Warning! Eating Books Could Seriously Damage Your Child’s Health!

Does your baby have a book-eating fetish? Mine used to prefer snacking on business cards.

Your kid should be safe – so long as the book was published before 1985. If not? Time to don a hazmat suit and bury them deep, deep underground.

Why? Well as reported in The Guardian, the US government believes that these old publications might give children brain damage. Prior to 1985, many books were printed with inks and paints that used lead pigments – just like those nasty Chinese killer toys that have been recalled recently.

But while there has never been a case of a child keeling over from eating too many old Tin Tin books, laws passed by US Congress may mean that  anyone who tries to sell old books for kids containing lead may be in serious trouble: “Penalties … can include $100,000 fines and prison time, regardless of whether any child is harmed.”

Forget about building a vintage book collection then – and what about libraries?

Of course, this pencils-up-the-nose, forehead-slapping “I’m mad, me” stupidity has many negative consequences: traders’ livelihoods are threatened; poor people lose access to a source of cheap literature for their kids; libraries may be forced to undertake expensive restocking, while out-of-print books will be lost forever (although an exception has been made for rarities, so long as they are sold for adult use only). The American Library Association actually warned Congress that the law was a bit shoddy but were ignored.

It’s actually not funny at all. A great many books could very soon become inaccessible. Even when they survive on private shelves. Another death knell for literacy?

Photo: Flickr/Matthew Routley