 Hello everyone. We got started a minute or so earlier. Nope, it's one o'clock Eastern. So I think we are right on time. Thanks everyone for joining us today for another Connecting to Collections Care webinar. I'm going to go through a couple of quick introductory slides and we're going to go ahead and throw this right over to our presenters today. You are here today for the CDC care webinar at the Poison Book Project. We're going to be running from 1pm to 2pm Eastern. There will be some time for Q&A afterwards. Just heads up on that as well. Okay. So again, this is what you're here for today. It's another CDC care webinar. It's one of our free programs. So we're happy to have you join us today. My name is Robin Bauer-Kilgo. I am the CDC care coordinator. I'm located just outside of Washington DC in Silver Spring, Maryland. So we're happy to have you all join us today. This is our home on the web, ConnectingToCollections.org. On that website, if you're new to us, you will find all sorts of fun resources, including a link to all of our upcoming program, a link to our past archives for both webinar and courses. CDC care has been around for over 10 years, so there's quite the depth of webinars on there if you're interested. Our course archive is on there as well. Like I just said, the course archive are more in-depth looks at subjects. We just actually wrapped up a course on long-range preservation planning. It'll be available for kind of a self-taught course pretty soon, so I would encourage you to go take a look at that if you're interested. Plus, like I said, there's some free courses on there as well. So please take a look at that website. We also have links for our moderated community where people can ask all sorts of direct care questions. And we also have a link to resources. So again, if you haven't been there, I would encourage you to go take a look and click around. These are our two home social media homes. Both are under at CDC care. One is Facebook and the other one is what was formerly known as Twitter, now known as X, but you can find all sorts of fun information on there, including announcements about upcoming programming. A couple of really, really quick Zoom reminders. I think we're all pretty used to these now, but I always like to throw in a quick reminder. You have two functionalities to talk to our panelists today or speakers rather. You have the chat in the Q&A. The chat is there for you to say hello. You can say where you're located. You can even say what the weather's like, which is always a fun topic of conversation, especially this time of year when it's so changeable. The other thing you can use to communicate with our speakers today is the Q&A box. That's really there for questions. So at any point during the program, if you have a question for our speakers, I encourage you to put it in the Q&A box. It allows us to track a little easier throughout the actual session itself. We are recording today's program, so if you have to dip out early, no worries, we will have this posted a few days by the end of the week, most likely on the FAIC YouTube channel and also our website. We have also enabled captioning. So if you put on that CC button down at the bottom, you will be able to see a caption and transcript of today's program. So upcoming programs to settle out for the rest of the year. We're going to be wrapping up our programming for 2023 in October. We're going to be doing fire suppression for museums October 10 from 1 to 2pm. It's part of Fire Prevention Month, so we're excited to talk to some folks from the Smithsonian about that and kind of what is out there for fire suppression types for museums. And just announced and open for registration is our November 16 webinar. I'm going to be posting on the front page probably this afternoon. So if you want to register for it, I would encourage you to do so. It's all about decolonizing in collections care. We're going to be talking about kind of what some museums are dealing with with this subject. It's kind of a hot topic right now. So if you're interested in it, I would encourage you to go register. And these are free programs so feel free to register whenever you want to. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our speakers today. I'm going to stop sharing my screen real quick. Our speakers today are Melissa to don't she's assistant professor in the University of Delaware Art Conservation Department and associate director of the Winchiter University of Delaware program and art conservation and Rosie Grayburn who is the head of the scientific research and analysis lab at Winchiter Museum Garden and Library and affiliated associate professor in the Winchiter University of Delaware and art conservation program. We're going to be talking about the poison book project we're wrapping up September talking about lots of deadly stuff we have the earlier one this month about arsenic now we're talking about poison book. So we will see you at the end of this program for a short Q&A feel free to take over Rosie and Melissa whenever you're ready. Okay. Welcome everyone thank you for being here. Rosie and I are looking forward to talking with you about the poison book project. It comes to so called poison books. You know the most important question is should you take this potential collection hazard seriously. And the answer is, yes, you should. But do you need to panic about it. No, absolutely not. There is a sensible path forward and we're hoping to share that with you today. This is the University of Delaware is land acknowledgement that was written in consultation with the tribal leadership of the Delaware Bay people, formerly known as Patuxet. Rosie and I would like to personally acknowledge that we have an ethical responsibility to consider how our work impacts our communities. At the local regional and global level, we strive to recognize the cost of the material culture that we study and the larger mechanisms of its creation. So for example, the textile and paper mills that have polluted the environment held sacred by indigenous communities and an environment on which we all rely. And also recognizing the role of enslaved and exploited workers in the history of the book. Once situated, I'm going to give a brief history of the project and where we are with it now. In 2019 during treatment for an exhibit Rosie and I discovered the arsenic rich pigment copper aceto arsenite, or Emerald Green in this mass produced Victorian book binding rustic adornments for homes of taste. The mass produced nature of the book binding gave us cause for concerns so we conducted an analytical survey of 19th century cloth case bindings, both at winter to library and the library company of Philadelphia, our neighbors of the road who very generously access to their collections. We were hoping to figure out how common Emerald Green book cloth was, and we also wondered what other heavy metal pigments were used in 19th century cloth bindings. And for that we use portable XRF to do elemental ID and where we found heavy metals, we followed up with ramen spectroscopy to confirm what the actual chemical compound was. We continued to research the materiality and manufacture of 19th century book cloth, but the project also progresses along a parallel track, identifying and documenting Emerald Green components of 19th century book bindings in collections all over the world. And while we continue to collect our own data, we're also crowdsourcing this data from other institutions, and that's really exciting, because we're bringing together so much more data than we could collect on our own and this significantly contributes to our understanding of the use of arsenic and book binding history. And we make this information publicly available on the poison book project wiki. Finally, where we are today is, as I said, continuing along several tracks of research, both analytical and historical. And we've also been establishing important research collaborations with health and safety adjacent fields. So epidemiology toxicology and industrial hygiene that's a big focus of this project for us. So what do poison books look like for cloth bindings, but class that contain heavy metals are usually intensely colored with little to no sign of fading. There can be discoloration on the spine as a result of indoor air pollution but for the most part the colors are rich deep and light stable. The heavy metals that we're concerned about include mercury chromium lead and arsenic. Now we haven't really dove into the mercury pigments yet we've been having trouble nailing down exactly what those compounds are but certainly with arsenic chromium and lead we've been pursuing those. These heavy metal pigments were applied to 19th century book cloth in a starch slurry that created a substantial coding so it hid the weave of the textile it could have an embossed texture on it. And we've found that chromium and lead containing pigments tend to be tightly bound to the book cloth matrix with little to no evidence of offsetting, unless that book cloth coding becomes compromised somehow and I'll go into that in a little more detail later. Bright blue books we have found do not contain toxic pigments, but they do contain lead, and we think it's likely to have been used as a mordant to help the blue color and adhere to the cloth. It's also worth noting that we've found lead in over 50% of the brightly colored cloth publishers bindings that we've tested. The books of the greatest concern and the focus of this talk are the emerald green books. And that's for two reasons. Emerald green is an arsenic based pigment that is highly toxic. It's the most toxic of all the heavy metal pigments that we've been looking at. And emerald green also tends to be a friable pigment, meaning that the arsenic will easily offset onto other surfaces such as neighboring books, shelves, enclosures, and of course your hands as you're handling them. So you don't see that color offsetting but detectable levels of arsenic are coming off. And we found that this arsenic rich pigment is not only in book cloth, but thanks to the crowdsourcing that we've been doing from other institutions, which are listed on our wiki. We found that there is emerald green and many other components of book bindings as well. So as you can see here, it's found in decorative on lays on books that don't contain arsenic in their book cloth. It's been found in book binding paper and that paper may be found on hardcover bindings or softcover bindings. It's also used as end papers inside the covers of books, and also on text block edges. So arsenic, mercury, chromium and lead, they're all considered heavy metals and you may have heard this term before. The term refers to elements in the periodic table that are really dense, hence heavy, but also on hearing that term it makes you think about a higher degree of toxicity and it's true most heavy metals do have a higher rate of toxicity. So this is what we know about the metals, the heavy metals that we are dealing with. And this is information that we're able to establish just from reading a safety data sheet. So I'll go from left to right. Arsenic, which is found in the emerald green pigment that is of most concern to our project is a known poison in the form of emerald green, and it's also possible carcinogen. We've established that arsenic was possibly applied to book class in the form of a pesticide. This is still ongoing research for us. But we know that these types of pesticides, either arsenic trioxide but also lead arsenate can be very corrosive to the people who are using those pesticides. They are also known poisons due to the presence of arsenic and are possible carcinogens. We have also come across, such as vermilion. Vermilion is mercuric sulfide, so it's a mercury containing pigment. And we've come across this on the edges, book edges, but also on the front covers of books. So the book on the far right hand side here has yellow and red elements. The red is vermilion containing area of the book. Vermilion is a known hazard. So the risk to health is lesser than arsenic, but it's still a known hazard. So care still needs to be taken. And then chromium. Chromium is found in chrome yellow and chrome green containing book cloth. They have also known health hazards. It's a possible carcinogen and can cause internal organ damage. And chrome yellow also contains a lot of lead, which has long-term chronic effects of exposure. So this is all just known hazard information that is out there. Again, you can find this in safety data sheets, but it's actually very limited exposure data for use in a heritage context. Next slide, Melissa. So a hazard like the ones I just presented can cause harm, but a risk is how likely it is to do so. So the poison book project, we're trying in the poison book project, we're really trying to understand the risk of all these hazards and how they're having an effect on those interacting with these books, whereas if that's patrons or stuff. And part of that is thinking about how much pigment is transferred from these objects to those handling the items and Melissa already mentioned the friability of the emerald green books specifically. So all we really know now because we've been focused on the emerald green containing books is that the offset of emerald green from emerald green containing books is much higher than that of other heavy metal containing books like the chrome yellow volume on the right. And so this is thus increasing the risk of ingestion or exposure to users. So we have not yet studied the offset of arsenic pesticides from library materials to users and people who are handling these books. And we also do not have data currently in our project about the mercury offset. And that's because the analytical methods that we've been using were not available to study mercury. And so we don't fully understand the risk of exposure through of handling for million and books we have to really rely on these hazard statements that are generic. Next slide please. So due to the fire risk books containing emerald green pigment present our project is really focusing on identifying emerald green pigment in library collections. I want to speak about some options for you for identifying emerald green pigment using a hopefully accessible and tiered approach and just some information. We'll be publishing a white paper which contains all this information and soon through the working group that Melissa will mention later in our talk. Next slide. Next slide, Melissa. So this is our first approach that we wanted to talk to you about this on the left hand side is the poison book projects color swatch bookmark, which is available to anyone. You can email us during through this email address with these instructions and you will receive one in the mail. This is our first approach they want to present because of its low cost, its accessibility and its ease of use. So we developed this color swatch bookmark after photographing a lot of green books during our initial survey on our ongoing project. We realized after a while that the color of emerald green books was very distinct, and it could be used to identify emerald green containing books with some degree of accuracy. If other factors are taken into account such as the data publication which we know to be quite narrow and the location of binding. This version of the bookmark on the left hand side of the screen is version two, and it has two sides. One is for cloth bindings containing and containing emerald green. And the other side is for paper bindings. It's important to make sure that you have that distinction. The color swatches and identifying information are distinct for each type of binding due to the dates and the colors that we see in birth types. We provide this bookmark free of charge to anyone who requests it, although donations are always welcome to our project. And next slide. So again, this is our first approach due to its low cost, its accessibility and its ease of use. How you use the bookmark can be up to you and we have ended up photographing bookmarks adjacent to emerald green books just to capture this information. But you can also just use it as you're walking around your collection, use it as a very quick survey tool. It's quick, but it also depends on how big your collection is. If you have like miles and miles of stacks, this is going to take you a pretty long time to to survey visually. Some also some very important things to consider regarding using this identification strategy is that if you're surveying books and this will go for other strategies that I'll talk about. It's really important that you are at risk of handling emerald green books. So make sure you wear nitrile gloves and wash your hands after you finished surveying. One of the other things to consider are that as you're visually observing your collection using the swatch and emerald green books do not tend to have any insect damage loss. That's just another data point to consider as you are surveying. Additionally, pigment may sometimes not be visible or present on the spine as shown in this image here, and this is due to the interaction of pollutants in the air with the emerald green pigment. So you can see here that if this book was presented on a shelf it wouldn't present at all like any of the colors on the color swatch bookmark so there is an element of handling and pulling of the books that needs to be done in order to be accurate with this methodology. Next slide please. So our second approach is also very accessible and it would be to consult our emerald books database, which you can find out find on our poison book wiki, and there's a link in the resource sheet that Melissa put together for this talk. The database contains 146 books to date and there are more in the queue which are waiting to be added. There is the title, the OCLC number, the publication date, most of the time that publish the publishing location of the publisher, and also the analytical technique that was used to verify the fact that that book was containing emerald green pigment. This sheet is again on our wiki but it's also available as a CSV or an Excel if that if you would prefer to use that for your surveying tools. Next slide please. So some things to consider. If you want to approach surveying your collection with this identification strategy. Obviously this can be a computer exercise so then the safety risks are reduced. But if you are going through the collection as you would with a visual identification strategy, then you would want to practice the handling techniques that we've already discussed so wearing nitrile gloves to reduce risk of exposure to arsenic and also washing your hands after the fact. One consideration to consider with this particular identification strategy despite its accessibility is the fact that it's not comprehensive yet. So although it contains a significant amount of data that we have collected at winter tour, and also our research partners and collaborators have crowdsourced to include in this database. There are only 146 titles other more are being added. So we may want to consider using this technique alongside other identification strategies such as visual identification strategies or the ones I'm going to discuss next. So I'm moving on now to some strategies that do require some more investment and expertise. And the first one I'll talk about is x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy or XRF. So in terms of strategies and instrumentational based techniques XRF is pretty common in conservation and in in general compared to other other identification techniques. It is non destructive, which means no sample needs to be taken in order to get a firm identification, but it is a radiation generating piece of equipment so radiation safety does need to be considered. This would require a purchase or a contractor. But as I said this instrumentation is pretty common. And we often find XRF instrumentation in geology departments and universities and things like that. It's very quick. But as you can see from this spectrum here, we're seeing the metals copper and arsenic which make up emerald green pigment, but we're not having a firm identification for emerald green. So XRF is great, but it can only suggest the presence of emerald green, not give a definitive identification, but it is strongly suggest at the presence of emerald green. So spectral beta is how we can get a good indication or suggestion of emerald green or arsenic pigment but here are some significant things to consider when you're thinking about using XRF to identify arsenical books in your care. So the instrument itself is quite expensive, you can expect to pay upwards of $50,000 for an XRF instrument. And then you also have to consider the costs of a radiation safety program, which can be upwards of thousands of dollars a year to have dosimeters and a contractor may cost upwards of $1,000 to have onsite depending on how much work you need them to do. The measurements are pretty quick. You get almost instantaneous reading for copper and arsenic if it's there, but the interpretation really does require time and expertise. And there are significant safety precautions to consider. I've already mentioned X-ray safety. A radiation safety program may differ per state. So for example in Delaware, all employees of Winterthur and the University of Delaware are required to have dosimeter badges and we're required to have a Geiger counter to monitor radiation levels. And then also depending on how you are using your XRF instrumentation, you'll have to consider using handling precautions. Moving books and X-ray equipment requires two people typically. So when you're working in survey mode, you'll have one person who is handling the books and wearing nitrile gloves, as our intern is doing in this picture, and maybe one person who is able to document alongside on a computer. Next slide. So the next identification strategy is kind of on an equal footing, I would say, with XRF in terms of the investment and expertise that is required. Polarized like microscopy or PLM requires a sample to be removed from the object. The sample is then mounted between a glass slip and a mounting medium and then use a microscope to observe the sample under plane and cross polarized light. Next slide. Here I'm showing you emerald green pigment and chrome green pigment prepared for PLM. These are the two most common green books in Victorian cloth bindings. You can easily identify I would say the spherulites of emerald green on the left hand side. And then chrome green is actually constitutes Prussian blue and chrome yellow. And so you can see the smudges of Prussian blue in the microscope image and the very, very small particles of chrome yellow. Our colleague Mina Perel, who was a postgraduate fellow in paintings conservation created a full document with the methodology, which we will be able to share with you if you're interested in pursuing this particular methodology. So like XRF PLM does require significant investment in either expertise or instrumentation. A microscope and chemicals will cost upwards of $50,000 or you could contract a conservator who would have to do the analysis and reporting for you. It is maybe slightly more time intensive than XRF due to the sample removal and preparation time, and not to mention the interpretation time under various different lighting conditions. And it's important to consider the safety precautions that are specific for PLM. Not to mention the PPE that you would have to use in order to protect yourself from possible arsenic exposure during analysis and sampling, but also the method for sample preparation specifically using the hot medium requires ventilation so that would be a fume hood or an elephant trunk, depending what's available to you so something to consider if you don't have that kind of engineering control in your space. A last important consideration is that this is a sampling technique unlike XRF, and so permission is required from the stakeholders and custodians before samples are removed. Next slide. Arsenic testing within environmental testing so what I mean there is water and soil testing is highly accessible to the general public, but we would like to point out some huge caveats to this testing methodology. Environmental testing for arsenic can be done by certified environmental labs or it can be done in-house. We have researched both of these approaches and have explored testing with external labs. The Poison Brook project team does not recommend this avenue of testing in-house. Next slide. So external labs use standard tests for arsenic in soils and water using quantitative techniques such as flame absorption and ICPMS analysis. This gives you a PPM amount of arsenic in your sample which requires interpretation from an industrial hygienist. Samples are destroyed in the process of testing so we would suggest this technique for wipe tests only and not samples removed from books. Some external labs require you to use a specific type of wipe called a ghost wipe and these are not ideal for use on books. You could use them on surrounding surfaces such as a bookshelf, but they can't be used on books due to their pH and moisture content. Off-the-shelf tests also measure the amount of arsenic, but if they are performed in-house they do require significant PPE due to the production of highly toxic arsine gas as part of the test process. And due to the amount of emerald green in book cloth, this can be a pretty significant hazard. Next slide. So what are the implications of carrying out environmental testing? Well, we've been in touch with a few environmental labs in Delaware. We've worked with one of them particularly and samples cost around $25 per sample for analysis with a certified lab. And this is with a five to seven business day turnaround. The kits that you can buy off the shelf are affordable, but you also have to consider the cost of hazardous waste disposal. And I'm going to say it again, if you are planning on using these off the shelf test kits, you will require full PPE and working fume hood like is shown on the left hand side image. And this is again due to the production of highly toxic arsine gas during testing. And also considering the costs of hazardous waste, all of the equipment that you are using for these tests has to be disposed of as hazardous waste due to the presence of arsenic. And so we'll discuss methodologies for that later. And I'll hand over to Melissa to now, who's going to talk more about safer handling once you have identified your emerald green books. Thanks Rosie. So this is an infographic from NIOSH. It's their hierarchy of controls for hazardous materials. But as we well know, when the hazard is actually collection material, complete removal is not desirable and sometimes not even possible, even though it is the most effective industrial hygiene action. However, you know, these tiers can also be reimagined a bit to find the best solution while also doing our due diligence as cultural heritage stewards. On this next slide, you'll see that this hierarchy looks a little bit different if we reimagine it for the staff of an institution that contains poison books in its collection, or users of those collections. So maintaining potentially toxic collections presents more of a risk for library staff than it does for library users, right? That's a given. But to put this into context, I would like to remind you that we are surrounded by toxic substances in our home lives and in our work lives every single day. For example, the tile cleaner that you use in your bathroom, maybe every bit as toxic as an emerald green book. But you know not to ingest it, right? You know to wear gloves while you're using it and to avoid eating or drinking or smoking while you're cleaning your shower. And so you manage your risk by following safety precautions and protocols. And the same is true when dealing with our cynical books. There's no need to panic about it. There's just a need to be informed to inform others who use these materials and to follow the guidelines that can keep you safe. So we follow a digital first policy at Winterthur Library. You can see that reflected here in the upside down triangle to the right. We restrict access to the arsenic containing materials and encourage researchers to use a digitized version of the book first. For staff, as I said, there's a greater degree of risk, and it's important to be transparent about those potential risks and to be willing to work together to come up with solutions that everyone feels good about. And also to bear in mind that risk isn't the same for everyone. So a staff member whose health is compromised for whatever reason may be taking on a larger degree of risk than someone who's healthier. And those are things that just really need to be thought about and dealt with in a case by case basis. So inhalation and ingestion of arsenic offset onto the hands is the most likely root of exposure when you're handling arsenic containing books. So nitrile gloves are really a non-negotiable for handling these items. Our colleague Susan Russick, the conservator at Northwestern University, has done some great research on emerald green paper bindings, and she worked with the folks at New Access to do some air testing. And that showed that the arsenic does not become airborne in the area around the books. So N95 masks, for example, are not really necessary to keep you safe when handling these books. But in my opinion, masks should be provided for any staff who want to wear them. If it makes you feel better, it is an added layer of protection. And frankly, if wearing a mask will help you remember not to touch your face while you're wearing gloves and handling arsenic containing books, then that's great. You should go for it. When you're handling these books, you should always keep in mind that they are a potential risk. So just handle them mindfully. Don't hold them close to your face. You know, pay attention to the way you're moving around with them and where you're setting them down. And of course afterwards, even though you've worn gloves, you still want to wash your hands. And we do recommend washing your hands with a de-letting soap and wiping down surfaces, either with de-let wipes or with a damp disposable cloth. And of course, those cotton gloves, I mean, really, those of us who work with books in institutional settings know that cotton gloves are rarely appropriate for handling books anyway. But they are especially not appropriate for handling arsenic containing materials that arsenic will just offset onto the cloth fabric of the gloves and then shed unpredictably in other places. So de-let products are marketed primarily toward consumers who work with lead, but they're actually effective at removing any heavy metals from the skin. And we use these products here at Winterthur. You should always check the safety data sheet to confirm that you are buying a pH neutral product. Not all of these wipes and soaps are pH neutral. And so here's an example on the left of an SDS and showing where it lists the pH. This is an SDS for a de-let wipe that is safe to use with arsenic. It has a neutral pH at 7 to 8. If that pH were in the 4 to 5 range, you would want to avoid using it because when you combine emerald green pigment within acidic environment, that can also lead to the production of highly toxic arsine gas, as Rosie mentioned. And arsine gas is the most toxic form of arsenic for humans. You would never want to use these wipes on actual books, either arsenic wipes or really any other kind of 19th century cloth binding. And that's because in books that contain chromium and lead, for example, those heavy metals stay well adhered to the book cloth unless they're compromised. Introducing moisture in the form of a wipe is enough to compromise that book cloth coating and it may actually result in exposing you to higher levels of chromium and lead than are safe. So if you're concerned about arsenic offset onto neighboring books that may have been sandwiching an emerald green book on the shelf, we would recommend wiping down those books using a dry disposable cloth or vacuuming them with a HEPA vacuum. So these are some images showing emerald green book cloth and emerald green book binding paper under magnification. We took these images using a Hyrox digital 3D microscope. And our quantitative analysis as Rosie had mentioned of emerald green book cloth showed very high levels of arsenic are present in book cloth and a significant amount of that arsenic offsets during handling. And our preliminary testing also shows a difference in friability between emerald green book cloth and emerald green book binding paper. The images just sort of illustrate that you can see in the image at the top, those white areas are actually the bleached cotton. That's under the substrate of the book cloth, and the emerald green pigment and coating has really abraded away from the high points of the weave just through normal handling. In the image at the bottom, you can see that on the left that image shows that the pigment looks fairly well intact. The image on the right comes from the lower right front corner of this binding where that paper cover was folded back at one point and the coating cracked along that crease. So there still is a degree of friability, but it is slightly less than than for the book cloth and we're continuing to do testing trying to quantify and compare those degrees of friability. So we often joke about not licking emerald green books, but barring that the most likely root of exposure is inhalation or ingestion of arsenic that has offset onto your hands from handling emerald green books. And this can happen by touching your face, rubbing your eyes, eating or drinking around these books, smoking a cigarette, biting your fingernails, you know, all these things that if you do them without thinking about them, you could be ingesting or inhaling that arsenic. And books with that contain this emerald green pigment in a form that's most likely to offset present a higher degree of risk. So you can see here that we are characterizing books that have the pigment in very small quantities in areas where you can avoid directly touching it. So for example, on these emerald green onlays on this binding, that would be a lower degree of risk than an emerald green cloth binding, which is very friable, or a book that has emerald green applied to the text block edges, which is where you handle the pages, right, and turn the pages. That is naturally also extremely friable. And then paper bindings, that sort of falls somewhere in the middle. But as I said, we don't really have any, like, hard numbers for quantifying the degree of risk. This is all just sort of qualitative comparing these items against one another. So as I mentioned earlier at Winterthur Library, we really emphasize a digital first strategy. However, there are, there have been some situations where a researcher has made a compelling argument to see a collection item that does contain arsenic, and they need to see it in person. So we worked collaboratively with our library staff to develop a strategy that everyone felt comfortable with, and work to provide proper training to everybody who was involved in serving trace our cynical materials to researchers. And we do make a distinction. We do not serve a higher risk, our cynical materials to researchers, but we will serve lower risk items. So the one situation where we have actually served an item to a researcher was where the arsenic was in the color illustrations inside the text block. And this is, this is how we served it in a mylar lined tray with a little printed note with the handling guidelines. The researcher was also instructed verbally by a staff member who was trained in the handling of these materials. Gloves were provided a book wedge and a book weight to hold the book open were provided both coated in Tyvek which is easy to wipe down. And we also provided a Teflon lifter. Since the researcher was wearing gloves and that diminished their dexterity and turning pages so we encourage them to use the Teflon lifter. And then after the researcher use these materials in an isolated table in a closed reading room. All these materials came to the conservation lab so they could be wiped down and sterilized. If this seems excessive for handling materials that just have a little bit of arsenic in an illustration. Then I say that's good because I think it's far better to be overly cautious than to be cavalier. We don't have to panic but we also shouldn't be cavalier in the way we handle these materials and give the public access to them. So, I've gotten a lot of questions from colleagues about whether zip top polyethylene bags are really the best way to store these books. And, you know, Rosie and I are really just drawing a line in the sand, like to date, this is absolutely the best storage enclosure for our cynical books, especially if they're bound in emerald green cloth. There's just too much pigment shedding that happens. They don't look fancy, but that is okay. That zip top is going to help contain the pigment. The bags are transparent so you can immediately see that there's a bright green book inside the bag will protect the book from a water event. And since plastic bags aren't usually considered to be a great way to store books, they likely look very different from all your other enclosures in your collection. And so that can also be good because it visually signals that something different is happening. We have done some preliminary testing on dust jackets, dust jackets made of mylar and also dust jackets made of polyethylene from the Colibri dust jacket system. The problem with dust jackets is that they naturally have a gap at the head and the tail near the spine. And our preliminary testing shows that after just a few weeks of storage, a significant amount of arsenic does offset onto the inside of those dust jackets. And then when the books are handled and that dust jacket gets manipulated, the pigment can then shed unpredictably into your lap if you're holding the book and reading it or onto a storage shelf. So it's possible that dust jackets might be a good solution for emerald green paper bindings since they are a little bit more stable than cloth bindings but a lot more testing has to be done to really confirm that. If you have these books in your collection, then they should really be added to your disaster plan. They should be written into your written disaster plan. And a warning should be added to any salvage related shelf signage that you use in your collection. And of course you should provide education and training for your staff. So arsenic is an obvious risk in a disaster scenario, but you also need to remember that the stable pigment in cloth bindings that contain chromium and lead is vulnerable to moisture. So in the case of a water event exposure to chromium and lead could be higher than it would be during the normal handling of a dry book. So you also want to ensure that appropriate PPE for handling potentially toxic books is also included in your disaster response kids. Rosie is now going to talk a little bit about labeling. Students and staff really have the right to know what hazards have been identified in the collections. And labeling as Melissa's already shown some examples should be agreed on with your institution, and in the cases in the left hand side which we're demonstrating here. The left most one is an example from Northwestern University libraries and the right from winter term. We agreed on the verbiage with library stuff and leadership prior to creating those labels. In both cases, the hazard symbol which we showed earlier and hazard statements are used, and then clear guidance is given around handling, both with written instructions and in the case of the Northwestern label also with handy symbols. So it's not just physical labeling that is important but also thinking about how you're recording this information in your in your institutions, digital collections, digital form, and your collection management system or your catalog. For us, we record treatments and also the analysis of poison books in key email, which is the collections management system that we use at winter term. But also in our catalog and we have handling notes for identified poison books, and also we've coded poison books to alert users and staff to their presence. In fact, we add a letter code to the end of a call number to alert these poison books which are all stored together in our library. We would also encourage you to plan ahead for waste disposal prior to any handling or treatment of emerald green containing books. And although we cannot give specific information because hazardous waste disposal guidelines really change from state to state and region to region. I would encourage you to check your state and local guidance when it comes to disposing of trace hazardous waste, specifically arsenic waste. So for example, at winter term in Delaware and due to state regulations, all of our gloves that are used in the laboratory setting which includes our library conservation lab must be disposed of in a specific lab trash format so not put in regular trash. However, if we expose those nitrile gloves or any other material to trace hazardous materials like handling poison books which are known to offset. We dispose of them in specific hazardous waste with the appropriate waste label, and then hazardous waste disposal company then comes to collect that waste. I do want to mention and Melissa's going to talk about this next that discarding an entire book is well beyond thinking about trace hazardous waste. So I'll pass it back to Melissa. Thanks Rosie. So this is a real hot button topic. Should you remove our cynical books from your collections, and we can't really tell you what to do, but we can encourage you to really think that through and really discuss it thoroughly with stakeholders in a really calm and rational way. So this shouldn't be a quick or easy decision, and you should really try to avoid any sort of knee jerk reaction to the fact that the book contains arsenic. You also really need to consider the question of responsible stewardship. What does that look like for your organization. Are you essentially passing the buck to someone else if you remove books from your collection. What are your ultimate goals, and what are the most sensible solutions for your organization. So if you do choose to deaccession our cynical materials, you have a few options, none of them are ideal, but you could keep them just keep them restricted from access and do the necessary work to manage and store them responsibly and it is my hope that most institutions will go this route. You can also attempt to donate or sell them with full disclosure about their our cynical content. Believe it or not, the fact that these books contain arsenic do make them more attractive to some collectors. So choose to dispose of them. They must be disposed of as hazardous waste, as Rosie said not trace, but as actual hazardous waste a book bound in emerald green book cloth might be a stable entity stored in a labeled zip top bag on a shelf in an appropriate storage environment, but soaking in a landfill that same book presents a much different hazard. We really are not managing an hazard ethically if we're removing it from our institutional environment at the cost of the broader environment. And we also really need to be clear that disposal of one of these bindings means the destruction of historically significant collection material that we are really only truly beginning to understand now. And that's a decision that really shouldn't be made lightly. We are intentional when we call our research the poison book project. You can't educate if you don't have your audience's attention. And it's a great way to get attention before we give our calm message about a rational approach to dealing with these materials. And actually the title of the poison book project is really more literal than it is sensational toxic heavy metals are serious poisons. They do exist in books. And this is an ongoing research pro project that is focused on outreach and awareness. We deal with a range of attitudes about the project from totally cavalier to extreme anxiety, and something in the middle is really the most appropriate response. It can be challenging to communicate the gravity of the hazard while also mitigating out of proportion concerns. I think it's important to be straightforward. If you're talking about arsenic use the word arsenic. Put that risk into context, we're surrounded by potentially hazardous materials, all the time in our everyday lives. The real danger here is simply not knowing that you're being exposed to a hazard. So you can take appropriate precautions. And of course, we're always trying to figure out sensible achievable affordable solutions. As a lighthearted aside, I really don't recommend this DIY project with a 19th century cloth case binding, as you see in this image, led is found in a majority of these bindings so you really don't want to use one as a handbag. And finally, we're not going it alone and you don't have to either. Bib talks as we affectionately call the bibliotox ecology working group is an international cohort of conservators cultural heritage scientists librarians book historians and health and safety professionals. We're working from seven different countries, and our goals are to identify potentially toxic materials in libraries and archives, and to develop safer management strategies for those collections. And we're currently working on a series of white papers as Rosie mentioned earlier, and we'll be making the first of them available through the health and safety network of the American Institute for conservation. We'll be going up on the wiki and wiki format and also as a downloadable PDF, and we're really hoping to have that first white paper on identification techniques posted by the end of 2023 so stay tuned. And we just like to thank everyone in our research community who have done so much to contribute to this project. Thank you. The chat and the questions have been lively. I'm going to go ahead and start jumping into the real quick though I am going to put a link to our resource page and the survey link in the chat so just for everyone to see but it's been quite fun to watch the chat and questions as you guys have been speaking so thank you so much for that. So quick I wanted to go back to the discussion of gloves because I know like when I started my museum career way back in the middle of everyone used white gloves, right like that was industry standard. And then when I started working with my first conservator, when I was hitting the 2010s, they introduced me to the fabulousness of purple, my trial gloves, so I wanted to talk a little bit about just someone asked, you know, when should you use white gloves shouldn't you and I wanted to get your guys thoughts on just the whole glove deal, basically. I really only ever use white cotton gloves to handle mylar to not leave fingerprints on it and because it just feels icky to handle mylar when you're wearing nitrile gloves because it's plastic against plastic. I could also wear the cotton gloves or nitrile gloves to handle photographic materials, but honestly those are the only situations in which I would wear them. And I don't wear gloves to handle most books, unless they contain arsenic, then I'm nitrile gloves all the way. Thank you. And someone asked just for clarification, is there a general date range for poison books. Absolutely. And this information is also up on our wiki. For the emerald green cloth bindings we've had, we've found that they have a pretty narrow range 1840s to early 1860s for those. But for the paper bindings, our colleagues at other institutions and our own data collection, all agree that it could really span anywhere from the 18 teens all the way up to the 1890s. Sorry, I wish I wish we could narrow down the the emerald green paper a little more narrowly but it seems to have been in wide use throughout the century. I mean it's pretty. I mean I can understand why like aesthetically speaking they were like this looks amazing. I think it's, you know, I think as as science and everything develops will probably be able to narrow it down more right but I do think being more of a cautious attitude of it and I really like how you guys focused on the fact of by no means are we saying like, if you see these types of objects or even our webinar we did earlier this month about taxidermy we see these things it does not mean to go and like start the metaphorical bonfire behind the institution and set these things on fire right like you just you want to like know that they're there. Label them appropriately and handle them appropriately that's kind of the base of all this so we always like to really stress that when it comes to these kind of objects for sure. Um, so someone this is a good question because I think a lot of people get caught in this area is how do you digitize a book that you find is coded in arsenic in pictures textbook edges as well as the binding because you digitization is still a hot thing so what would you guys recommend when dealing with that. I can take this one to see. Um, so that's something that we've been talking a lot about at winter chair because we do have several poison books in our collection that have not been digitized and we are planning to digitize them. First of all, you need someone who's a hearty soul who is not intimidated by the binding who's willing to do the digitization. We're very fortunate that we have such a soul and at winter chair library, and she and I are going to be working closely together on the digitization of these books. She will be wearing full PPE, and I'm also going to be present with wipes for wiping down the machine we use a zoichel for most of our digitization. And so once we confirm that the D letting wipes are safe to use on that machine. We're going to use that to wipe down all the surfaces afterwards but certainly you do have to recognize that you are increasing risk by handling the book in that way. And the person doing it has to be comfortable with the PPE that they're wearing and the risk that they're taking on and then you have to think about doing that work. It's a great environment without other co workers milling around, you know, doing other types of work, and just being really deliberate and then wiping everything down carefully and then of course disposing of all of that PPE and the wipes as trace hazardous waste. Perfect, thank you. It's to two so I'm going to hit one more question. If you guys are able to help do one more and then we'll probably have to set on the program unfortunately for today. These kind of these questions kind of go together someone says have you shared your warning side engine directions for handling somewhere online I'd love to make our collections labels and directions similar to other institutions and then someone else that asked just kind of how would you label the products. So I was thinking, you know, have you guys heard of any common labeling practices, any of that kind of thing throughout your experience. Yeah, absolutely. And that is something that the bibliotoxicology group has been working on and we've been collecting a Google Drive of resources with things like labels in them. And now you're making me think that I should include a link to a view only Google Drive where people can download examples of the types of labeling that we've been using and recommending. So I will get on that, and I'll get that link to you and hopefully you can share it in the YouTube recording. For sure. And someone just said thank you that would be great. So that's a good way to end today's program. A huge thank you to you both Rosie and Melissa for doing this. This is I heard your guys talk at the AC meeting back in Jacksonville this year and I really liked it and I was, I remember thinking there's a lot of folks out there who are dealing with this issue so I'll bring it to the CDC care audience so that they know to be aware, you know what I mean, but not not to be scared, but just be aware and be knowledgeable when handling these types of objects do you guys have any final thoughts for our group today. Just want to say thank you for for giving us an opportunity to share our message with folks. Yeah, thanks Robin thanks all and check out their resources that we put together for this talk. I think that'd be really helpful for everyone. I am putting that link in the chat right now again along with the survey link because I always have to poke that as we go along. Well thanks again to all of you. Thanks to FAC and I'm a list for supporting this program as always. I will have the recording up by the end of the week at the latest for everyone to enjoy. And we will see you in October for fire suppression. So thanks again everyone and we will see you next month. Thanks. Be safe. Bye everyone.