An Irish author's books have been pulled from the shelves of The National Library in France, due to concerns that the book covers might be poisonous.
The national library, which boasts a collection of more than 16 million books, said it had to remove four books dating from the 19th century because the green covers were likely laced with arsenic.
The highly poisonous chemical was commonly used in the Victorian era for its color pigmentation. Called Paris green, or Scheele's green, the arsenic containing green pigments were frequently used to color book bindings.
Two of the four books removed from the library were volumes of Limerick author Edward Hayes's "The Ballads of Ireland" from 1855, reports The Irish Mirror.
The other two books pulled from the shelves include the 1862-1863 book of the Royal Horticultural Society and an 1856 bilingual anthology of Romanian poetry by Henry Stanley.
According to the library, handling the books would likely cause only minor harm, but the volumes were being submitted for further analysis.
"We have put these works in quarantine and an external laboratory will analyze them to evaluate how much arsenic is present in each volume," said a National Library of France spokesperson.
The National Library of France identified the books after researchers from the University of Delaware discovered that publishers in the 19th century used arsenic to color book bindings, reports The Guardian.
Since 2019, University of Delaware researches have tested hundreds of book covers for heavy metals and toxic pigments. A list of potentially dangerous volumes can be found at the Poison Book Project.
The Poison Book Project says books laced with the toxins could present a health risk librarians, booksellers, collectors and researchers, and warns the books should be stored and handled with caution.
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