Word: tetryl
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...first paychecks and a chance to get out of the house. Rosie the Riveter became an overnight symbol of competence and independence, though not all women finished work looking like Goldie Hawn in Swing Shift. Peggy Terry, who loaded shells at a plant in Viola, Ky., recalls that the tetryl in explosives turned skin, hair and eyeballs orange: "The only thing we worried about," she says, "was other women thinking we had dyed our hair." Evelyn Fraser, a former WAC captain in Europe, had more somber preoccupations: "The shocking thing was to walk s among Germans and see them...
...Silversmiths may absorb so much silver that their skin becomes slate grey. "Canary" is the name for an explosive-powder worker whose hair and skin have become red-yellow from tetryl. A foundry worker often has red-streaked forearms...
When the potent new explosive goes into mass production, it will head an impressive list of U.S. military explosives. Chief items: TNT, amatol (a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate for artillery shells and aerial bombs), smokeless powder (long in use as a propellant), tetryl (used in shell boosters to provoke the detonation of laggardly TNT or amatol). Least sensitive of all the Ordnance powders is ammonium pictrate, which is used in armor-piercing projectiles because it can wham through steel without going off at first impact...
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