Doublecheck your old books for poisons

Emerald-green covers on old books may contain arsenic.

France’s national library has removed four 19th-century books from its shelves whose emerald green covers are believed to be laced with arsenic.  The library said on Thursday that handling the books, which were printed in Britain, would probably cause only minor harm, but it was taking them away for further analysis...

The Paris institution identified the offending copies after US researchers discovered publishers in the Victorian era had used the chemical to colour book bindings. The arsenic-containing green pigments were called Paris green, emerald green or Scheele’s green after a German-born chemist.

Testing hundreds of book covers for heavy metals since 2019, researchers at the University of Delaware have drawn up a list of potentially dangerous volumes as part of the Poison Book Project.

"Composite image showing color variation of emerald green bookcloth on book spines, likely a result of air pollution. Even when the color on the spine has oxidized and browned, the green cloth on the front and back covers remains vividly green." Courtesy, Winterthur Library, Printed Book and Periodical Collection.

Also, don't chew on your book covers if they are chrome yellow:

The Poison Book Project has identified the toxic pigment chrome yellow (lead chromate) in 19th-century cloth-case bookbindings. Lead and chromium were detected using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) and the compound lead chromate was confirmed using Raman spectroscopy. Preliminary friability testing indicates that chrome yellow remains tightly adhered to the bookcloth and does not offset heavy metals onto the hands.

Victorian-era bookcloth colored with chrome yellow pigment may range from deep, bright, or olive greens (achieved by mixing chrome yellow with various percentages of Prussian blue) to yellows, oranges, and browns. Smaller percentages of chrome yellow mixed with Prussian blue were used to color chrome green bookcloth throughout the 19th century. Chrome yellow was used in larger quantities to color yellow and orange bookcloths predominantly in the 1880s-1890s, a time period that correlates with more affordable pricing for the pigment than earlier in the century.

I don't have time today, but I'm planning a followup re books bound with human skin.

Now, about the photo at the top of the post.  That image shows the bookshelves of reader Philip, who emailed me because he has been a longtime admirer of the posts at TYWKIWDBI that feature readers' bookshelves.  Philip, who is firmly in the "lurker" category, hasn't offered any text to describe the bookcase contents, so I'll use the image to illustrate this post, even though there are no suspicious bookbindings in it.  And I think Bob the Scientist's green penguins are safe, but I haven't browsed the 50 other previous submissions.

All of this has reminded me that I haven't updated the readers' bookshelves category in several years.  I intend to do so this summer.  What I'll probably do is take a few weeks off from the blog for vacation and I'll set the old bookshelf posts to serially repost in my absence (while readers submit new ones), because these posts are my favorite (and arguably the most interesting) ones in the blog.  

When I do this I will also repost instructions on how current readers can submit photos/descriptions of their bookshelves (not yet, please).  So take some time to ponder now whether you would like your bookshelf(ves) to become world-famous, and whether they need to be tidied up or dusted.

Related:  Toxins in 19th century clothing