I thought the final note “which can irritate modern day readers” in the heading was a funny comment. Were historic readers immune to the effects? Has a binder deteriorated such that the irritants come off more readily? Likely neither and it’s always been a problem, but it’s an unanswered question.
Probably has always been a largely occupational hazard and otherwise of little concern to the general public, even those who read books regularly. Of course in this era where fear sells and everything has to be harmless regardless of real risk, it's become a more prominent issue.
I don't think this is a "fear sells" issue. Arsenic green is remarkably toxic. In the 19th century, the toxicity just wasn't known or recognized as serious. Now, we know better. Medical diagrams from the time period show hand injuries on people who worked with arsenic compounds regularly (deep sores that won't heal, e.g.)
My first thought was that they referred to metaphorically poisonous books, something that scans the catalogue looking nasty books about diversity or gender ... "oh no, more book banning".
My first thought was that a library was writing fake books to poison LLMs that were using their corpus without their permission, and that someone had developed a tool to identify such books.
LOL exactly. If I had a choice between a book burning of these arsenic books, or a book burning of stunning and brave books such as Middlesex, I would absolutely sniff those arsenic fumes, as that would smell better than to silence the speech of the oppressed classes by the oppressors
The tool was developed by University of St Andrews, not the poisonous books.