Dee,
Gretchen failed to mention she will be teaching her Integrated Pest
Management: The Plan and Implementation online course
http://bit.ly/2ztltcM beginning November 2.
--
Brad Bredehoft
CEO
Museum Study, LLC
www.MuseumStudy.com
On 9/9/2020 12:48 PM, Anderson, Gretchen wrote:
Hi Dee,
Don’t you just love the challenges of a natural history museum. This
one sounds like a doozy!
Is there any chance for you to visit the collection before it
arrives? In that way you could see if the extent and activity of the
mold and do a better assessment of the needs. Then you could do a few
tests to see if the mounts are predominantly laced with arsenic.
Ok – First, to your question about methods. Since your curator wants
to fumigate – see what is actually legal to do in your area – that
might just answer the question. As you know, traditional fumigation
is not only a human health problem, but can also cause trouble with
the specimens. Find out what fumigant would be used, if you can. Get
the SDS ….etc. I would not recommend fumigation. Have you considered
anoxic? Perhaps a CO2 bubble – That will take longer than freezing,
but it is an option. You would probably have to rent or find a
company who does it.
My preference is for thermal control. Either freezing or heat. The
preparation is the same – double bag things (that is a lot of
plastic!), but both methods work extremely well. The advantage to
heating is that it takes less time. And, there are more pest
management companies who are set up for a heat treatment now – they
use it for bedbugs now. Done properly, heating and freezing is still
the most effective (both cost, safety of people and collections, and
kill rate) method.
Now on to Isolation/storage. Is the room you describe going to be the
‘permanent” storage for the specimens? It sounds like it. The best
would be to use thermal treatment and then move them into the cleaned
space.
1. Prep the space – clean, seal all cracks, add sweeps to the doors.
Pay specific attention to the walls shared by other collections.
2. Monitor prior to moving taxidermy in. See what is present and
address the situation through housekeeping and improved seals.
3. Determine how you are going to most efficiently store
collections. I am sure you have been thinking about this! Keep
things off the floor (if possible) so that you can clean under
them – especially important for monitoring. Hang whatever you can
on the walls – the head and shoulder mounts are ideal. Another
method is to attach each one to a pallet (or several to a pallet)
and put them on warehouse shelving. Create plastic sheeting
containment for them. I did this by attaching them to a wood
pallet what had a deck on it (it was before plastic pallets were
available). Attachment was a few screws into the backboard of the
mount. A wooden frame was attached and then stretched with
plastic sheeting. Blunder traps were placed inside. Full body
mounts were done the same way, with their bolts being attached to
the pallet. This made them easy to handle. In your situation you
might not have to seal in plastic.
4. Ongoing monitoring. – You will have to do it whether or not you
run the specimens through thermal treatment or not. Set a
monitoring and housekeeping schedule and stick to it!
Pros and cons of isolation/monitoring only – Pro: This is the easiest
and overtly cheapest way to do it. You have to have a plan as to when
an infestation is found. Also, you will have to do a detailed exam of
everything as it is coming in, and possibly clean as things are coming
in? Cons: There are no natural barriers in the room so it will be
harder to isolate if there is an infestation. There is no baseline of
condition or infestation. Cleaning will be an immediate priority.
Email me if you want to talk through some scenarios.
Gretchen
Gretchen Anderson
Conservator
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
5800 Baum Blvd.
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
(412)665-2607
*From:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *On
Behalf Of *Dee Stubbs-Lee
*Sent:* Wednesday, September 9, 2020 10:35 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* [PestList] IPM for huge incoming collection of mounted mammals
The New Brunswick Museum has acquired a very large collection of over
400 mounted mammals. Some are very large species. About 60% are head
and shoulder mounts, the other 40% are full body taxidermy mounts.
Some have some associated diorama materials.
These will be coming to us from an off-site, non-museum out of town
location, where I am told they are densely stored in about a 1700
square foot space on private property. I have not seen this collection
in person, only from photos. I am they need to be moved to the
museum’s collections storage imminently, possibly within a few weeks
and with as short as possible a processing turnaround time. The space
that is being considered for housing them is the museum’s current
preparation workshop, which is about 1780 square feet. We are no
longer able to use this room for preparation work (wood working,
painting, etc.) due to ventilation not meeting current health and
safety guidelines. The workshop has direct access to a freight
elevator and to an exterior single size door. It has a concrete floor
and is located on the museum’s basement level. The adjacent
collections storage rooms house our most pest-vulnerable collections:
textiles and ethnographic collections. This workshop room is located
directly below the conservation lab and loading bay.
We have a small walk in freezer for IPM that is used by all museum
departments, but this is not adequate to process this large
acquisition, and many of the mounts may not physically fit in any
case. The curator in charge of the project would like to avoid hiring
freezer trucks, and prefers fumigation.
These mounts are from within the last 50 years or so, so I am hoping
that arsenic and related hazards may be less of an issue than with
older mounts, although I worry about health and safety aspects of
fumigating on site, especially as my office is immediately above this
space.
In addition to my pest related concerns (mainly protecting our other
collections), I have been told that some of the mounts have visible
mold growth as well as a musty odour, so these are challenging on many
fronts
I am looking for advice on freezing vs fumigation (onsite or off site)
vs inspection and HEPA vacuuming only, and for dealing with this on an
extremely tight time frame and with extremely limited resources. I
have never dealt with an IPM project of comparable size and scope
before, so all advice is appreciated!
Dee
/Dee A. Stubbs-Lee, MA, CAPC/
/Conservator / Restauratrice/
/New Brunswick Museum/
/277 Douglas Avenue/
/Saint John, New Brunswick/
/E2K 1E5/
/Canada/
//
/(506) 643-2341/
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