By Athina Karolidou
The National Library of France, one of the largest libraries in the world, recently removed from its shelves four 19th century books. The reason prompting this withdrawal was the discovery of traces of arsenic in the books’ covers.
The predominant similarities between these four volumes are the time of their publication, which was during the 19th century Victorian era, and their emerald green-coloured covers.
At the time of their discovery, it was suggested that the books did not contain a significant amount of arsenic, and therefore handling them could only cause negligible harm. However, a spokesperson from the National Library of France commented on the event stating, “We have put these works in quarantine and an external laboratory will analyse them to evaluate how much arsenic is present in each volume.”
The four volumes quarantined are:
The 1862-63 book of the Royal Horticultural Society.
Two volumes of The Ballads of Ireland by Edward Hayes, published in 1855.
A bilingual anthology of Romanian poetry by Henry Stanley, published in 1856.
The Poison Book Project, which is an ongoing study regarding the pigments used in Victorian-era bookbinding processes, enabled the finding of these poisonous publications.
Melissa Tedone, Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware and the initiator of this project, said in a 2022 interview with Discover magazine that during the Victorian era, “emerald green was the most colorfast, brilliant green colorant available and it was a wildly popular color among consumers. No alternative dye could even come close to the intensity of the color.”
Due to this prevalence of the colour, tens of thousands of books published between the 1840s and the 1860s had this pigment in their bindings. However, towards the end of the 19th century, it was revealed that this verdant hue was exceedingly toxic since it contained arsenic.
When an emerald green-coloured book cloth was discovered in early 2019 at Winterthur Library, the Poison Book Project was established. Its primary goals became the identification of books with potentially toxic bindings and the subsequent analysis of how to safely handle and store these volumes.
Owing to the fact that such bindings could present a health risk to librarians, booksellers, collectors and other people regularly handling those specific titles, the Poison Book Project made it its mission to find all the books laced with arsenic.
Since the program’s initiation, 313 emerald green bindings have been identified. However, while the research was initially focused on the analysis of green pigments in cloth-bound books, it has since broadened its scope to include any mass-produced 19th century bookbinding that may contain arsenical green hues.
After identifying those four books through the Poison Book Project’s list, the National Library of France decided to also examine other books that have a green hue on their covers “beyond the Poison Book Project list.”
Although for avid readers a plot containing a poison-laced novel may seem immensely intriguing, a similar scenario in real life is far less exciting. And since the World Health Organisation states that arsenic is “highly toxic in its inorganic form,” the National Library of France, like other institutions before it, has taken action to remove the books for the protection of those who handle them.
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