Evidence stacks up for poisonous books containing toxic dyes

The field of physical chemistry is going to blow your mind.

For example, it's fairly common to use eyeliner on the "waterline" of your eye where it will wash off into your eye over time. You need to reapply lipstick periodically; partially because some of it ends up getting washed off and swallowed. A lot of these eye and lip makeups contain (cosmetic grade) glitter. A lot of makeup is in the form of sticky sprays or powders that presumably get partially inhaled.

I don't mean this as some sort of hysterical "makeup is a conspiracy to kill us!!1!1" sort of thing. I know that it goes through extensive testing and is probably mostly safe. However, I do wonder if some of these might eventually be found to be less safe then we originally thought.

It might be the ADD or whatever, but I really detest the feeling of being caked in grease. I've often wondered what kind of damage its doing to people's skin to block gas exchange, clog pores, soak in weird chemicals, etc.

Gotta say though, it never occurred to me how much goop is going in people's eye holes, or how much lipstick they're ingesting. The inhalation I've thought about a lot... It's not easy to get shit out of your lungs once it goes in there. High hopes for earth-friendly (and lung friendly) glitter to become more of a thing.

All that said - I get it. We're incredibly shallow, generally, and I've seen in myself and others the difference a little makeup can make in how you're treated.

copper acetoarsenite is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_green and is deadly, but still used by artists as a pigment today (though it's no longer used for things like wallpaper, clothing, and rat poison)

lead oxide is a mild concern; it's sweet, and back when it was the most common white pigment for painting houses, kids would chew on it. at that time there was a massive subclinical lead poisoning outbreak that probably resulted in an unprecedented decades-long crime wave in the usa, but that was probably more due to leaded gasoline than the paint. and the amount that can potentially flake off a book is even smaller than what kids got chewing on paint chips

but lead chromate is basically nontoxic under any normal exposure conditions. it's something you don't want to eat, though people commonly use it as a food dye; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_chromate says:

> Despite containing both lead and hexavalent chromium, lead chromate is not acutely lethal because of its very low solubility. The LD50 for rats is only 5,000 mg/kg. Lead chromate must be treated with great care in its manufacture, the main concerns being dust of the chromate precursor. (...) It is used (illegally) to enhance the color of certain spices, particularly turmeric,[8][9] particularly in Bangladesh. (...) Unlike other lead-based paint pigments, lead chromate is still widely used, especially in road marking paint.

and lead sulfide is pretty much completely nontoxic. there's no way to get lead poisoning from it. that's why egg whites are an antidote to lead poisoning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_sulfide#Safety

if you tried to murder someone with lead chromate and lead sulfide, you would fail. they would probably be unharmed

now, it's also possible the lead is in some other form that's more dangerous. and it's not clear that you'd put lead sulfide in a book on purpose; it's black, but carbon is cheaper, and making carbon black is both safer and easier. so maybe the excess lead is in some form that's of real concern. but the compounds they've identified are harmless, except for the green menace we already knew about

phys.org and the acs should be ashamed of having printed this baseless fearmongering