Dutch and French libraries remove books containing toxic substances from the shelves | Book & Culture

The Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris quarantines the books, which come from the United Kingdom. A laboratory must determine how much arsenic the books contain.

Researchers have discovered that publishers in the 1800s used the chemical as a green coloring agent for books. The researchers worked at the Poison Book Project, which has been testing books for toxic substances for years. The project also maintains a list of risk books.

The Paris library took action when four of the approximately sixteen million titles turned out to be on that list. The institution now also has books with green covers and bindings that are not on the researchers’ list checked.