Hi everyone,
I just want to follow up on the discussion of arsenic in library books. I mentioned we had done some testing and wanted to elaborate. At Northwestern, we had air and wipe tests done when a staff member was pulling suspected arsenic books from the open stacks. An aspirator was attached to the person's shoulder, workstation, and within the pulling area. The air testing results did not show arsenic, lead, or chromium in the air. The person was also wearing nitrile gloves that were also tested. The gloves came back positive for arsenic, lead, and chromium. The person was pulling books for 4 hours. An argument can be made that the test is not representative of what a reader would experience, however, the books we pulled were friable. It is representative of what staff would do if they were pulling or shifting books from the 1800s. Staff who are pulling books that may contain heavy metals should wear PPE.
As others on the call mentioned, there are good resources that are out already or coming soon.
At the 2023 AIC conference, there was a session titled "Poison Books: Is That Green Book Going to Kill Me? Bibliotoxicology Working Group Discussion Panel; Speaker(s): Timothy N. Greening, Susan Russick, Rosie Grayburn, Melissa Tedone, Kimberly Harmon, Becky Fifield". Susan Russick presented the research findings from Northwestern. She submitted her presentation for the post-print publication, and it should be available online shortly.
University of Delaware Bibliotoxicology site is a great resource for people https://sites.udel.edu/poisonbookproject/. We are submitting our test results to them. As a side note, we found that nearly 99% of the books we pulled were previously digitized. Removing books from the stacks does not mean loss of access. Patrons can view the book in the special collection reading room, or they can access the digital copy. Our pilot study included 97 books; Susan is submitting an article for publication. I won't go into any summary here since this message is turning out to be rather long.
Feel free to contact me directly with any questions. My deepest wish is for others to join in this research. There are still many open questions and I hope that others are conducting similar testing that can either corroborate our findings or disprove them. There is lots to do.
Tonia
Tonia Grafakos (she/her/hers)
Marie A. Quinlan Director of Preservation
Northwestern University Libraries
Northwestern University
www.library.northwestern.edu
t-grafakos@northwestern.edu
office: 847-491-3837