  Photomicrographs of iron particles in bone marrow revealed by Prussian Blue stain can be seen here.

Any Googler worth his or her salt will tell you, Prussian Blue is also the group name of two teenage white girls from Bakersfield, California who sing songs in honor of White Pride and White Power. Lamb and Lynx Gaede, along with their manager-mom April Gaede are quite a sensation. Famous for being infamous, or simply unfairly defamed for voicing a view. How the choice of Prussian Blue came to be their group name is not entirely clear.

(Caution: Strong Language in the video below)

It is a fact however, that Prussian Blue, the powder, is the residue left behind in the metal canisters used by the Nazis in gas chambers. Zyklon-B, after it releases cyanide gas, leaves behind a faint coating of crystalline blue residue which is basically ferric ferro- cyanide. One of the more unforgettable scenes from movies of the Ninetees is one from Falling Down, when Michael Douglas character is given a gift of used zyklon canister by the survivalist storekeeper. Watch,

What do I think of the teeny-bopper white-power girls, you wonder? Lynx and Lamb are young, their mom is a bit odd. Someday the girls will grow up and come into their own and form opinions about the world and humanity, may be their current bloom will fade a bit by then or grow into other shades. Not all little jihadists grow up to be real shahid, no?

Till then they have better company in this British band of bluesy-rock, they too call themselves Prussian Blue – evidently they are more Blues, less Prussian, hear them here.

Here is a real irony. The real Prussian Blue the chemical is quite non-toxic. On the contrary, it is approved by FDA for treating radioactive contamination by Cesium and Thallium, and works on the principle of ion-exchange. The US actually maintains strategic national stockpiles of Prussian Blue for Radiation Emergency. Who is the main supplier? A German company, of course!

Albeit, I still love the term Prussian Blue.

More on the word Albeit elsewhere.