A few weeks ago in one of the book seller groups someone mentioned that some old books are toxic. I didn’t quite understand but it seems that some very old books contained arsenic.

A week ago there was this article on Local History ROCs!, the blog of Local History & Genealogy Division of the Rochester Public Library. The article is by Sheila Pietrowski. She explains that in a desire to have bright green colors manufacturers would use some arsenic in things like book covers and also other items like wallpaper and artificial flowers. For books it would effect books manufactured between 1775 and 1900. Go read the whole article for more information as to what they are doing with some of their old books.

Yesterday I was watching a British documentary about killers in Victorian times and again they mentioned how bright green wallpaper made many people sick and probably caused more deaths than people knew at the time. They used an XRF scanner on a sample of old wallpaper and it showed arsenic and lead. Both of those are toxic over time.