Went to a nice talk last night about portable, non-destructive sensing, of things such as liquids inside bottles (whisky being an example), and pharmaceuticals inside opaque containers.
It also covered pigments in the binding of Victorian books. If the binding is green, then there is a chance the pigment is copper arsenite.
So, if you have Victorian books with a green binding, don’t lick them.
Too late!
25 years ago (has it really been that long…yikes) I was involved in a restoration project of a historic Victorian home in Seattle. There were signs placed in various rooms telling people “Do not lick or sniff the wallpaper”.
The wallpaper was largely scheels green, which has the same arsenic as the books.
My questions was always ’ Why are they licking the wallpaper in the first place?!"
LICKABLE WALLPAPER FOR NURSERIES, it said on the next door.
‘Lovely stuff, lickable wallpaper!’ cried Mr Wonka, rushing past. ‘It has pictures of fruits on it – bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, pineapples, strawberries, and snozzberries . . .’
‘Snozzberries?’ said Mike Teavee.
‘Don’t interrupt!’ said Mr Wonka. ‘The wallpaper has pictures of all these fruits printed on it, and when you lick the picture of a banana, it tastes of banana. When you lick a strawberry, it tastes of strawberry. And when you lick a snozzberry, it tastes just exactly like a snozzberry . . .’
(Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Telling people not to do it probably resulted in more licks than if they had no idea… Unless it has a specially appealing smell