CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The University Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is urging staff members and patrons to be careful when handling certain books in its collection with cloth-covered bindings that may have traces of toxic heavy metals. The Library’s Preservation Services unit is surveying all 19th-century monographs in the Library’s collections to determine the scope of the problem.
The issue affects academic and public libraries throughout the country, although its breadth is much greater at large research libraries at universities such as the U. of I., said Jennifer Hain Teper, the head of Preservation Services. She and Shelby Strommer, the collections care coordinator for Preservation Services, are leading the 19th Century Heavy Metals Project. They estimate that approximately 320,000 items in both circulating and non-circulating collections are potentially affected.
Those items that are in circulating collections will remain on the shelves for now, but they won’t be available to be checked out. Patrons who browse the stacks could come into contact with them though. The extent of the health risk from handling the books has not been determined but “right now, we’re being extra careful because there are a lot of unknowns,” Teper said.
The Library is providing safe handling tips to staff and patrons and offering disposable gloves and wipes to clean work surfaces to anyone concerned about being in contact with the materials. It created an informational webpage with examples of 19th-century bindings that may be problematic. It also is posting signs in the open stacks and providing bookmarks with suggested safety precautions that include not touching your eyes, nose or face, and not eating, drinking or smoking while handling the books; and washing your hands immediately after handling the materials.
“Exposure would be primarily through ingestion – if you handled the books and then bit your nails or ate a sandwich or rubbed your eyes. The risk can be minimized through gloves and proper handwashing,” Strommer said.
Patrons are urged to use digital versions of the materials when possible. Those that have 19th-century books checked out should visit the project website for more information about returning these materials to the Library.
The Library is working with the Materials Research Lab to analyze a range of books to determine if their covers or bindings contain any heavy metals.
Teper said the change from hand to machine bookbinding that began with the Industrial Revolution also brought the ability to make beautifully stamped, decorated and brightly colored book covers. Available pigments to color the bookcloth changed from natural clays and minerals to new pigments sometimes using various heavy metals – chromium for yellow, arsenic for emerald green, cadmium for reds and oranges, mercury for greens, and lead to add opacity to the colors. The pigments were mixed with starch to stiffen the cloth book covers, and those pigments are still in the book bindings today, Teper said.
Libraries began to become aware of the possibility of traces of heavy metals after the Winterthur Library at the University of Delaware, through its Poison Book Project, began investigating the book cloths and bindings of Victorian-era books to identify whether they contained toxic pigments.
A team at the University Library is beginning a survey of books in the open stacks – those with circulating materials – to gather information about the 19th-century books in the collection, including how many have their original cloth covers, how many have been rebound, what years they were produced and the colors of the original covers. The team will perform an X-ray fluorescence analysis on a representative sample of books with cloth covers of various colors and produced in various decades throughout the 19th century to determine if any heavy metals are present.
The testing will help narrow the scope of the problem and prioritize the books to focus on first, Teper said. For example, some colors of covers may not indicate any heavy metal contamination. More likely, she said, is that the testing could rule out problems with books produced in the early decades of the 1800s, before widespread use of the new pigments, and in the late 1800s, when the harmful nature of the heavy metals was realized and pigments containing them were phased out.
Teper also estimates that 30-50% of the 19th-century books have been rebound.
“That radically changes the total number of books we have to worry about,” she said.
Even books that have been rebound could have some problematic pigments if they include end papers or page edges that were painted or gilded. Books that have been rebound and have no such decoration can be put back into circulation.
“We have to physically look at every single book. There is no way to rule out a problem without looking at each book,” Teper said.
The survey will give the team an idea of how many books they will ultimately have to restrict access to, she said. Those books will be bagged and moved to restricted collections where they won’t be able to be checked out. They’ll be digitized if they aren’t already, and if someone needs to see the physical item, they can do so in a restricted reading room with the proper precautions, Teper said.
“Because these books are 200 years old, they aren’t our highest use materials,” she said. “We’re really hoping this will have a minimal impact.”