 Hello everyone we're going to give it just a minute for the room to populate. We appreciate everyone being timely as normal for one of our CDC care webinars. Just some really quick housekeeping before we start. We are recording today's webinar I'll mention that a few times just so everyone knows. We also will have some capabilities for you to communicate with our presenter later on, we will also be running from 1pm to 2pm Eastern so it will be a 60 minute program today. Right if everyone just give me one second while I do a quick update. Okay. Alright, so I'm going to like I said just do a couple of quick slides and then we're going to get jump into today's program. Again welcome everyone my name is Robin Bauer Kilgoe I am the CDC care coordinator and you're here today for a webinar on arsenic and collections. Again we'll be running until about 2pm Eastern, and I'm located just outside of Washington DC in Silver Spring Maryland where we're having a nice heat wave right now so hopefully we'll have a couple days of that and then it'll start cooling down to what we expect temperature to be. Just a couple of super quick updates again my name my contact information if you have any questions or comments about today's program feel free to email me at c2cc at cultural heritage.org. This is our home on the web connecting to collections.org that website actually has a whole archive of all of our programming we've been doing one free webinar a month for over 10 years so it was quite an archive of our free programming we also have courses which are more paid for programming which are slightly more in depth looks at collection items within the cultural sphere. 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Oh one other thing again we are recording and we've also enabled captioning so if you're interested in that please hit that CC button at the bottom of the screen and those will be helpful as well. There's coming free webinars that we have for our program just everyone knows at the end of September we have the poison book project which is all about what you need to know about heavy metals and historical bookbidings. That program is going to be happening on September 20 from one to two, and then in October will be doing fire suppression for museums. We also have one coming up in November which will be announcing shortly so again if you go to our website you'll see some information on that soon and that'll close out our programming for 2023. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our speaker today her name is Fran Richie she's a conservator with the National Park Service we're very excited to have Fran today, there has been some pretty interesting news lately about this issue our thinking collections and we're excited to have Fran come here and talk to us today about the subject. So Fran feel feel free to get started whenever you are ready. Okay, can you am I back now. Yes, we see you on screen right now. Okay, let me share again. Okay, and then let me know when you see my screen now looks beautiful you can get started whenever you're ready. Yeah, we're having like little some twitches with them with zoom. But anyway, alright here I am. Okay, thank you so much Robin. I'm really happy to be invited to talk on this topic. Arsenic is something that I talk a lot about because I have to deal with it a lot. So it's kind of close to my heart in a way and in fact I've even been arsenic as part of a heavy metal rock band as a Halloween costume multiple years. So yeah, I think a lot about it. I'm an objects conservator with experience and a special interest in indigenous collections and natural science materials. And I do conservation and restoration of taxidermy and I've done that over the past several years for collections around the United States, and then for my nine to five I'm really lucky. I'm a conservator for the National Park Service at Harper's Ferry Center in West Virginia. And part of my role is to help parks identify hazards in their collection. To help them identify treatment priorities condition issues, and then perform actual conservation treatments. I am peer reviewed status. I'm a professional associate in the professional organization the American Institute for Conservation. And I'm the chair of the conservation committee for the Society for preservation of natural history collections, which is United States based but it's a global organization. So I would like to encounter where or talk about where you might encounter arsenic, how to detect it, and then of course, what do you do if you do detect it in your collection. So one thing that I want to, you know, point out is that in my disclaimer that one thing that I didn't say that I am is an industrial hygienist. Those are folks who actually specialize in collection holding institutions who can truly assess the actual risk to humans of a hazard in a collection. So they look at the exact hazard and the types of activities surrounding the hazards, and they can really formulate what the risk will be to the human. If you have specific questions about your collection. I most likely will not be able to answer that today, but I can help direct you to a conservator and an industrial hygienist who can help with that. And I really want to call out the two previous C2CC webinars that are very helpful with this topic, identifying and managing hazardous materials in museum collections and arsenic and old lace controlling hazardous collection materials. And both of these were presented by conservators industrial hygienists and occupational safety specialist, and they do a great job of discussing a hazard versus a risk, and how the same hazard can present in different ways and some of them are riskier than others. And they really do say to you that just because you have identified a hazard in your collection does not mean that you need to get rid of it. There have been many studies that have been conducted on collections with residual pesticides. And what they have found is that if people use personal protective equipment, they can control those risks really well. And I love Kathy Makos and one of these says that HEPA vacuums are your friends. And later on we'll go over what HEPA vacuums are if you are unfamiliar with it. And also, I just love that they do say that just because there's a hazard that doesn't mean you need to throw it away. A lot of times I've been called in by people to look at taxidermy and taxidermy collections with the intent that, you know, they're kind of scared of it and they've heard that there's arsenic and if there's arsenic and they're going to throw it away because it's contaminated. So I often come in and, you know, talk about how to control these risks, how to mitigate the risks. And then also let them know that there are people who specialize in working on the conservation and preservation of taxidermy. And that just because something looks a little worn out, doesn't mean that it's, you know, without, that all hope is lost. This Muflan mount, this shoulder mount of this sheep is a really good example. You're actually looking at the after treatment image. This was treated by a conservation grad student from NYU named Nicole Feldman, and the before treatment image is on the left. She was taken off of a wall broken into very many pieces, and she was able to successfully perform conservation treatment on it, and have this endangered specimen now take its place back on the wall and represent this species. So there's a lot that can be done. All right, but getting back into arsenic. So let's talk about what it is. It's, it has the properties of both a metal and a non metal, and it's found as a native element on our Earth's crust in hydrothermal veins and deposits, and it's actually the 53rd most abundant element. It's found in combinations with other elements to form minerals. And we've known that for hundreds of years as humans. We've been using it, especially as an additive to strengthen other metals like lead. And when it's added to the copper alloy bronze, we refer to it as our cynical bronze. So that's a mixture of copper tin and arsenic. A very small amount is actually still used today in car batteries to help stabilize them which I didn't realize till I was researching a little bit further. You can synthesize arsenic or mix it with other elements to create desired products. And as humans we realized how toxic they could be, and started creating arsenic based insecticides and pesticides. And of course that was effective but it's a little too effective. They're toxic for invertebrates but also for vertebrates like us. And so we realized over time that we shouldn't be using them. We're using them through generally in so much around humans, which leads us to what is the risk for humans. The biggest risk is long term exposure. Arsenic enters your body through inhalation, ingestion or dermal or eye contact. And so it's folks who really unfortunately breathe it in or eat it in either usually unknowingly that have been known to develop the most serious conditions with it. It can lead to an increased risk in skin cancer and other different types of cancer, if you do have that long term continuous exposure to a large quantity. What you see on the slide is information that I found from OSHA, and it specifically points out what chronic exposure can do. But it also points out that this has been seen mostly in workers who were exposed to arsenic at smelters, mines and chemical factories, and then also residents who live near smelters and arsenical chemical factories. People who live near waste sites with arsenic may also have an increased risk of lung cancer because it gets into the groundwater and they either drink it or they eat plants that have been grown using the arsenic laden water. And indeed, what we see is that nowhere in that list does it list museum workers. We're kind of like a subset of people who are exposed to arsenic. But we do there is a history of people who have been working in the art and industry fields with raw arsenic over time who did see the ill effects of it cumulatively over time. So in the lithograph that we see those are the hands of workers who worked with artificial flowers making artificial flowers from that's from the 1859. And so these are folks who the arsenic would have been used in the green dye, and then fuzzy little pieces would have been applied to the fake flowers. And as they were applying them, they didn't have gloves, they didn't have masks or respirators. And so all those little pieces of fuzz with the arsenic dye would be released into the air and they would be constantly inhaling it and probably ingesting it as well and it's on their hands. So they knew that they saw that it was dangerous. But we can protect ourselves today and we also you know we do not have people applying things in the way that they did before they had personal protective equipment. And then short term exposure, looking at the toxicological profile for arsenic that was produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2007. They saw that short term exposure. If you have direct skin contact with high concentrations of inorganic arsenic compounds, your skin may become irritated with some redness and swelling. However, it does not appear that skin contact is likely to lead to any serious internal effects. So that's a really good quote for us to see as as museum workers, when we are working with industrial hygienists to exactly figure out what is the risk of objects that are in our collection. We have two very different examples. We have the leaded arsenical bronze sculpture that we know that if we handle it with gloves, we don't have any kind of risk of inhaling any of that arsenic. It's a component of the metal versus this old container of sodium arsenite that actually does have pieces of small pieces of arsenic compound inside of it. And so if we were to open up the lid of that container and then any of that were to spill out on our desktop. That is a significantly higher risk. So, knowing how arsenic is present in our collections can be very important. And of course, the biggest thing, you know, we're looking at it like the people who are the most at risk for arsenic for danger are those who are exposed over a long time. They're unprotected and they have that repeated exposure. And we know that if we don't lick our museum objects that we greatly decrease risk to ourselves and to the object to. So we know that arsenic is since it does have those metal properties. It's not, it's not a vapor. When it does come out of objects, it wants to fall to the ground, it wants to fall to the tabletop or to wherever. And so if we do, you know, wear our gloves to protect ourselves. And then if we're dusting or vacuuming or if we're getting very close to it or working in a tight space, we'll use our particulate mats or masks are in 95 masks or our respirators with a respirator to protect ourselves from anything that might be kind of fluffed up into the air. All right, other places where it is found in collections. If you have a geological or mineralogical collection, you might have these beautiful representations of Rialgar, the red mineral, or or permit the yellow one. And these both of these are arsenic mixed with sulfur, and they both do break down over time so there is still some risk if you don't have proper environmental controls for your collection. The or permit especially if it's exposed to large quantities of light and to moisture it will break down into kind of like a light fluffy substance. And so you would want to really protect yourself and make sure that you're guarding yourself many of that. And also, we see that these raw materials were broken down into really small particulates and then formed into a pigment that people would mall they would mix it with other different materials and with oil and turn it into an oil paint. And so we do have kind of master paintings which are older paintings that have Rialgar and or permit based paints in them. There's no one who has a historic pigment collection, which is probably beautiful, but you also need to be aware that you need to take extra precautions around around the loose pigments. I'm going back and forth between screens so sorry there's a wall and things. And then also our cynical compounds were used in the textile industry, they were be able they were able to produce these really beautiful greens using arsenic and copper. They're really kind of like an emerald green color, known as shields green and Paris green. So, in textiles that die could have been used to create outfits for humans. But then also book cloth to cover some of your books and so that's what's going to be presented on at next month's webinar. We've also used however that die in wallpaper, and then also as we've heard in the artificial flower industry. So if you have any of those in your collection, just be aware of that. And you'll want to make sure that you inspect your collection to see if any little pieces are degrading over time and are falling off of the object, especially for those artificial flowers if any of those fuzzy green pieces have come off of the object and are in the tray. Look out for that and be aware of it. And surprisingly, perhaps, is that people also used to ingest arsenic to change the tone of their skin. They wanted to appear paler to show that they had enough money that they didn't need to be outside working in fields to cultivate their food or anything like that. So men and women would would ingest arsenic for that. So if you have I have come across containers like old medicine bottles or just kind of containers of what life was like during a certain time period in museums and they might have containers of arsenic that either have the residue or have actual like loose powder that's still inside of it. And of course, the one that's probably the most well known and maybe why most of you have tuned in today is that we know that arsenic is present on natural science collections in taxidermy and in study skins. It was applied to to the skins of animals before creating taxidermy or study skins as a way to preserve them to prevent pest infestation, and also as a way of kind of drying out the skin over time. This was especially used before we had better tanning techniques and so people were just kind of trying all different sorts of things and see see what would work. So arsenic was successful to the images that I have are actually from a more recent as a museum display and the taxidermy on the top image. I'm not sure exactly when it was mounted but they did test positive for arsenic. And while there were some adult malls on top of them, the damage was not severe versus the animal that you see in the bottom image that's actually a robin that was just destroyed by clothing malls. This was a new years and the malls were able to be undisturbed and kind of eat whatever they could. And so we saw that the the specimens that had arsenic fared better in these situations and taxidermists knew this we see in the recipe book. That is from 1858. And there's all different recipes for our cynical soaps. So arsenic would be mixed with different materials, like soap, salt of tartar powdered chalk, different things. And then applied to the inside of the skin before mounting the skin onto a form. If you're unfamiliar with how taxidermy is made here's one of the techniques that produces very realistic life like animals. Life like taxidermy, and you can see that the taxidermist sculpts what the carcass should look like based on measurements from the animal or maybe even actual bones that are inside. And then makes a mold of that sculpture and cast it using pieces of Michelle or pieces of plaster and burlap that are built up on the inside, then places those pieces together. And then after preserving the skin, either through tanning or through other preservative methods, measures applies a layer of arsenic soap on the inside, and then puts the skin over top of the mannequin, which is why we say that taxidermy mounts are mounts and not stuffed animals because they are stuff. So then the skin is sewn on to the mannequin. It usually pins are put in place probably around the eyes and nose, so that while the skin is like setting and drying into place. Everything will go where it should be. And, and that's why when we do examine taxidermy. We like to look around the eyes and around the seams to see if anything kind of funky is going is going on there or maybe if any residual pesticides are coming out of those locations. And here's how it looks to do a study skin. This is a another Robin has not been eaten but you can see that the carcass is removed. And then because bird skins are not tanned because they're too thin. These were a modern day study skin someone would use borax or other kind of decreasing agent on the inside the skin. But back in the day, someone would have used an arsenic soap on the inside and then placed in a cotton batting or other type of material and then sew it up to create the patterns that then scientists can come back to years and years and years to take measurements to study the animals and sometimes even take DNA samples. So very important that these animals exist today. I said, you know, these started use in actually the first use was probably in the late 1700s because the earliest recorded instance that we have of taxidermists using arsenic soap was in 1803 1804. And we typically think of the timeline going until about the mid 20th century, and there's no definitive in date when people stopped using arsenic, but it kind of died out as the 20th century drew on. But I kind of think of it as around the 1960s, but I certainly have seen taxidermy mounted before them that did not have arsenic, and I've seen taxidermy mounted after that that did have arsenic. But think of it more as like mid mid 20th century. So, all of these examples have, they've had arsenic as an intrinsic part of construction, and it's not considered a contaminate because when we think of a contaminate we think of like an oil spill where something has accidentally come on to another substance. Rather, these are all an aspect of that piece of cultural heritage that must be considered but not feared. In the same way that our museums preserve and protect other items that pose a risk to human health, such as those mercury amalgam mirrors from last month's webinar. There's a lot of different thermometers with mercury in them, paintings that have lead based arsenic based mercury based chromium based paints, medicinal collections, things that have radioactive paint on them like in the aerospace industry, uranium glass on the list goes on and on. So I don't say this to scare you but to hopefully show you that we in the museum field are accustomed to mitigating risks and dealing with potential hazards in our collections. And we know that properly caring for a collection, like having a controlled environment with controlled temperature relative humidity, performing routine housekeeping and vacuuming with our HEPA vacuum, and then performing stabilizing conservation treatment when objects require it. All of those activities that we do go towards creating a safe environment that helps protect us helps protect our collection and helps protect our the public. In this example, the Cézanne painting is actually the last painting that we know of where they did discover that Orpament was used. So a lot of those yellows are earth tone paints, but there were a few places where Orpament is inside. One collection though where the arsenic was not always added as a prep material, but as standard museum practice, when it entered into collection that is with indigenous collections, unfortunately. This, this was museums attempts to truly control any pest infestations it's before we had integrated pest management, which is what we do today where we do not use chemicals. But prior to that, it was very standard practice in the same way that museums would mop the floors, they would also apply pesticides. And, and this included, this was a lot of indigenous collections because of the organic materials that are so often incorporated in these collections that are very tasty to pests. So the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian talks about this on their website and talk about how the arsenic was probably used in a powder form or a paste form or dip forms it was like spread onto the object. And how the residual pesticides are the point of them is to stay on the object so that it can be an effective killer of pests for for years and years and years. And people have studied this, they looked into the history of pesticide use and at the Smithsonian's the National Park Service has a conservatism that lists different pesticides that we know of that were used or many different ones. And it goes beyond arsenic, you know, into things like mothballs and the naphthalene the paradigm for benzene and things that are that are vapor based that are organic pesticides. So, you know, it's very interesting because sometimes in these collections it will be an entire object, like a blanket that had arsenic applied to it. But then depending on the history of the object, if it incorporates skins or leather on it, perhaps those were produced by a non native person who did use arsenic in their preparation. And then they were traded or sold and then those skins were used to create a completely different object and they're just one component of it. So maybe just one component will have arsenic on it where the rest of it doesn't. So I've been I've encountered that in collections as well which we'll see an example very soon. All right, those are like a lot of my pep talks and disclaimers and things like that. So let's look into how to detect arsenic how to find arsenic in your collection, especially if you have any of the types of objects that that I previously mentioned. The first thing that we like to do that is actually very important is to understand the history of the object itself. When was it made, who made it, all of that. Is there a history of residual pesticide use in your facility, especially if you do have indigenous collections. Sometimes there will be records in your facility that say, you know that, or even if supplies were purchased that they purchased certain supplies that were pesticides or maybe just in someone's logbook saying that they owe their activity for this Monday was to go apply the XYZ. There's no one who worked in your in your museum for about 40 years, you know, maybe they heard of someone applying these pesticides in an earlier in the 20th century and like you know there's just kind of rumors that have had that existed. So do your investigation on your actual collection. How long the object made, because if you do have artificial flowers, then you'll want to know if they were made in the 19th century versus something that's more modern today that were made recently that wouldn't have our cynical dies on them. Same with the books, same with the wallpaper, and then especially your your taxidermy, knowing that time period is very important. So long the object had been in the museum, museum collection. Again, that's really good for indigenous collections because if it's, let's say address that has been passed down by family members and then more recently would then donated to a museum collection. I would not expect that buckskin dress to have arsenic on it because it wouldn't have been applied wholesale by a museum collection. However, if it's a if it's a dress that came from a different museum collection, and then came came into your collection somehow was on loan or something like that, then there might be a chance if it's been in the museum for a long time that it has arsenic on it. And then who made it, and that kind of goes into what I was saying about how sometimes there can be different components of a piece that would have arsenic on it so this is a Martin Gale. And there's, you know, there's the skin, there's buckskin, there's fur, there's felt, there's beaded areas. I was able to use XRF around all of these components. And the only place where I detected arsenic was on the backside of the fur. And so in discussing that with someone from the community, and someone from the museum, we were thinking perhaps maybe that the skins were purchased from someone and then incorporated into this object. The next thing that we would do is perform a visual examination to look for any white particulates or hazy areas that could be indication of arsenic. Before we do that we're going to suit up into our personal protective equipment or PPE. Of course we're going to wear our nitrile or latex gloves to create that physical barrier between our skin and any potential arsenic. They don't use cotton gloves. They don't produce a physical barrier and then also if you have sweaty hands, then that sweat will come through the cotton glove and then transmit onto the object too. And that can be especially bad if the object has the metal components to it. I like to use a glove that is one size larger than I normally would use. And that's because it makes it easier to put the glove on and off. So it's easier for you to have your gloves when you're handling contaminated areas. Excuse me. See, don't use the word contaminated. When you're using when you're handling collection pieces, and then take them off when you want to be kind of like in your clean area or area that you want to, you know, keep free of anything that could transmit over or who knows you just want to keep your pencil and your notebook and all of that free of anything. If I'm going to be acceptably handling if I'm going to be like lifting things up, putting my nose and looking around, moving some feathers, moving some fur in the taxidermy, I'm going to wear my lab coat or a smock, and I'm going to wear my particulate in 95 mask so that if anything loose does come out, I'm protected from all of that from being able to inhale it or ingest it. We usually say, yeah, to look around, you know, for the for the haze, these are some feather examples. So if we're looking for what we think will be arsenic on these, it can be really tricky. Sometimes it's not arsenic. A lot of times it's just dust, or it's other types of things that have ingrained on top of that object, especially if it's been on display for many, many years. So it's not actually always helpful. If you're, if you're just looking at feathers in that way. If you're looking on mammals, or any, or birds as well, but you can look around the eyes to see if any of the arsenic is coming out around the seams as I mentioned earlier. But that's also not always the case. Sometimes when we see arsenic, when we see a white substance on there. It's not always arsenic, it could be something like borax, that degreaser that's been more recently added to skins. It could also be the mannequin materials. We see this kind of naked bird mount in the image on the right, and on the neck of this piece of taxidermy you can see that white plaster like substance. And if the eyes were, you know, set into that plaster material chances are it could break down over time and then loose pieces come off and then come out around the eyes, and it will look like arsenic but it isn't actually arsenic. But those are places where we like to look around. And then also you know here are some other things that can be really tricky. These are objects from an Alaskan collection. What we're seeing in the wooden object on the left that's actually polyethylene glycol treatment that's causing that white appearance on on the wood. And from the conservation treatment it's not arsenic. In the image in the middle that's a fatty bloom that is from oil deposits that have now kind of lose their way to to the surface of the object. And then in the image on the right, that white haze that you see on that plant material that's on the bone or ivory piece and would that's mold that's growing. It can be really tough to do the visual visual analysis. If you have any more questions about these like what's the white stuff identification in these images. Check out the log site that was created by conservators called Alaska white stuff ID. I really like it. And then sometimes the arsenic is there and we just can't see it with our human eyeballs. This was a really good opportunity that I had I was looking at a tax or me collection and I had my XRF with me, and this tax or me bird the wing was already off so I was like, oh, here's my chance. I can look and see, you know it doesn't look like there's any arsenic on it so I'll use my XRF to confirm it. Well, the particulates that you do see around that wing there's a little bit of the wing bone sticking out those are corn husks really really small pieces of sorry of corn cob really really small pieces and maybe some other things as well but to me it like that and that was used when preparing the skin to decrease it again to dry it out. But to me it doesn't look like arsenic it doesn't look like some of the other images that we've seen. I was like oh it's just corn cob but when I use my XRF which can detect very small amounts of arsenic it did confirm that it's actually on there. So that looks differently than what we're expecting. So let's look at then other methods that are more scientific and might be more successful. The first one is X radiography. So you could take an X ray of your object, but also just kidding because who has an X ray machine. I don't even have one in my lab. But the reason why I put this slide in here is because I just love this X radiograph and how it illustrates that residual pesticides can be unevenly applied to the inside of the skin of a piece of taxidermy. And it could also be unevenly applied to all other, you know, types of materials that might have a residual pesticide applied to them in that red circle. The the white opaque area that's a buildup of arsenic. And so then we can kind of see that around other places where since it's a metal. It wouldn't let the X ray beam penetrate, or it kind of blocked the X ray beam. So that's why we're seeing that this taxidermy also has metal armature it has metal wires running throughout it that's what you see. And then it has the original skull inside of it still. And it looks like there was even some arsenic that was applied to that. So very interesting so just keep in mind keep this image in mind that it can be unevenly applied. I also perform a chemical spot test. I'm looking at you conservators when I say this, because this requires the use of hydrochloric acid and potassium hydroxide. So those are serious chemicals that you only want to use if you have a laboratory that's dedicated to use these. And I have successfully done this chemical spot test a few times in my career, but I don't really recommend it I mean it really, it really depends on you being able to like wipe off and sample an area and actually get, get some arsenic for that but then using these pretty intense chemicals. All right, here's the meat of it everyone. If you weren't paying attention now. If you weren't paying attention before you might want to pay attention now. This is the easiest and fastest way, cheapest way, I should say, of detecting arsenic in our collections. These are arsenic test kits for water analysis that we can buy through Amazon for home use. Yes, that is right. Some of our water naturally has arsenic in it, or unfortunately if you live near a waste disposal, maybe you would have some because of that. These are available. You can tell on here in my examples one of them has 100 tests in it. The other one has five and they are priced differently the prices I think are even different from when I assembled the slide. But even though they're relatively low cost know that they have a limited shelf life and so it's not a good idea to get a stock of them to have on hand, you should only purchase them if you know that you're going to be using them pretty soon. They take a while to do. So you, I wouldn't recommend buying 100 of them to start with. So how do you do this. First you determine a representative sample set to test, and then you test one of them, one at a time. And what I mean by representative sample is once you know the history of your collection. If let's say you have an accession of green books that are from the time period where they would have used our cynical dies you know from like the 19th century. Then you might choose one of those. And then if you have a little collection of taxidermy. If some of them came into the museum in the 1990s versus some of them that came into the museum in the 1890s, you're going to choose one from the 1890s to sample. So, so know your history for that. And then, yeah, you only test one at a time because you can only test in one vial at a time like you don't want to put, you know, all your samples in one vial or you don't want to risk mixing things up when you're trying to run your test. So whether your supplies create a designated space for this cover the table, use cotton swabs or q tips, you need to purchase distilled water from the grocery store you do not use your tap water, because your tap water might have traceable amounts of arsenic in it. You want to get your nitrile gloves, a pair of scissors and a stopwatch, you will fill the designated test to with the still water so it'll tell you to fill it with your tap water. So for this instance you fill it with your distilled water from the grocery store. And then to collect your sample taxidermy and study skins are the easiest. So, unfortunately for folks with those other types of collections. It's more difficult, but for taxidermy and study skins. The thing that I found most successful is to dampen your cotton swab in a container of distilled water, and then roll that cotton swab gently over that one piece of taxidermy or cotton swab again, focusing on the seams, focusing on any openings or if you do see anything that looks like dust or loose particulate on the surface, try to capture that with your cotton swab as well. Don't double dip in your distilled water once you've dipped your cotton swab you've only dipped it once and then you rub it over your, your object. Something else, don't dip your cotton swab in water first use a dry cotton swab. And that's because, depending on what the object is, you could damage it by by applying water onto the surface. So, if they haven't been buck skins, if they haven't been smoked, they will react poorly to water. If, if furs haven't been tanned well then they might react to the water and you might have a dark tide line around that area. For things that are dyed, that also might, if it takes off a little bit of the dyed and you would see that on the object so either work with a conservator or before you use a cotton swab or just use a dry cotton swab. But to help you actually pick things up, what would be really beneficial is to take a pair of tweezers or just take your fingers and kind of fluff up the cotton around the cotton swab so it's nice and loose and open. So when you do rub it over the surface of an object, if there is anything loose it's going to get caught in those cotton fibers. And then if anything has come off of the object, like fibers of a book cloth or like particulates from artificial flowers. And if you have permission, then you can add those little pieces to your test tube, but only use them if you're certain that it came from that object. So like if you have your artificial flowers and you, you know, wear your gloves and you move them aside. And if you see any little bits of green that that was underneath of them that fell off, then you could take your tweezers or take that dry cotton swab and and wipe them again. And then once you have your sample, then I would. Oh, I want to point out actually let's go back to this slide. You can see here, me having my arsenic gloved hand versus my clean non arsenic hand that's not gloved. So in case you were wondering why I'm not wearing a glove on both of my hands. It's because you know one of them is touching the object and then after I touch it, I will transfer the cotton swab from my clean hand to the dirty hand, and then I can use my clean hand to take a pair of scissors and cut off the end of the cotton swab. And then that's also my clean hand to record my notes and all of that kind of thing. So just pointing that out. So yeah, cut it off into the tube with the still water try to cut off as much of that cotton as possible. So you ensure that you get everything in there. And then you run the test exactly as it's instructed. Don't, don't deviate from it. It will take 14 minutes in total and there are specific steps that you need to complete within a specific amount of time for that test to run properly, which is why I recommend having a stopwatch for it. And you can see that the steps are. It's written out and it's also there are images for each step of it. The three reagents that are used they are, you know, in labeled bottles, there are different scoops for each of them. So just read through read through the test and, and it should go okay. So I saw that there's some people from outside of the United States. I don't know how available these water test kits are outside of the US. So I apologize for that if they're not available in your country. But at least this could be maybe illuminating maybe you have something that's kind of similar. Alright, if arsenic is present, then our sign gas will be produced and it will react with the test strip, and the test strip will change color. So then you compare your test strip to what's on the bottle. And if there's anything other than white, and that indicates that there was arsenic present. However, on the bottle, that is specifically for just water and concentrations of arsenic in water. But what you did was sample your object. So just because you have a light color or a dark color on your bottle. That's not representative on your test strip. That's not representative of your actual object. Maybe you were able to get off a little bit of arsenic. But there's a lot on the inside, or maybe you were able to get off the little bit of arsenic that's actually in the object and then there's not that much more that's in there, you really don't know. So you record the result as a yes, no on your spreadsheet, and then put that into your database. So you're going to say the date of the test, the type of the test, who performed it, where the samples were taken. And then the results as a yes, no. This is not quantitative. And if you need to assess it further, contact an industrial hygienist. When you're done, you should vacuum your table with the HEPA vacuum, and then you can throw away the materials of the test kit as the test instructs the pros and cons. You could also wipe underneath an object, like I was saying with the artificial flowers like gathering those type of things so you don't necessarily need to sample like rub a Q tip on an object itself. But note that if you just rub on a shelf that has multiple objects on it, then if you get a positive for arsenic you don't necessarily know which object that arsenic came from. I haven't found any false positives, unless you're using tap water so don't use tap water, but I have found when I've come back in with my XRF and run that on the samples it confirms a positive result. They're easy to run, they're cheap. The cons. To be a good scientist, ideally you would have a known positive to run with this to ensure that the test is still accurate that it hasn't, you know, gone through it shelf life, and to ensure that you're running it properly that you understood them the instruction, but how many of us have, you know, a known positive arsenic so that can be very difficult. There can be false negatives which hopefully you recognize by now, hopefully I've said it enough that you're like yeah yeah we get it. But yeah if the arsenic is not on the surface, if it's not loose, or if you sample from the wrong spot, you won't get positive for arsenic. It's difficult to test some materials as I've mentioned, it's time consuming with those 14 minutes for one object. They have a shelf life and it's a yes no it doesn't assess the risk to you. Then if you do have access to scientific equipment, you might be able to use x-ray fluorescence or XRF, and that is an analyzer that has an x-ray tube on the inside. The x-rays are emitted, they excite the top of an object, the surface of the object, and those elements when they get excited, they release energy, and that energy is received by the analyzer. And it creates a spectrum for it and compares it to known spectrum of other materials, and it can tell you what is present in that object. So I know that like most people don't have this available to them. XRF analyzers are very expensive, they cost tens of thousands of dollars, not every conservation lab has one. They can be rented, but that is also very tricky because they might not be calibrated to be able to detect arsenic and mercury and lead and things like that. And indeed I have worked with other conservators on a private project where we rented a unit and we told them that we needed to be able to look for arsenic. And then we got it and I'm running XRF on things like moose heads and buffalo and whatnot, and I'm like, you know, this was mounted in 1904. I'm just, I am shocked that there's no arsenic on this, like this is very unusual. And sure enough, we called them and the unit that we had requested, they didn't have back yet, so they gave us something else and that was not calibrated to what we needed. So it's very tricky. But what's good about XRF is that it's non-destructive. You do need to have contact with the material, but at least it's non-destructive. And then it only takes seconds to complete it. So you can run XRF on multiple locations on an object all in under a minute, which is great if you want to look at more things in your collection. However, it's still a yes-no. It does not actually assess the actual risk to you. It's, yes, there's arsenic present. What I've been using the past couple of years is a Brooker Tracer 5i. It's wonderful because it has this great touchscreen on the front, and it shows you the percentage of elements that it detected equaling up to 100 in the sample size where it's detecting, which is only a three millimeter circle. So think of it as a dime. So like on this that we see on the slide, in an area as large of a dime on this object, arsenic was present in 0.57% of that. So, you know, what I know about that then is that there is arsenic present, that there wasn't a whole lot of it in that one little spot, but I don't really know what the rest of the item is like, unless I were to do a systematic scan of the entire object. So the image on the left, that's the red circle, that's the business end of the XRF, and that's how large that, well, the detection area is even smaller than that, but that's the business end. So if you do have XRF on your collection, also record that the date of the test, the type of XRF analyzer, who performed it, where the readings were taken, and that it's a yes or no. It can also be used to, you know, this headdress, little components of the headdress tested positive for arsenic. I was able to then use my XRF on the surface where the object had been sitting. I wasn't able to detect any arsenic that had transferred from the object to the foam. So you can use that, you can use XRF to try to figure out if there's an arsenic transfer. So something that's great about it is that you can take samples on objects in the way that I described earlier, and then bag them in a Ziploc bag and then send them to someone who does have an XRF. Once again, it doesn't really tell you the whole picture. Think of it as like it's the first level of screening for an object because if arsenic's there, the XRF will pick it up. But it might mean that there was arsenic just in other parts of the object that you just weren't able to get. And then if you do detect arsenic, you add a label to it. In the webinar from 2021, I loved that Haley Monroe was pointing out that we tend to overuse the skull and crossbones. And so she, I noticed on her labels for arsenic, she used a red exclamation point. So let's really think about that. You know, if a piece of taxidermy is sitting on the shelf and we're not really going to be interacting with it, we're not looking at it. So let's save our skull and crossbones for a label where the danger is more, where the risk is more acute. Like the example she gave was a poison dart that still had poison on the tip of it. If that were to actually puncture our skin, that's a different level of risk than a piece of taxidermy that we won't be interacting with very much all. And even if we did, we know how to protect ourselves. But the label says what it has a positive for and then to wear nitrile gloves before handling it. And then of course we continue to wear if you do have a collection that has arsenic continue to wear your, your PPE. We've gone over a lot of that. But I also wanted to note that you can cover the your working surface with a plastic sheeting, and you can designate it for reuse if you vacuum it afterwards. Fold it in on itself put it in a plastic bag labeled labeled that that's what it's for. And then you know keep it and bring it out and use it when you need it. If you have paper like craft paper you can cover it. And then after you vacuum it you can throw it away in regular trash. Clean your object with a HEPA filter so these HEPA vacuums it's high efficient high efficiency, particulate air filter on these vacuums, typically Nilfisk but there are other companies that create them these are museum vacuums. There's no exhaust that's coming out so you don't risk blowing hazard around the room. So that's what we use. And that's why the industrial hygienist Cathy Makos said that they are our friends, because we can use them and feel safe with them. So vacuum up everything afterwards vacuum yourself vacuum your lab code wipe you can wipe the surfaces with a web wipe. Just in case the vacuum mist you missed something with the vacuum. If you wipe down the surface then if it's a dampened paper towel then that will bring it up. And you know we've I've worked in locations where our health and safety officer looked at our trash afterwards. And there was such a big there was no detectable amount of arsenic on it so we were allowed to throw away all of our stuff in the regular trash instead of hazardous waste because of the way that we were closing down our workspace. So if you want to talk to your health and safety officer about it. You also want you know all the things that were represented in your sample set. Go ahead and and if some, if that one representative item tested positive and just go ahead and assume that the rest of it tested positive and do all of this for those items. This is my chance to be on my soapbox. It's a pet peeve of mine when people misuse their gloves. Your gloves are meant to protect you. They don't protect you if you are wearing your gloves, you touch an object with a hazard and then you adjust your glasses, or you move your hair, or you wipe your nose, you're then getting the hazard on yourself. So don't wear gloves all day don't touch your object and then come over and type on your computer. Take them on and off. Thank you. I would really appreciate it if you would do that. And then finally, what do you do now include an explanation, you know, of the testing and the results in your orientation for staff interns on anyone who's going to be working with these collections. Maintain your records purchase a HEPA vacuum if you don't already have one vacuum items two to four times if they're on open to slay vacuum them throughout the year. If they're able to be vacuum themselves and vacuum underneath them so that if any of those particulates fell out or fell down over time you'll vacuum them up. And then, you know, back in the exhibit space daily do your routine housekeeping so if anything did transfer to other parts of the exhibit, you're going to vacuum it right up. Maintain your stable environmental controls construct trays so that you're handling the object using trays instead of having to touch it itself. The items are asked to be worn if people would like to visit their ancestors, if they would like to borrow them for any kind of ceremonies, inform the requester of the arsenic testing and vacuum the object before it goes out on loan. Enforce a perimeter around an object on on open display. That could be physical barriers or it could be you know like the pedestal of that object or whatever is like it's so far that you, you're not within arms reach of the object. And I hope it goes without saying but of course do not use objects that test positive for arsenic in educational programs where the items are meant to be touched, because we don't want people touching them. The final slide is that I would like us to look a little bit more critically at what we're doing. Let's consider a cost benefit analysis for performing arsenic testing, you know people always they ask me about this a lot like whether they should do arsenic testing on their collection. And when we talk about it I asked them you know what is the use of the collection. What is the history of your collection. Are the objects on display or are they accessed by researchers on a daily basis. Are they with an arms reach of the public. Are they located in a part of your collection storage area where people pass by them regularly, like let's look at this because the amount of time and money that people spend doing arsenic testing, the water testing that does take so much time. Perhaps that time is better spent. Just doing the regular housekeeping, you know performing the tasks that help maintain the health of collections, and it helps maintain the health of staff. You know your time reviewing handling policies and training staff on everything. And then of course just assume that there is a hazard there and where your night trial gloves and and operate accordingly, which is what we do in natural history museums, because we just don't have time to do testing on every single object. And then of course if you have specific concerns. The best thing that you could do is to consult an industrial hygienist who has experienced with museums to help guide you through a risk assessment. And then of course look at these check these out. But thank you so much hopefully I have empowered you. Hopefully you're not too fearful of these collections, and hopefully you've left learning something new. So thank you so much. And that was a lot of really great information in a short amount of time and we talked about that a little bit is that this is such a big topic that we wanted to make sure we covered everything. You did a wonderful job of that so thank you so much. Do you have a few minutes to do some questions like maybe five. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, excellent. The chat's been popping. The questions going on to all good things so it's been fun to watch it. Real quick though before we start that you we talked a little bit about health and safety in general obviously that's been coming up quite a lot. C2C care did you a course last year on health and safety for collections folks this is something that's often talked a lot about in for conservators but when it comes to collections people it's a little bit more we kind of come to our conclusion all over the place. So that might be a good place to start it's free course you can go to our website to sign up for it and I would encourage you to go take a look at that. Okay I'm going to start at the top if you have one of the arsenic cosmetic containers in your collection how should that be stored or what how would you recommend storing that. I think to add another layer of safety for yourself, I would store it in a Ziploc bag, so that if there is I mean I will I would vacuum it first wearing my PPE I would vacuum it and then I would store it in a Ziploc bag, so that if there are any loose pieces that come out they'll be contained in the bag. And then I think that's also a really great example of having something in a tray, so that if you need to move it out if someone does want to look at it or whatnot you can handle it in a tray. Someone's asking when it comes to the home arsenic tests they said do we need to run a fume hood to run the home arsenic tests. Also, can you confirm is the at home test preferred over say, having a local conservation studio do the chemical tests. Yeah, yeah. So if you're running you don't need a fume hood but you do need to work in. There's a warning label on the bottle that you do need to work, you know, in an area where you have don't do it in your closet. Don't do it in the bathroom, do it in an area that has a lot of space that have a lot of ventilation, you could even do it outside, if you would like to. But that's probably the best place to do it. But if you perform it in the way that that is indicated through, through, through the instruction, then you then you should be fine. And that is why you need to make sure that you do it according to like all the time stamps that are recommended so that like, you know, eventually like the arsenic, the arson gas is going to it's going to stop being produced because it will run out of like material to be put on in that chemical reaction. And so it's not something that's going to just like happen in perpetuity. And then I think I mean you can certainly if you have access to a chemical or to a conservation lab I mean I even for conservators I it's just so much easier to run these at home test kits that even for conservators I recommend them doing that overdoing the chemical spot test, so that you don't have to handle hydrochloric acid. I would prefer not to handle that if I did. So someone asked our fur coats in a clothing collection suspect suspect for arsenic beaver fur hats and just generally can you talk a little bit about when it comes to like, I would get react and say probably clothing not so much unless it's been around for a long time and it still looks pristine then I would start getting very suspicious in general. Yeah, um, gosh, a student asked me about this a few years ago and I, I, I don't know as much about the furrier industry. If it's of a certain time period, I would be suspicious that some of those furs that there had been arsenic or mercury involved in the preservation of those skins while they were tanning them. While they were yeah preserving them to then make them into those like fur coats and outfits. So it's particularly yeah for first. And then I know that for beaver hats, that is where that's where Matt Hatter came from. There was mercury involved in creating those and mercury vapor does as the mercury break the mercury sulfide and other forms of as it breaks down over time for it dissipates as a vapor. And so if you have any of those in your collection. If you have them in a cabinet, then when you open the cabinet you want to open the cabinet and then go away so that any of the papers that have built up inside of there, they can dissipate into the room. And this is also something you encounter mercury in herbarium. And in those types of collections and plant collections in the older ones they would also apply mercury chloride to those specimens and so that is the standard is that you you open the cabinets leave until the the level of mercury that has been exposed in the room until it goes down. I think that's a whole nother topic. I'm going to hit this last question because we have a couple along this theme, but this person says should we be concerned about residue particles transferring between objects. For example, if we had clothing and they have had our stick on it and put it on the mannequin, would there be a risk of arsenic residue particles and other clothing items that are put on the same mannequin later on and a couple people kind of ask those questions of, how do we identify these things how do we isolate them like this whole question of how concerned must be, must be, would we be to kind of transference. Yeah, yeah. Okay, this is something that I think we are still working on. We know that sometimes arsenic does transfer, and then I have also seen myself that sometimes it does not. I've done yeah so so it's a yes no. I think what you should do is is just go ahead and like think that it might happen, and then vacuum the mannequin in between doing all of this and vacuum the object before you put it on the mannequin. Just so that if there are any loose pieces that come out that you would be able to capture them in your vacuum and not have them transfer. I will say that what I have been noticing is that when the arsenic has been applied to things like furs and skins and whatnot. It seems like it gets, especially if it was applied as part of the manufacturer and not as a residual pesticide. It seems like it's trapped a little bit more in that collagen matrix of the skin. I think that's why I haven't been able to notice much transfer. And in taxidermy, I don't actually often encounter a piece of taxidermy where I see white piles below and it's arsenic. In fact that's never happened to me. And so what I suspect is that like, you know maybe that that does happen when that when the seams break or when there is like a break in the skin a cut in the skin like those types of things like as it starts to break down. So, I don't think of these objects as always like spewing out arsenic and that transfers happening everywhere. It does happen sometimes. It does not happen every time. And that's all that I can really say. Okay, thank you. A couple people have also asked about paper and book related items, I'm going to tell folks, maybe not all answered but we do have a webinar scheduled for later this month dealing with book binding in the green book project which I would say come join us for that one as well because there might be some of those questions answered there, the folks who did that project specialized in books and archive and paper so I would encourage you guys to come to that one. And with that I am going to have to wrap up today's program. I want to say a huge thank you to you friend. This was wonderful. It was timely we've had this webinar on the books for months and it's like the timing of it was very interesting. So again thank you so much for taking the time today. So, I guess this webinar as fast as we can on to our website. I will also get those list of questions over to Fran, and so you can take a look at them to kind of see what else people are asking about. I will say I think one of the big takeaways today is just be careful of what you're handling. Be aware of your personal protection equipment, make sure you're wearing gloves and all that other kind of fun stuff. And just be aware of what's in your collection. Do you have any final thoughts for our audience today Fran. I just want to thank everyone for being open and receptive to what I have to say. And go talk to the army. All right, thank you we're hearing lots of thank yous in the chat and lots of shout outs to you particularly obviously and probably folks you know, if I had to guess. Well thanks everyone. We'll see you at the end of September with our next program and everyone stay safe and healthy and hopefully in the cooler weather as it approaches us here in the middle. Thanks everyone. Talk to you soon.