diff --git a/glymur/jp2box.py b/glymur/jp2box.py
index 971818f..578ef36 100644
--- a/glymur/jp2box.py
+++ b/glymur/jp2box.py
@@ -2656,10 +2656,20 @@ class XMLBox(Jp2kBox):
             warnings.warn(msg, UserWarning)
 
         # Strip out any trailing nulls, as they can foul up XML parsing.
+        # Remove any byte order markers.
         text = text.rstrip(chr(0))
+        if u'\ufeff' in text:
+            msg = 'An illegal BOM (byte order marker) was detected and '
+            msg += 'removed from the XML contents in the box starting at byte '
+            msg += 'offset {0}'.format(offset)
+            warnings.warn(msg)
+            text = text.replace(u'\ufeff', '')
+        # Remove any encoding declaration.
+        if text.startswith('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'):
+            text = text[38:]
 
         try:
-            elt = ET.fromstring(text.encode('utf-8'))
+            elt = ET.fromstring(text)
             xml = ET.ElementTree(elt)
         except ET.ParseError as err:
             msg = 'A problem was encountered while parsing an XML box:'
diff --git a/glymur/test/test_jp2box_xml.py b/glymur/test/test_jp2box_xml.py
index 8650895..ff589f9 100644
--- a/glymur/test/test_jp2box_xml.py
+++ b/glymur/test/test_jp2box_xml.py
@@ -94,24 +94,6 @@ class TestXML(unittest.TestCase):
     def tearDown(self):
         os.unlink(self.xmlfile)
 
-    @unittest.skipIf(OPJ_DATA_ROOT is None,
-                     "OPJ_DATA_ROOT environment variable not set")
-    def test_invalid_utf8(self):
-        """Bad byte sequence that cannot be parsed."""
-        filename = opj_data_file(os.path.join('input',
-                                              'nonregression',
-                                              '26ccf3651020967f7778238ef5af08af.SIGFPE.d25.527.jp2'))
-        if sys.hexversion < 0x03000000:
-            with warnings.catch_warnings():
-                warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
-                jp2 = Jp2k(filename)
-        else:
-            with self.assertWarns(UserWarning):
-                jp2 = Jp2k(filename)
-
-        self.assertIsNone(jp2.box[3].box[1].box[1].xml)
-            
-
     def test_negative_file_and_xml(self):
         """The XML should come from only one source."""
         xml_object = ET.parse(self.xmlfile)
@@ -305,3 +287,38 @@ class TestBadButRecoverableXmlFile(unittest.TestCase):
                          b'<test>this is a test</test>')
 
 
+class TestXML_OpjDataRoot(unittest.TestCase):
+    """Test suite for XML boxes, requires OPJ_DATA_ROOT."""
+
+    def test_bom(self):
+        """Byte order markers are illegal in UTF-8.  Issue 185"""
+        filename = opj_data_file(os.path.join('input',
+                                              'nonregression',
+                                              'issue171.jp2'))
+        if sys.hexversion < 0x03000000:
+            with warnings.catch_warnings():
+                warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
+                jp2 = Jp2k(filename)
+        else:
+            with self.assertWarns(UserWarning):
+                jp2 = Jp2k(filename)
+        self.assertIsNotNone(jp2.box[3].xml)
+            
+
+    def test_invalid_utf8(self):
+        """Bad byte sequence that cannot be parsed."""
+        filename = opj_data_file(os.path.join('input',
+                                              'nonregression',
+                                              '26ccf3651020967f7778238ef5af08af.SIGFPE.d25.527.jp2'))
+        if sys.hexversion < 0x03000000:
+            with warnings.catch_warnings():
+                warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
+                jp2 = Jp2k(filename)
+        else:
+            with self.assertWarns(UserWarning):
+                jp2 = Jp2k(filename)
+
+        self.assertIsNone(jp2.box[3].box[1].box[1].xml)
+            
+
+