19. Later, Welsh admitted: Representative Vic Fazio “criticized the librarians for secretly diverting funds from other library programs to support the DEZ experiment,” reported The Washington Post. “ ‘Specifically,’ [Fazio] wrote Boorstin last Dec. 2, ‘over $2.3 million of the $3,740,474 obligated since fiscal year 1981 has come from funding sources other than those approved by…Congress.’ ” Phil McCombs, “Library’s Preservation Go-Ahead; Dangers of Book-Saving Process are Discounted,” The Washington Post, February 11, 1987, p. C-1, final edition, Nexis. At the hearing, Fazio said, “You didn’t realize you had gotten hooked on this approach.” Welsh answered, “I realized I was hooked, but not that I was using that much money without your permission.” Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, pt. 2, February 10, 1987 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), p. 417.
20. “The time drivers”: See NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 79.
21. “Shortly after the water injection”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 6.
22. “[Name whited out] has been applying pressure”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 80. A memo of December 5, 1985, reporting the “Incident at Magnetic Test Quiet Lab 306” to a NASA manager ends thus: “Any inquiries concerning this incident should be referred to Dr. Peter Sparks, Library of Congress, 202-287-5213.” NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 49.
23. Before NASA had completed its investigation: NASA had produced an interim report on the December 5 explosion, but not a final one, when the second explosion took place. “By February 14, 1986, Mr. Marriott’s group was well into the investigation of the December 5, 1985, mishap and verbal reports had been provided to the Director of Engineering, and an interim written report was provided on January 17, 1986” (NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 15). One respondent stated that he was “upset that they were working out at building 306 before the report from the December 5, 1985, Accident Review Board was released” (p. 92). The Library of Congress asserted that the DEZ facility was shut down after the “fire” in December “pending a review of the cause of the fire.” Cleanup began, the library claimed, “following completion of the review,” whereupon the “second incident occurred.” Library of Congress, “Library’s Book Deacidification Program Moves Forward Following Review of Incidents and Pilot Plant,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:27 (July 7, 1986).
24. “disenchanted” electrician: There were, he said, “too many people giving orders without following normal procedures.” NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 91. “Before the December 5 fire,” the electrician “had not known that DEZ could explode” (p. 92).
25. a substantial volume: “After the December 5, 1985 fire, it was general knowledge that DEZ was in the system,” according to one interviewee. NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 95.
26. “black goop”: NASA, Accident Investigation, pp. 9, 110.
27. copper elbow pipe: NASA, Accident Investigation, pp. 11, 93.
28. too hot to touch: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 109.
29. Northrup did not inform NASA: NASA, Accident Investigation, pp. 25–26.
30. “the walls were blown apart”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 14.
31. “The violence of the explosion”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 36.
32. there were no relief valves: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 28.
33. “We’re going to blow it”: Welsh, phone interview, March 25, 2000.
34. armored vehicles: Welsh, phone interview, March 25, 2000.
35. “vast and unprecedented cuts”: Library of Congress, “The Librarian of Congress Testifies Before Appropriations Subcommittee,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:9 (March 3, 1986).
36. “disassembled by means of shaped”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 16.
37. whoomp: Phone interview with an eyewitness who does not want to be named, April 2000.
38. “there has never been an important”: Boorstin also formally said good-bye to the members of the house subcommittee during that meeting; he was retiring from the Library of Congress. Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations, Hearings, p. 394.
39. rats: “The study will expose rats to acute, subchronic, and chronic inhalation of zinc oxide particles at various concentrations in air….An examination of sperm morphology and vaginal cytology will also be performed on specimens in the sub-chronic and chronic studies. Some specimens from the sub-chronic exposures will be mated to study the reproductive and teratogenic effects.” U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 79. The cost of the rat study, performed by the Battelle Memorial Institute, is given on p. 18.
40. The tests were “inconclusive”: U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 77. In another test, DEZ-treated paper was applied to the skin of guinea pigs and the eyes of rabbits.
41. optical-disk program: See, for example, William J. Welsh, “The Preservation Challenge,” in Merrill-Oldham and Smith, Library Preservation Program. “In the area of preservation research, the Library of Congress is currently engaged in two promising projects of enormous potential value,” Welsh writes, both of which apply “ultra-high technology to preservation”: diethyl zinc and optical disk.
42. “On Friday, February 21”: Library of Congress, “Engineering Problems Experienced at Deacidification Test Facility,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:11 (March 17, 1986).
43. “The Library’s own review”: Library of Congress, “Library’s Book Deacidification Program.” The DEZ technique “is a viable process that can be implemented and handled safely,” according to the article.
44. “didn’t have the chemical processing experience”: Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations, Hearings, p. 435.
45. “Dump DEZ”: Karl Nyren, “It’s Time to Dump DEZ,” Library Journal, September 15, 1986.
46. “danger and unmanageability of DEZ”: Karl Nyren, “DEZ Process.”
47. Welsh published a rebuttaclass="underline" William J. Welsh, “In Defense of DEZ: LC’s Perspective,” Library Journal, January 1987.
48. when it does use DEZ: Scott Eidt told me: “Diethyl zinc wasn’t used a great deal as a Ziegler-Natta catalyst. It was used, as far I remember, and is still used, in dilute hydrocarbon solution, to scavenge out water from the polymerization process — that is, it would react with the water in the solvent and knock it out.” Book Preservation Technologies also resorts to vague language, perhaps in order to avoid mentioning the military uses: “Metal alkyls have been used for many years in a variety of applications. Their major use today is as an intermediate in the manufacturing of polyethylene and polypropylene” (p. 28).
49. neat and by the ton: “During the course of a year, Texas Alkyls will be trucking 15 to 20, 430-gallon tanks of neat liquid DEZ from their facility in Houston to the full-scale plant site,” U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 71. Stauffer Chemical wrote a letter to the Library of Congress dated April 18, 1985, in which it observed that the rate of gas generation is two orders of magnitude greater for neat diethyl zinc than for DEZ diluted fifty-fifty with a solvent. The letter is paraphrased in NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 144. The gas, mainly ethane, is flammable.