I regret to inform you that you must stop licking brightly-colored books published in the Victorian era. The dyes are poisonous.
The latest research on these poisonous books used three techniques—including one that hasn't previously been applied to books—to assess dangerous dyes in a university collection and found some volumes may be unsafe to handle. The researchers present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society. "These old books with toxic dyes may be in universities, public libraries and private collections," says Abigail Hoermann, an undergraduate studying chemistry at Lipscomb University. Users can be put at risk if pigments from the cloth covers rub onto their hands or become airborne and are inhaled. "So, we want to find a way to make it easy for everyone to be able to find what their exposure is to these books, and how to safely store them." Hoermann, recent graduate Jafer Aljorani, and undergraduate Leila Ais have been conducting the study with Joseph Weinstein-Webb, an assistant chemistry professor at Lipscomb
See also the beautifully-named Poison Book Project. We already knew about the arsenic and lead, obviously.
Our May 4, 2024 update to the Arsenical Books Database brings the total of confirmed arsenical green books identified around the world to 313! We are grateful for data submissions from Dr. Andreas Janke at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; conservator Anna Johnson at the University of Southampton Library (UK); MLIS student Ashlyn Higareda, and Head of Preservation Stephanie Lamson at the University of Washington Library (U.S.). We would also like to thank our colleague Jill LeMin Lee at the Philadelphia Athenaeum, who pointed out that the "Date Added" column was not sorting properly. We have changed the date format and believe this has resolved the problem. We appreciate constructive feedback from users that helps us improve the website functionality.
Interesting domino effects. A related truthie: the tie-dye era was a side effect of the British military wanting better camouflage in the 1940s. If that seems dark, well, don't think about what the German dye industry was up to back then.
