 preservation, please go ahead and take the microphone. Thanks so much, Mike. Hi, this is Kristen from Heritage Preservation. And thank you so much for joining us today. Heritage Preservation is moderating the Connecting to Collections online community. And that includes these online webinars. And we're doing this project in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History and with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Learning Times is helping us produce these webinars, and they've helped us produce the site as well. So we thank them for that. Again, the goal of the online community is to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and to network with their colleagues. In developing the community, we drew on all sorts of resources that had been developed as part of the Connecting to Collections initiative, including the Connecting to Collections bookshelf, the webinars, and workshops that we've hosted, and a whole series of actual online links that were part of what we call the Guide to Online Resources. That was part of the bookshelf project. So you can go through the online community and find a topics screen that shows links to all of these wonderful resources, and we hope you do that. Today, we are featuring something that's provided by the American Association for State and Local History, and it's their technical leaflets. For more than 40 years, AASLH has been regularly producing these technical leaflets on a range of topics that affect historical societies, historic sites, and history museums. And they're available at their website, which I've put up here on the screen. You can just click on there under Programs, Products and Publications, and then Technical Leaflets. And so you can see that there. And they're very inexpensive, very low cost, and they're bulk pricing. And today, we have made available one of the technical leaflets. You see it there. Our featured resource right now is the Handling and Exhibition of Potentially Hazardous Vaccine Museum Collections by Neal Cochlein and Melinda Markle. And it's available right now. It's free of charge on our site. So there's no charge to look at this today. And it will remain up on the Connecting to Collections online community for free for a period of time. So we thank AASLH for making that available. And we encourage you to check out their website and other technical leaflets that might help you in your work. Today, we are by Neal Cochlein. And he is the Director of Preservation Services and a Conservator at the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis. This is one of the country's regional conservation centers. And on the screen here, I've put their URL. They've got a lot of great resources and information about their services on their site. Neal has directed education and outreach programs since 1999 for the Center. And they reach 180 members through their work, which include museums, historical societies, libraries, and archives from throughout the Midwest region. Neal consults on all aspects of conservation and preservation, including collection surveys, long-range preservation plans, disaster planning, emergency response, building projects for museums, and writing grants. In short, there's really nothing he hasn't seen. And he's on the road a lot going around to museums around the country. Prior to working in Minneapolis, he was a conservator in private practice and an associate conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. And today, Neal will be answering your questions about handling and exhibiting potentially dangerous artifacts. And this can include a range of things. I'm going to just pull up a poll here so you can let us know what sort of things you might have in your collections that concern you and you can just click all that apply. Let's make it bigger here. Hopefully, everyone can see that. And this is just a partial list. But you get a sense of from firearms and swords and knives to taxidermy to historic medicine bottles and medical equipment. It just can be a lot out there. So this will give us a heads up on the sort of questions you might have. I was seeing in a range. I'll just keep this up a minute and give you a chance to answer that. Great. OK, so no ammunition and explosives. That's helpful to know. But a little bit of a different thing out. So hopefully, we'll be able to answer all of your questions and answer your questions. I'll just close this poll and move it away. So thanks again, Neal, for joining us again. My pleasure. Yep. Feel free, everyone, to just type if you have a question. Below the screen. And I guess I can get the conversation started with just a few people on with. You know, Neal, you've been around a long time in the preservation business. And I'm sure you've seen a lot of storage facilities and conditions. Do you want to just give us one example of a common type of hazardous collection that maybe an institution doesn't quite realize is as dangerous as you do? Absolutely. I would say a lot of times, especially in historical collections, we run into collections that contain old medicines of various dates and various types. And oftentimes, I think what is lacking is that many historical medicines either were identified by trade names or by common names. And the actual chemical makeup of the medicines, oftentimes, is either unknown or, in some cases, may be completely ignored. And when we look at historical medicines, it's really kind of shocking to think at what our ancestors were using for medicinal purposes. A lot of times, there were things that we considered to be horribly poisonous today were quite commonly used. These things included arsenic, strychnine, and various other types of poisons. A lot of times, there would be mercury compounds that were used. And what a lot of people don't realize is that with time, when these medicines are left in their original containers, oftentimes, the volatile components of the medicine will evaporate off. And oftentimes, you're left with a very highly concentrated dose of basically a poison. And so it really becomes problematic for people who have to handle these types of collections. They often feel like, well, as long as they're sealed in a bottle, we really don't have to worry about them. And that isn't really the case. Oftentimes, it's probably best for any sort of residual medicines that are left in bottles, actually, to be removed, to be cleaned out. And usually, when one is doing an interpretive exhibit that contains medicines, it's not really the importance of the medicine itself. It's usually the container, which is of the most historic significance. So how to properly clean away these poisons becomes a task that often is left to collections managers, et cetera. And so as a conservator in doing a lot of consulting, we often will consult on how do you remove these various residues that are left in bottles and if they're soluble in water, you can use just simply a water rinse. But once you resolubilize those medicines, what do you do with them? And so oftentimes, what we recommend is to resolubilize whatever those particular medicines are, actually pour them out into a disposable container. Let the liquid that you've added then evaporate. And whatever residue is left in the disposable container, if you're not sure, you really should take them to your local toxic waste site. And many county or city dump stations do have the proper types of equipment necessary for taking toxic materials. And whenever you have a leftover medicine, you should consider it highly toxic, especially if you don't know what the particular components are. But even common things like cough medicines, et cetera, historically, many of those contain these rather startling poisons. And we have just an example here, a bottle that I found in a historic house that was used to you could rent it. The public could rent it for various activities. And in one of the bathrooms, they had an open what we would call a medicine cabinet. You can see here, there actually was a bottle of Strick-9 sulfate, which was used historically as a medicine. And again, it's hard to imagine that our ancestors were actually taking Strick-9. But many poisons in very small doses wouldn't be lethal. And so it's pretty amazing. And I think one of the things that really is lacking in a lot of the museum literature is actually having a pharmaceutical historian go back through and look at all of the various brand names and household names for medicines and actually publishing what the actual chemical components of those products were. I think many of us would be quite shocked to find out. Reference in the technical side of the story, then that some of these medications include that are now illegal. And so that's another reason to make sure that the packaging is left intact, but any solids or residues are removed. So then, should people take also other, in doing that sort of gentle rinsing of bottles, precautions like vinyl gloves, face masks, anything like that? Absolutely. And maybe even before beginning the project, to have done their research on the toxic waste facility in their area and any requirements that that facility might have for accepting materials? Absolutely. And as much as possible, if you're going to clean out a medicine vial of some kind and you're going to let whatever the solvent is, whether that's water or some kind of organic solvent to actually remove the residue, you need to, as much as possible, you don't want to mix these residues together. Number one, because you don't know chemically how they can react. And number two, you want to label whatever that disposable container is. You want to label as best as you can from the original label on the medicine vial or bottle or container exactly what it is, even if it is just the commercial name and not the actual chemical name. But you do want to turn that over to your toxic waste site so that they can deal with it appropriately. Right. Would this be something that potentially, if you had a university or college in your town and they had a chemistry lab that you could potentially talk with them about maybe even doing this work in their lab where they might have a fume hood or, I mean, I'm sure the legalities in today's world. Being highly optimistic. But it seems that if you're a smaller institution, you really are concerned that maybe that would be an option for just getting some more opinions on the issue. Absolutely. Absolutely. The other possibility would be to contact your local hospital. Oh, that's a good idea. And oftentimes local hospitals are very willing to work with you, especially when they know it's some sort of historic medicine. They're certainly willing and able to help you dispose of it properly. And again, if for some reason you have certain types of medicines that are outlawed today, such as opium, marijuana, cocaine, et cetera, many times in historic medicines, these were components of medicines because they weren't illegal at the time. But if you do have a controlled substance that today is considered an illegal drug, then it is best if you do take it, either to your local police station or to your local hospital so that it can be disposed of. Otherwise, although it's not common, if you have some sort of medicine in a powdered form that happens to have a high concentration of cocaine, within the medicine, the museum can be liable for actually retaining that substance. So you do want to make sure that for anything that's considered illegal today that it's properly disposed of. And in most cases, dealing with law enforcement or with hospitals, from your explanation, there's an understanding that you want to maintain the bottle. You don't necessarily want to retain whatever that medicine is. You would rather surrender it, in fact. And so usually those sorts of either law enforcement agencies or hospitals, which still may be using some of these types of medicines as descriptions, they will help you to dispose it, to clean it properly and allow you to leave with your coveted container, with the labels, et cetera, that you want to use for your exhibits or your interpretation. Great. So some questions we've gotten are, what if these are unlabeled contents, and is it probably just safe to assume you should treat it as if perhaps it had been thrown away years ago and someone had put in some sort of a replica powder, but you should just probably safest to assume what you have could be original material, it could be poisonous, and to treat it that way, but then unlabeled container? Absolutely. If you're not sure what it is, you should empty it. You should remove the residue. You should keep. You shouldn't mix. You should never mix different contents together. And then you should just take it as an unlabeled medicine or an unlabeled substance. And if it's necessary, then the toxic site where you're taking it, it's usually they can do a test to find out exactly what the contents are. But any sort of information that you can provide, even if you take the cleaned bottle with you and say, this is the bottle that it came out of, sometimes even by the design of the bottle or if it was an opaque bottle, et cetera, that can oftentimes give some information to sort of direct those sites that are taking this material on how they should dispose of it. I mean, if you have something that's contained in an opaque bottle, chances are if it's left out in daylight, then there's going to be some sort of chemical change that takes place and that they will want to know about. OK, these are great tips. So we've gotten a question from Rebecca Cervolo. I've been saying that correctly in Alabama about possible radioactive mineral specimens. And he said, just on how they might begin to tackle that issue. OK. The first thing is if you have something that you suspect is being radioactive, the first thing you need to do is to actually do a measurement and to measure the radioactivity. And what you need is a Geiger counter. And most universities in their science departments will have a Geiger counter. If necessary, you can take the specimen to them in some cases, they may send out a graduate student with the Geiger counter in order to do a test. If you have something that is radioactive, of course, you want to treat that object very carefully. Now, there's sort of a distinction that is made between a naturally occurring mineral, which may have some radioactivity to it, as opposed to something that has been constructed or has been processed that may have radioactivity involved in it. This can be anything from certain pigments to glazes and ceramics to things that were manufactured for the military, for the space program, et cetera. Even though it's possible to do a calculation to find out what the half-life is, et cetera, of the material that you're dealing with, usually my recommendation is you really need to consider whether it's worth retaining this material within your collection. That's sort of the first question. Do we want to have to deal with all of the ramifications for actually keeping something that's radioactive within our collections? And this boils down to being able to protect your museum staff, your volunteers, et cetera. And then the next question is, can we properly store this particular artifact, whatever it is, whether it's natural or whether it's man-made artifact that has radioactivity in it. Can we properly store it? And I'm not an expert in radioactive materials, so I can't really say, oh, all you have to do is put it in a lead-line box or put it in a steel box and then you're safe. I don't have that expertise. But if you were to determine that within your collection, you do have radioactive materials, what I then would do would be seek out an expert in the field. And again, my recommendation would probably be going to a physics department at a major university and saying, we have this radioactive artifact. We have decided that we do want to keep it for research or interpretive purposes within the collection. How can we best store it? And I think with all of the information that's been in the news, especially the tsunami in Japan and what happened to the nuclear reactors there and there have been descriptions of sort of these multi-walled steel containers that have cooling capabilities, et cetera, et cetera. Storage of these types of materials is not just a simple factor. It's usually not as simple as we need a particular type of container. We can put this artifact in it. We can seal the top and then set it on a shelf. It's never that easy. So I think that if your collection contains a material such as highly radioactive material, you really have to think about, is it worth maintaining this piece? And if we are going to maintain it, you have to do the research to find out how best to maintain it. The other thing on top of this is that most artifacts that exist in collections are kept for one or two reasons. It's usually for research or it's for exhibition. And so you think very carefully about, do we have something that's radioactive? Can we even exhibit it in such a fashion that's going to be able to protect our visitors? And again, we have to think a certain amount of radiation is going to affect, say, an infant or a young child, very differently than an adult. So these are all questions that need to be asked and need to be sorted out. And oftentimes, I don't know, I think it's in my experience when I find radioactive things or explosives or really industrial poison, so on and so forth. When all of the consideration is done, it's usually easier, and the key word here, it's usually cheaper just simply to get rid of the offending material. Yeah, and another thing I think that a lot of people might have in their collection may not realize is so dangerous. I mean, there's household items like poisons, but also cosmetics. I'm just trying to pull this slide here. Right. And this is, as you can see on the slide, ammoniated mercury. Exactly. And just like the medicines, a little bit scary to think people put this on their skin. Right. But again, it can be something that people don't think of when it's in their collections. The household poison slide, I think I'm going to pull up. But you had also brought up to me that it is obvious this is caution poison all over it on the slide paper that it could be in a good storage container or safe, but you also have to be thinking of these items in your collection if you were to have a disaster happen. Absolutely. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? So you say you've made a decision to retain something that has a certain degree of hazard, hopefully not extremely hazardous to the public, but you made certain precautions. But how might you think about that when thinking of a potential disaster or situation that your institution? Absolutely. One of the things that I recommend is when possible, if you have dangerous and toxic materials in your collection that you have decided to keep, you certainly have to think about what happens during a disaster. Now, up on the screen, we have this poison slide paper. And if you first, anything that says poison on it, you want to make sure that you read very carefully all of the information you can about the product. In this particular case, I believe that this fly paper is to be kept dry. To activate it, you actually wet it. And it does contain arsenic. And so in this case, if you were to have, say, a flood in your building, and you had a stack of this fly paper, which I actually purchased this at an antique store in South Dakota, they had a stack of this stuff for sale. And I bought several of the containers because I wanted to use it as an illustration. And again, if this was something that you had in your collection and you had a water event, say you had a pipe that broke or you had a flood, and the fly paper actually was to fall into the water, you're then dealing with a level of toxicity that totally changes how your disaster response would be. Because you're no longer dealing with dirty water or polluted water, you're now dealing with poisonous water. And so the first question is, would you want to subject yourself to this, let alone any volunteers, et cetera, et cetera? The same is true with first responders. If you have live ammunition in your storage vault, and luckily we didn't see any on the list, but if you have live ammunition or perhaps you have some sort of explosive that you're not even sure about in the situation of a fire, all of a sudden the danger could change immediately. I mean, live ammunition in a fire actually can shoot off. So you want to think about those people who are first responders. The last thing that I could ever imagine as a museum person would be causing the death of a first responder. And so I think it really is you have to think a little bit beyond your use of some of these different materials. But you have to think about the possibility of how they can affect others. So one of the things that I recommend is that if you have any dangerous or toxic artifacts that you do keep them in a fireproof cabinet, and rather than spreading this stuff throughout your entire storage area, that you keep everything all together, that you label the outside of the cabinet and actually list what's in there, that part of your disaster plan, whoever the first responders are, whether it's the police, whether it's the fire department, that you already have notified those individuals that you do have some potentially dangerous things in your collection and that they are kept in a very specific area. Usually I recommend you keep them right inside the door to your storage area so that depending on the conditions that the first responders meet, they can make an educated decision on whether they even want to enter that particular room. And so I think this also causes museum staff to think, well, gee, if they're not even going to enter the storage room because we have this cabinet of dangerous and toxic things right inside the door, maybe we need to reconsider if we don't want to lose the rest of the collection in storage, maybe we really need to reconsider whether it's necessary to even keep these types of objects in the collection. And again, there are many types of historical objects that the chemistry involved just is not very well known. Now one of the things, and Kristen, I'll let you find this slide, is there used to be these glass containers that were used for putting out fire. And many people believe, and here's an example of one. This is sort of a clear glass, clear solvent in it. Many people, you know, for the longest time, have thought, oh, that's just water that's in that. And you would take this glass container filled with water, throw it on a fire. And it would put out the fire because of the water when, in fact, the actual chemical inside of these glass fire extinguisher bombs, as they were called, is actually carbon tetrachloride. Carbon tetrachloride is a very toxic solvent. It used to be found quite commonly in dry cleaning, but it was outlawed by the EPA. And this was some decades ago. But again, these as historic objects, they contain an extremely toxic solvent in them. And carbon tetrachloride has been proven to be an agent that causes various types of cancer, but especially liver cancer. So again, a question is, do we want to retain these types of materials, especially if they're going to put number one people at risk and number two other parts of the collection at risk? I think that it really takes some serious consideration of how we're going to maintain these types of artifacts. Now, I know by looking at our list of participants that we have some people from art collections who have joined with us. And believe it or not, there are a lot of materials found in artworks that are quite toxic. If we look at particular types of pigments, a good example would be vermilion, which is sort of a historic red vermilion oftentimes was used in Renaissance paintings. And we go, OK, we've all heard of vermilion. It's a red pigment. But what a lot of people don't realize is that chemically, what is vermilion pigment? Well, it turns out it's actually mercuric sulfide. And when mercury burns, it actually gives off an extremely toxic gas that one breath can kill an individual. And so art collections also can contain very toxic things that people don't even think about. I remember doing an exhibition of the work of Sigmar Polka when I was in San Francisco at the Museum of Modern Art. And he did this installation where he had assistants grinding up historic pigments in egg whites and then painting these huge domes that were in the old building where the Museum of Modern Art had resided for decades. He had chosen vermilion. He had chosen rheogar. And he had chosen orpiment, all historic pigments. Well, after the show, our prep staff was told to go in and wash off this egg residue with these ground pigments in them. And I just about blew a gasket because they were started with the yellow orpiment. And nobody realized at the time, except for the conservation staff, that orpiment is actually arsenic sulfide. And I walked in when they just had started. They had buckets of water with scrub brushes and gloves on. But they literally were covered in this yellow pigment, trying to scrub it off the walls. And again, here, basically, our prep staff is using an arsenic bath. And so we immediately stopped that. We took the two individuals, and we actually took them to the hospital so they could be properly cleaned, et cetera. And then we ended up using oil paint to actually paint over these huge domes that had all of this powdered poison. And so I think many of us become sort of what's the word I want. We just feel that these things that we're handling every day, we don't realize sort of chemically and physically the dangers that they may impose. And I think that's something that we really have to pay attention to. And I know that in a lot of my consulting, when I'm dealing with institutions who are doing collection inventories, I really try to instill in them the need for identifying chemically materials that are contained in different artifacts. And then when you know there are dangerous components that you do consider deaccession, that you do consider if they are key to the collection and you want to keep them, that you package them in such a way so that somebody who may just walk in off of the street or a volunteer who may be going into storage to select a particular artifact and yet they choose the wrong thing or whatever that you actually do everything you can to protect not only the staff but the public from these various materials. And when you're considering putting things on exhibition, that also can be you have to take into account. Is there any possibility that this could affect a member of the public? And I think if it's OK, Kristen, I'm going to sort of transition here into taxidermy's questions. Yeah. That was my next question because that's the situation. Taxidermy and ethnographic artifacts are very, very common, very, very central to a lot of institutions' mission. And yet have so many challenges. Absolutely. And one of the biggest things, and this includes ethnographic artifacts, but it's a little bit different, taxidermy when it originally was done. And this is historically the way taxidermy was done. But then we have to question, well, what is actually a historic practice? Originally in order to preserve the skins and hides of taxidermy animals, the chemical that was used was actually powdered arsenic. And it was mixed with water and actually whipped into sort of a froth. And this froth was painted onto the skins of animals. It was allowed to dry. And then the skins, which still had some of the moisture, they weren't allowed to completely dry. But the skins then, with that moisture and the arsenic, could be fit over an armature and fastened into place. Now, that's considered a historic practice. But in reality, we have seen taxidermy specimens that retain this arsenic practice even into the 1970s. And so we generally use a cutoff date of 1980, even though taxidermy is not controlled or licensed in any sort of way. And I'm still convinced to this day that somewhere out in the hinterlands of North Dakota or Montana or Wyoming, there is somebody doing taxidermy who has been doing it for the last 50 years. And somewhere in their shop, they have a 55-gallon drum of arsenic that they're still using the traditional method of whipping up an arsenic froth and applying it to skins of animals. So I always approach every taxidermy specimen with a big question mark. Is this toxic or not? Chances are, if a taxidermy specimen was prepared before 1970, chances are it is laced with arsenic. And so this is something that is, to me, an especial concern, because as taxidermy animals begin to age, many times the arsenic will filter out either through seams or through the skin itself. And you can end up beginning to see arsenic on the surfaces of these types of artifacts. And so any time I go into a museum, whether it's very large or very small, and I see taxidermy animals that are not well protected from the museum going public, I always get extremely nervous and try to relate to those who are making the exhibition decisions to, number one, make sure they have tested their taxidermy specimens for arsenic. If they contain arsenic that they're taken off of exhibition, they should only be shown in totally sealed cases, and those cases should never be opened. If you have a historic taxidermy specimen in a totally sealed case that never comes out, you're probably going to be all right. That is until there's a disaster. Again, if you have a flood and the case breaks, all of a sudden you're going to have arsenic in the flood waters. If there is a fire and the arsenic begins to burn, burning arsenic is extremely toxic. Again, you have to think about the first responders. So taxidermy, to me, is really questionable. Now, if you have historic taxidermy specimens, I think it's important to actually do a test. And there are arsenic testing kits that are available through many of the chemical manufacturers. And you can, in some cases, if there is a white powder on the surface, you can take some off very carefully and do a test for the presence of arsenic. If you have any sort of taxidermy specimen that is out on exhibit and you don't know when the piece was prepared, how long, if it's been in the collection since before 1980, you simply have to make a judgment that that particular specimen probably has arsenic in it. To make a judgment call of any other stripe would definitely be a mistake. Now, we also have seen with ethnographic collections, which include Native American artifacts, as well as various other African artifacts, Pacific Island artifacts, et cetera. Many of those artifacts that were collected by public or even museums outside of those original peoples, oftentimes these types of artifacts also have had pesticides applied to them. At the turn of the century into the 20s, 30s, even up until the First World War, oftentimes that included dusting with either powdered arsenic or powdered strychnine. Other types of chemicals were also used. But again, one has to be very, very careful. Here is where provenance becomes really important. And there are new technologies available to do testing for these types of poisons, especially arsenic. But if, say, you received a collection from a non-Native American, and it embodied 200 artifacts, and you're now wondering, gee, should we test some of those artifacts? Should we test all of the artifacts? Basically, in a scenario such as this, you can choose some sort of key pieces to test. Those pieces that have leather, that have feathers, that have quill work are usually the likely candidates for having been treated with pesticides. If you treat a group of objects and you find even a single object that has a positive test for arsenic, you have to consider, until individual testing is done, you have to consider that the chances are likely that the full collection had been treated with either some sort of pesticide, or in some cases it may be an antifungal agent, and arsenic was used for both. So again, you have to be very, very careful when you're dealing with ethnographic items. Something that we also see quite often is with the repatriation of, especially, Native American artifacts. And many smaller museums don't understand sort of the philosophy that Native Americans had concerning their artifacts. We had a group of Native Americans who visited our lab during this past week. And it was very interesting because I wanted to confirm something that had always sort of been a rumor. And two of these people were from different Native American tribes and spoke different languages. And I asked them, my understanding is that most, if not all, Native American languages do not have a word for art. And indeed, they confirmed that. And it's sort of very interesting because we had a discussion about how things that have now landed in collections across the United States, across the world, that are Native American, is that the Native American peoples believe that their objects, that their artifacts, were actually living spirits. And so the very idea that someone from outside of their own people would be applying a poison in order to protect the longevity of their artifact, they find that almost overwhelming. It's like someone outside of their peoples was actually poisoning the artifact in order to kill its living spirit. And so we run into all kinds of problems today when things are repatriated back to tribes. And in many cases, the types of artifacts that are being repatriated have a special spiritual significance or religious significance. And in many instances, the original tribes want to be able to use these artifacts in their spiritual or religious ceremonies. And so it really becomes this quandary, I believe, for the non-Native American collections people that we have to be really, really careful about how we treat their artifacts in this day and age. We need to find out as much as possible what the provenance and what the previous treatment of these artifacts were, especially if they're going to be returned to the Native tribes. Again, it's sort of like my feeling that any museum person would never want to see a first responder lose their life because of a mistake that they themselves made or that the museum made. And I think it's also true of repatriating items. The last thing we would want to see would be someone using the item in its original context and end up poisoning that individual. That's a good point. Thanks, Neil, for that. I wanted to get to Lisa in Brookings, South Dakota's question about with ethnographic materials that may have had pesticides. What kind of best practices should they use in handling that? I mean, getting that into clothes for training or storage. Again, should those materials that have either questionable provenance or have been positively tested, they should they be stored together much in the same way you talked about other hazardous collections? And then what kind of would that help in labeling them so that, I mean, obviously, I think a good best practice is for them to be for all storage areas to have restricted access so that volunteers aren't necessarily just wandering in and out for a variety of reasons, not just hazardous collections materials. But what sort of tips on these? So you know to have, and you know that they have a certain level of danger, what sort of storage and handling tips might people have. And then I just want to tell the group, which there are a few more minutes left. So if you have a last question, put it in the Q&A box now. OK. Go ahead, Neil. Well, for Lisa in Brookings, I know Lisa very well. And I know that she and her group of volunteers have built individual storage containers for everything in their Native American collection. Their history of dealing with their collection is quite amazing. And she's to be congratulated for that. I think certainly you want to be careful about handling them. You always want to, as much as possible, wear gloves, wear proper respirators, especially if there's any sort of powdery residue that you can see in a storage box. If it's been sitting on a shelf, if there's any sort of powder surrounding the artifact, you certainly want to take notice of that. You always want to be very careful about handling any item that may be questionable as to whether some sort of previous preservative has been added. So indeed, you do want to handle things with gloves. We usually recommend using nitrile gloves. Cotton gloves are not good protection, simply because any sort of powdered poison or pesticide can permeate those gloves and end up on your skin, even with thorough hand washing, et cetera. It's better to use a nitrile glove, which any sort of powder cannot penetrate. When you remove the glove, you should bag them and take them to, again, a toxic waste site. But for storage and exhibition, if you have something that you know has been dusted with a poison, it's probably best to make both a storage container and an exhibit container to completely house the individual artifact so that, number one, you don't have to touch it, number two, so that the exhibition case can also be used to store the item. And you basically never have to open that case. Great. Thanks for that. Well, we didn't get to address firearms or weaponry today, today's webinar. And I think based on the poll we did at the beginning that we didn't see a lot of people on today's webinar that had that question, but just in case someone's listening to this archive later, perhaps that's a special topic that we could address in a separate webinar. But I wanted to thank Neil, again, for your time today. And it's interesting and very useful information. And again, it's been recorded, and it will be accessible on the website. Probably the next day or two. And so we've also found in the topic section of the website. So if you have a colleague that you think would benefit from the information shared today, please do pass it along to them. And I have put up a URL to our evaluation in the Q&A section if you don't mind cutting and pasting that into your browser and letting us know what you thought, and particularly what topics would be of interest and use to you in your work. Coming up, we will do our best to address them in future webinars. So thank you again, Neil, for your help today. And we look forward to joining you on our next webinar in a few weeks. Thanks again.