 And use what's right now, the chat window is an open chat. We're going to move that over, close that down, and we'll have a moderated chat. And you'll be able to use that window to ask any questions. And also if you're having any technical difficulty, just go ahead and put it in that Q&A window. You'll see that in just a second. And we'll go ahead and follow up as appropriate. At this time, I'm going to turn things over to Jenny Arena, who will go ahead and get us started by introducing Alex. Jenny, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, so I will try to speak up. It sounds like we're coming in a little quiet, so keep letting us know how it's sounding and we'll try to fix that. So welcome back, guys. We are, after today, over halfway through on this course. Thank you for joining us. Today is, of course, our third webinar in the course, Risk Evaluation, First Step in Disaster Planning. And this course, as you know, is part of a series called Caring for Yesterday's Treasures Today, which has been made possible by Laura Bush, 21st century librarian grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And we're so fortunate to have learning times on board to produce these webinars and help us out with that website. I hope you guys are using. So keep saying hi. Eventually, we'll move that over, as you know, and we'll go to a moderated chat. But for now, everyone, feel free to introduce yourself. We're looking at we're removing over 200 participants so far. So keep saying hi. So we have a great webinar planned for you guys today entitled What Looks Within, Identifying Hazards Within Your Collections. A little scary sounding. And Alex, I'm sure you'll have some shocking things to share with us, but a great one planned. Our final webinar, as you can see, is planned for this Thursday, February 14, Valentine's Day. We'll see you there at 2 o'clock in the same place you are right now. And then just to go over, since we're getting close to the end, on what you need to do to earn a certificate. This is, of course, only if you're interested in earning that certificate. You don't have to. You can join us without earning that. But if you are, we ask that you are registered, so you show up in our database. And if you're not registered, please contact us directly at info at heritagepreservation.org, since the course is no longer offered on the registration page. We ask that you turn in your permission form, but it looks like most of you already have. So we're in good shape there. And then we ask that you submit all four homework assignments by February 21. And it looks like where people are keeping up, we have about 150 turned in for the last one, a little over 200 for the first one. And we'll have another homework assignment for today and Thursday. So the deadline is February 21. So make sure you get everything in by then. A link to all the homework assignments can be found on the course page. We've also got Alex's PowerPoint presentations, her handouts, and other resources that come up during these webinars. Now, hopefully everyone here today has been getting our emails. After each webinar, we send you an email with a recording of that day's webinar. If you're not getting them, that's a sign that you might not be registered. We send this email to everyone who's registered for the courses. So if you're not, it's one of two things. Either we're ending up in your spam filter or you might not be registered. So please shoot us an email. And that's about it for housekeeping. As always, feel free to email us if you have any questions. And I'm going to move over our chat box. And we're going to go into this moderated chat. And so this means that we will approve your comments before they get posted to the room. And it also means we can answer your questions privately if you're having technical issues. So when you post something, once we approve it, you'll see your post twice. But don't worry, no one else in the room is seeing it twice. They'll only see it once. So I'm going to move this out of the way. All right. And I'm going to hand things over to Alex. Alex has braved snow and internet outages to be here. And we're so happy to have her here today. It's so appreciated. I'll move this over, Alex, and hand things over to you. Thank you, Jenny. Yes, indeed. I am in route from Blizzard Nemo, not a pleasant experience. I can tell you that with three fireplaces on, I went through a half a quart of wood. And I used my gas stove. But I did not have any burst pipes. Thank the Lord. So my internet just came on up about two hours ago. So we can start going forward here on this third webinar here. So let me see. Where are we? Well, in the first course on collection care basics, those of you that have started from the beginning, you learned about the seen and unseen agents that can cause collection damage and deterioration. You also learned how temperature and relative humidity and light levels and air quality and collection storage areas can help hurt archives and your artifacts. And in last week's class with me, you learned about man-made and natural hazards and how they can affect your building and your collections. But do you know? Do you know what the risky business is on your storage shelves? Are you really aware of the hazards in the collections and the effect the health and safety risks they have to staff and collection users? So we're going to go over that today. Because historic collections test the knowledge of collection managers and registrars due to an awful wide variety of functions, methods of manufacture, and the composition of materials. To be informed about all facets of their care, from their history to the health and safety hazards, is a challenge even to the best of institutions. So for today, I want everybody to consider that this webinar is an important part of your professional development, no matter what kind of collection you care for. And even if you don't have these collection hazards that you're gonna see going forward in your institution, they may exist in your home or your neighbor's home or your local historical society if you're connected with your community. And for archivists and librarians in our group, this will alert you to perhaps about the items you have on loan that complement your wall spaces. So do think of them. It also, frankly, makes everybody a better informed body if a sister institution is in crisis and needs your help. So pay attention to this webinar and sit back and just enjoy it. I think you might find that some of the issues are sort of fun to look at. Whoops, gotta go back one slide, there we go. Okay, many topics of museum collection items are made from components that are inherently toxic, dangerous or hazardous, or have the potential to become toxic dangerous or hazardous in time. This is a list of the major categories that we're gonna go over today. And although it may seem frightening and overwhelming and really an issue that's just easier to ignore, an institution could substantially reduce its risk to staff, your volunteers, and to visitors if you become familiar with what potential hazards really lurk on your shelves. So and I do wanna say though that the following information although no way exhaustive, it can help you begin to assess the risks and hazards associated with the objects in your collection. And I should also say that this webinar is not addressing the materials used in case and building construction. These can also have toxic substances that may be released. For example, PCBs, what we also know is polychlorinated biphenols. They can be found in old paint, old sealing tiles, transformers, fluorescent light ballast, and a variety of different plastics that you may have around your wiring or in different areas of building construction. I may reference them, but I'm not gonna be going into them in any detail. You can learn more about these in Pamela Hatchfield's book, Pollutants in the Museum Environment, as well as lots of other sources. But let's start off with fire. So maybe what do you look for in your collections to understand what presents a hazard? So I'm first gonna look at collections that present fire hazards. A primary danger is the fire risk associated with deteriorating nitrate negatives. These negatives were early forms of plastic used for a very long period of time. And you can see they go from as early as 1889, pretty much right through the 1950s. Even the acetates can go even up to current times. And they can really be hidden mostly in the depths of your photography collections. All of these are different kinds of plastics, but it's the cellulosic plastics, the cellulose nitrate and the cellulose acetate, not the polyesters that I'm gonna be concerned with here, and these are the ones that I encourage you to be on the lookout for. And the risk to exposing your institution to spontaneous combustion is due to the chemical instability that's present when storing, you're deteriorating nitrate negatives. It is really advisable to remove the nitrate negatives from general storage areas, and to store them following storage guidelines in a deep freezer. A best practice is to have the nitrate negatives professionally reformatted, and to store the original in a cold storage area offsite. Now, both of the web resources from the Northeast Document Conservation Center and the Conservagrams from the National Park Service have really helpful advice that details identification, handling, packing, transportation procedures. So I encourage you to look at those. You'll find them all in your resource packet, but be aware that all of these film-based materials that are made of some form of cellulose plastic are at risk of spontaneous combustion, just because they feel like it today, I guess. But they can just go off, so it's very important to get them out of your collections and to identify them. Now, the cellulose acetate and cellulose nitrate, as I said, were early forms of plastics that were good for film, but they were also not just good for film. They became very popular because they were a less expensive means to imitate more expensive materials, such as ivory and tortoise shell. So these cousins, what's happened is these, the cellulose acetate and the cellulose nitrate have morphed with the Industrial Revolution to create different kinds of plastic cousins, and they are not prone to spontaneous combustion. They are prone, however, to chemical deterioration and are fire sensitive. They will off-gas harmful acids that affect collections around them negatively. Some give off a notable vinegar smell or sweet smell, but others simply show visible signs of cracking, sweating, and powdering. So identifying these in your collection will allow you to isolate them, provide a more specialized environment, cooler is always better, and monitor for degradation. Over time, these early forms also expanded to include a wider range of plastics and were incorporated in everyday household goods. The use of plastic materials became really popular, as I'm sure most of you are aware, by the turn of the 20th century. You'll find it used in toys, appliances, and many, many types of household items. So look in your collection for them. To identify one of these possible early plastics, look for white efflorescence, and I think you can begin to see them around the beads in the black-beaded red velvet jacket. See how those red beads are a little white? That's the kind of powdering or efflorescence that you will find that gives you an idea that things are beginning to deteriorate and fall apart. They're giving off an acid, too, which will affect the surroundings of materials. So actually, in here, if we did a, I don't have our slide to zoom in, but it actually has turned our red velvet to a brown. So if you do find them, make sure that you handle them with nitrile gloves or latex gloves, and know that they require special cleaning protocols, and are best not cleaned with water or solvents. It's best just to dust them. So do look for them. You'll find them in dolls. That's why I have the doll image up there. You'll find them in a lot of different kinds of materials. Now, not all plastics are gonna be unstable, but the Silo's cousins usually are stable and will exhibit signs of instability. Now, another class of fire excitement that you might find are fire grenades. For those of you in historic wooden buildings, you may find 19th century and early 20th century fire extinguishers called fire grenades. Most were made after 1870 until about 1910. Many, but not all, are filled with carbon tetrachloride, a hazardous liquid that's heavier than air. It sinks upon release, and it was felt to smother flames of a fire. Now, the danger of carbon tet, however, is the gas it produces from contact with the fire, not the oxygen it displaces. If you find them, these require a special hazmat removal process, and should be brought to the attention of your fire department. And because they are often considered important architectural features that tell you a story of your house, you will need to advocate that the fire department empty them and return them rather than destroy them. Otherwise, they should be stored in a flammable cabinet. And sometimes when you look at them, you'll also be able to see that they're empty and the liquids are already evaporated. So you may not have a concern, but just be aware if you see them, they come in many pretty colors and many different kinds of shapes and sizes. But they're all about a foot tall or so. They can look like light bulbs or glass bottles or little grenades you see in that upper corner up there. Now, another sort of fire risk is the risk of explosion in objects that contain gunpowder. Black powder becomes increasingly unstable with age and slight jolts may cause it to ignite. You may find it loose like the powder in the bottom of this can that is in the image to the right, it looks like coarse ground black pepper, really coarse black pepper. You may find them in the collections of armories, artillery companies, reenactment groups, and general historic collections. This hunting was a very popular sport if you're telling the stories of the turn of the century. And this definitely is a prime material to remove from your collections. Even traces of it can remain dangerously explosive. It can be triggered by a sharp physical knock and the correct but unpredictable environmental conditions that increase the chance of static electricity sparking an ignition. Deposits of black powder come in all sizes and shapes. And the hazard commonly goes unrecognized because munitions usually hide under and behind other collections like these rifles stored with other miscellaneous collections. And actually this was inside the silver closet. You can find it in many different places. Now ammunition in the form of shells and grenades are the most recognizable. Sometimes even 19th century civil war cannonballs are still active. They may still have a fuse in the hole. Revolutionary cannonballs will not have that problem. Any of these need to be verified as being deactivated. Unless you have verifiable written proof to the contrary, assume that all firearms are loaded and all shells and mortars are live. If deactivation of munitions is necessary, please don't attempt to do it yourself. Ask for help from your state police or a National Guard unit to identify if it is loaded and to deactivate the charge and clean the residues out of the barrels. For instance, as an example, in my home state, no one checked the Civil War cannon on the lawn in front of the state house until the 1980s when it was found 100 years later to still be loaded. Think of all those children that sat on top of that cannon barrel for all those years. Just nobody knew that it had, nobody remembered that it had misfired and no longer was a usable cannon. And it had, when it had misfired, the cannonball had been stuck inside the barrel along with the residues from the charge. So this was something that was important to remove and to address. Now, when you think of more fires and explosions, to identify more obscure objects that might retain a charge, think of alternative industries, such as mining equipment, search and rescue equipment, road flares and even photographic flash equipment if you maybe tell the stories of the newsmen or the newspaper in your area. Think of the industries in your area that might have used some sort of explosive equipment that you might have examples of in your collection. Each of these objects has a mechanism that is meant to hold a charge and could potentially be loaded and ready to go. So if you are a history-based institution that does not have an active collecting plan, more often than not, these will lurk in the depths of storage because they have not been recognized for what they were. Collection stewards traditionally are really diligent about not removing anything from a collection area. After all, collections are our children, right? And being very mindful, they have just returned the bits and pieces to a shelf leaving the dilemma to discover what they really are for the next person to resolve and that next person could be you. Remember, two old cans of paint can also build up pressure and explode when handled but some of these items, though, they really are oddball and I hope some of them will make you smile. As an example, golf balls are filled with compressed air or certain models of golf balls are filled with compressed air. And if a fire happens, the heat will cause the air to put increased pressure on the deteriorating covers, which then pop like popcorn. Something I'm sure your first responders may have never experienced before. Some of you too may finally remember the chemistry sets of your childhood. These often have acids and easily made combustibles included as part of the set. And that's probably why they were so fun, right? I mean, the things our kids are missing these days. So it is a good practice to make a list of possible candidates and ask for help in identifying next steps if you aren't sure. There's nothing wrong with that. So Jenny, shall we break for questions? Oh, we should, because we have a lot of them. We do. We do. Okay, so people have ideas as to what challenges in our already looking in their collections, okay. Yeah, so I'm gonna go ahead and go back to one of our first questions during your slide about plastic film supports. And this is from Janine, she's curious. She says, I'm assuming the polyester in question is not similar to the archival enclosure material, correct? Well, it's the same basis for it. That are safety films. Polyester is what Kodak calls safety films. So they are a similar plastic, yes. Okay, and then- But they're more stably made. Okay, and then Kathy had a question from Ohio. She says, do slides also apply to this segment? Early slides, yes indeed, will apply to this segment. Okay, now we had some questions during your nitrocellulose cousin slide. Yes. And Robert has a few questions. He says, are acetate-based negatives also combustible or is this just limited to nitrate-based film? No, cellulose acetate are very, they are not spontaneously combustible, but they will burn very quickly and they do deteriorate. They are an unstable material. So they will deteriorate and give you that vinegar syndrome and begin to yellow and curl and give you all sorts of signs of deterioration. So they should be removed and isolated because as they off-gas that vinegar, that off-gassing will affect collections next to it and speed up the deterioration process. And that was another question we had and I believe the audience answered it, is that vinegar syndrome, is it hazardous to humans? It's an errantant is what it is and it will irritate your skin and it will irritate any inhalation. Okay, and then a follow-up from the previous question was what about acetate-based microfilm? If it's acetate-based, cellulose acetate-based microfilm will also have the same kinds of problems. Okay, and then Kathy had a question too about 1950 slides, would those be polythene? Is that correct? They could be, they don't necessarily have to be but most likely they would be. I would reference you to the Northeast Document Conservation Reeflet, their preservation leaflets and they have a short guide to film-based photographic materials. It's all about the identification, care, and duplication. It's online and it gives you some really good identification headers and we know the information from Kodak. What we don't know is all the identification information from the other film-producing companies. So at least Kodak came forward and then there are some other tests that can be done or I would say contact a conservator who specializes in film and photography and they can help walk you through this also. Okay, let's see, another question. Kathy had a follow-up question. She says, is it safer to digitize, acetate, or simply store them? If you store them in really good environmental conditions you will be able to preserve them longer. The issue with digitization is it's putting into a whole nother format that can really ensure that it will be stabilized for the future. That's a formatting question though and I'm not a specialist in formatting so I would suggest that you ask a paper conservator who is more familiar with formatting than I am. So I don't know how you actually do the risks there. Certainly if your environment is not terribly user friendly I would say digitization is the way to go. Okay, and then we had a question from Casey who is curious, how do you tell the difference between acetate, poly, and nitrate? Well if you look at that preservation leaflet it gives you some clues what to look for. Some of it is just you can date in the pictures by either looking at the images. In some cases there are notches on the actual film that will help you date it. There are also some float tests where you can cut a piece off and there's a particular chemical you can float it in and nitrates will fall to the bottom because they're heavier, the polyester usually floats in the middle and then the acetates may float on the top. I could have that reversed. It could be the acetates go to the bottom and the nitrates go to the top. I always have to look up the instructions and then there are some burn tests too that can be done. If you have any questions I'd say contact your photographic conservator. Okay, and this is our last question on that topic. From Robert, he says, so if film and photographs are stored along with paper collections then they need to be removed not just for preservation purposes but because of potential fire hazards. Is that a safe assumption? If you have anything that has cellulose nitrate or cellulose acetate for a film-based material it is definitely safer to remove them. Okay, and then one more follow-up question from Robert on vinegar syndrome. He says they had an entire area of microfilm that was exhibiting vinegar smells in their library and he's curious on the impact it might have had on staff and we also had another question from someone who said what are signs and symptoms that you might notice if that was an issue? You can, I think with overexposure it's sort of like being with mold. You become very sensitized to it and you can have coughs, it can irritate your lungs and so you have the breathing, the difficulty in breathing aspects to it and some people can become quite faint from it. And Adrienne Bernie just commented that she found out the hard way that the fumes can make your lungs hurt so echoing that. So we have- I'm sorry Adrienne. So we have some questions about firearms and your slide about black powder. Janine is curious are bullets that were fired many decades ago safe now? Bullets that have been fired are empty of their charge. So yes, they are safe. Okay. And now we have a few questions from your slides about anything that might explode. So let's see, when you were talking about parachutes Kathy was curious if you were talking about poly-based parachutes, not silk ones. What I'm talking about with parachutes is the rip cords. When you jump out of a plane and your parachute doesn't unfurl, there is a safety backup parachute. And if you pull the cord, it will, the second one will explode, it's supposed to explode or out. And so there is a little charge in a pocket in your parachute. So it's not so much the fabric, but it's the mechanism that makes them all tightly packed and then makes them unpack. Okay. And we have another question from Alan and actually a few other people who were curious about old matches. Do they degrade and become non-dangerous over time or what do you have any suggestions on what to do with matches and collections? Well, with matches and collections, I would just keep them. What's going to get a match going is if there's some fire that comes or some heat that comes next to it and then it needs oxygen to burn. So I feel the safest thing to do with matches is to store them in a metal container. And that limits the amount of oxygen that they can use should they ignite. And it also limits them on the outside from heat or something that might land on to it that would cause it to begin to burn. Okay. And we just have a few more questions. We have one from Greta who was curious. They have a World War II cans of food. Should they empty them? Oh, wow. This is always a debate. And it's actually, I'm gonna talk about it a little bit later, right, or on. But I advocate in the vast majority of cases that the cans are emptied. The reason I advocate for that is that if this seals, these are usually tin cans that have a lead solder seam to it. And if the seam becomes, if the acid from the food begins to corrode the seam, or if the seam wasn't particularly super tight and a little bit of oxygen, even just a little micro molecule gets in there, you can form some botulism. And once the botulism begins to form, it creates some pressure as that pathogen begins to grow and the pieces can explode. So it can only not only be a health hazard, it can also be a physical hazard. And then once it begins to leak, it becomes attractive to pests. So unless there's some very, very strenuous reason you really want to keep the food that's in there, I advocate for you emptying those containers. Okay. And this might be related. Linda was curious on how they might store aftershave or perfume in a collection. I, aftershave or perfume. I usually suggest that it be removed and then you have a dyed liquid, like a water or an alcohol that goes into the container. The only reason, the only reason we have some concern really is if the container breaks for some reason and then the contents of that will spill onto something and may be hard to remove. There may be certain oils or fragrances or components in that aftershave or that perfume that can have some residual effects on the pieces that it may flow onto should the container break. Okay. And I'm gonna take one more question before we move on to our next slides because some of these we might address further down the road. So this next question comes from Leanne and Leanne, we got your email. And so her question is one of her buildings is set up as a garage, including unmarked cans of liquid, oils, paints, turpentine, et cetera. Should these be reviewed by their first responders? And Alex, this is the same person who sent us that great email. She's the collections manager for the Small Transportation Museum. Well, probably, poor Leanne, she's probably walking into a man's territory that's a facility maintenance position or maybe it's volunteers that are doing this. The best practice is to use a flammable cabinet in which to store all of those materials in them. So if they do explode, the cabinet will contain it. Another good practice is to label them all and if they can't be labeled to then to dispose of them. So you don't have to go to your first responders, but you can start with the staff there that says, can somebody please tell me what these are because we are not really following OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for staff. So there's actually a legal issue here if protocols cannot be or not followed really carefully. So there is a reason we do have all these safety protocols. The first thing to do is to get that flammable cabinet. Great. And then Cindy asked us to kind of address how you dispose of these objects or remove them and I know you'll get to that towards the end. The rest of these questions, I'm gonna hold on to them and we'll try to get them before the webinar is over, but I wanna give Alex plenty of time to get through her presentation. So Alex, over to you. All right, well, thank you everybody for all your questions and we'll hold on to them towards the end. I mean, here we go, somebody already asked the questions about the food. So let me just, I have one slide here and we'll just go over and see if I can reiterate any information that I've already covered because as you know, a more obscure material associated with historic collections, especially in New England, is whale oil. Whale oil is sometimes found as examples of historic lighting fixtures in historic sites. So we had somebody from Nantucket, so maybe they have some whale oil out there. It will burn in a really hazy, messy way that will then accumulate as a greasy deposit on collections. And it'll actually, once it's that deposit, will add to your own health and safety problems. So to reduce the smoke risk associated with this messy hazard, substitute the contents with another inner lookalike liquid or store them in flammable cabinets. So see if you really need them on display or whether there's another way you can visibly substitute it. And then we also find in historic sites preserved foods. In these images, there are glass jars with different kinds of jams and jellies and food and meats in them. And a can of syrup on the right. If the seals leak, either in the glass containers or the middle tins, due to aging or physical harm, they can explode from the bacteria generated inside. Old, unopened cans that have a leaking solder line may be contaminated with botulism. Bacteria inside may cause the cans to swell and explode, harming staff, exhibits, and other objects in the collection. It's not so obvious a collection item, but certainly generates a really messy boom and is very attractive to pests. So these items should be on your fireman's notice list as potential hazards. As with heat, they can explode and cause shrapnel, too. So those are just some ideas. It's one of the reasons you want to reduce the risk of having those canned foods in your collection. Now, these on this slide, it may be far from your experience, but in large industrial collections, PCBs may be found in generators, transformers, and many types of industrial equipment. As these objects deteriorate, or if they're damaged, the PCBs can leak out exposing people to this cancerous hazard. And then other kinds of materials that I generally put in this category are batteries and hydraulic and brake fluids and master cylinders. They have corrosive fluids you may find in home medical equipment, cars, or other ingenious working collections. Lots of inventors around the turn of the century pull together odds and ends. And so you could find some really interesting sort of scientific and medical electricity generating equipment in your collections. If you have any batteries, be sure to drain them when safely feasible. In some cases, even in vehicles, the connector lines need to be purged with dry, compressed air. And for vehicles, additional trays to catch drips is advisable to minimize the hazardous cleanup procedures when it comes to having them, especially if they're working vehicles or they're stored for six months and then somebody's going to take them out for a little toodle around the block. It's always a good idea to give them their own oil tray to park over. Now, you can learn more about large vehicles in the Conservagram leaflet that's listed here. It's also in your resource packet for the webinar. Now, are there not so commonly noted health and safety risks? Are collections containing human and veterinary pharmaceutical supplies? If you have these, make sure you handle these with extreme caution as such kinds of boxes and collections may contain viable pathogens or toxic and or controlled substances. These files are usually unreadable and the contents unknown. Oh, it's a white plow powder. Oh, it's sort of purple. Could look like a lot of different things. Over time, the ingredients will have decomposed or become highly concentrated. If you did not know what the vials house, they should be considered a potentially harmful substance. Be aware that first aid kits up through the 1950s, and this includes even Girl Scout kits and all any kind of first aid kit, sometimes contain a highly unstable and explosive material called picric acid in the gauze bandages. As these bandages dry out over time, the disinfectant, which is what the picric acid was used for, it can become unstable. You need to get your fire department, your hazmat team, to come in to take care of it. It's not going to blow out your building, but it is definitely something you don't want to handle. They usually, it's like a lowest level of hazmat. They usually need to evacuate the building, or at least give you a 75-foot radius. So they do need to be removed from your collection. So if you have any gauze bandages, just be aware and just handle them really carefully and call your hazmat team. So overall, for any of these materials, your collection management guidelines should contain the protocols and the local support resources for disposing of these and for cleaning out the jars if you happen to have medicine jars. Often, your area university chemistry department can help you identify any solutions in medicine jars, and you can also start with your pharmacist. And also your police and your FBI can help you with some chemical analysis if you're really curious to. Now, collections that are related to medical devices for surgery or in historic collections for bloodletting are considered to have biological risks due to pathogens that may remain on them. This also applies to the sharp edges of spears, swords, and arrows. A best practice is to handle them with gloves and to wipe the exposed areas with alcohol. And be sure that your collection management records indicate when and how they were cleaned. So that saves the next person who looks at this from knowing if they need to call somebody in. Now, I put up here a mouse and the residual of a mouse because another biological risk is that of hantavirus. And hantavirus is a serious life-threatening disease spread to humans by rodents that have the initial symptoms similar to influenza. It's carried by rodents, especially deer mice. And it's found in contaminated dust from their nests and droppings. It doesn't make the animals sick, but it really will make you sick if you come in contact with this contaminated dust when cleaning your storage areas that have not been accessed for a long time. So that's why I wanted to bring it to your attention. So signs of mice nests and rodent nests are important to be alert for when you're cleaning spaces after a disaster, too. If you want information on how to clean and disinfect the area, you can reference the conservogram that I have listed here. You use bleach. They do advise that you actually not only put on gloves and a mask. They actually suggest that you get into one of those disposable hazmat suits, too. And you'll be using lots of bleach. Now on to another interesting collection you may find, one way or another. This should be carefully managed. This kind of collection that should be carefully managed are those for preserved wet specimen. And I will say it's surprising how many collections contain a sampling of this type of collection, even if it is not part of your collecting focus. You don't need to be a medical museum. You don't need to be a natural science center or a research center to find these. Specimen housed in formaldehyde, formalin, or an ethanol, are a fire threat, as well as a health and safety risk. The seals of fluid, excuse me, preserved specimens should be regularly checked as the evaporation is an ongoing concern, both for the preservation of the specimen and for monitoring and ventilating the room. If your collection is small, storing it inside a flammable cabinet designed for solvents is advisable. If you have a large number and you really have a collection of these, you probably already know that a ventilated room designed to reduce the risk of sparks and fire is a best practice. So these rooms usually self-ventilating. They're on their own ductwork. They have electrical outlets that are at least three feet high because these solvents will actually fall to the floor. They'll be heavier than air. And having an emergency plan if you have these is really important because these are highly flammable. Of course, for those of you who wonder why you only have a few bottles that you do, look at the importance of these pieces to your emission. You're collecting plant and you're programming. If you find them to be extraneous, think about taking action to deaccession them and remove them from your collection. It's the safest and easiest thing to do. Oh, another kind of hazard you might find. Many types of inherently toxic substances are used in ethnographic materials. There are a number of cultures around the world that purposely use plant products to produce medicines, poisons, or restrictive substances. Poisonous seeds also may be used as decoration on clothing and in jewelry. These were used in rosaries, rattles, and turds items. Grape goods are sometimes colored with red lead and white lead, cinnabar, and other toxic minerals and pigments. So that's another reason to be careful about ethnographic and ethnobotanical hazards. Spears and knives may be coated with some of these plant poisons. Other objects may be contaminated with pathogens that can cause disease, including those removed from privy excavations in areas that may have been flooded or contaminated by sewage. If you don't know what it is or cannot read the label as with the Chinese products in this image, a best practice is to assume their hazardous and manage them accordingly. And in cases such as these curl vine beads on the right, the attractive color hides how toxic they really are. The curl bead vine and the castor beans produce the extremely dangerous powder ricin that can use one of our big terrorist threats. Now, all ethnobotanical hazards and actually all hazards need to be visibly identified as hazardous and a handling policy with gloves is a good practice. And as I said, this is actually a really sound practice for any hazardous item in your collection. A three tiered labeling system is advised to alert users to these hazards. This includes the database on the object itself and on the storage case. So this particular labeling system was put together by the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. But I think it's applicable to all of us. So I clearly need to break for something to drink. Jenny, I'd be glad to take some questions too. Of course. So we did have a great question just a second ago from Christy. Alex, can we get a copy of this three tier labeling system for the website? I think it is still available. I will look into it. It was online and it was free. And I will check it out. We may be able to get it through either the University of Minnesota who hosted it. I have to see if they're still hosting it. But you can certainly use these images here and make up your own graphics just like this. Okay. And we'll look into that guys and we'll post it on the course webpage. So Alex, I have a question that actually came to us via email and I thought this is a good opportunity to ask. You have mentioned in dealing with hazardous materials, you might call upon people that would be your first responders in the event of a disaster. And our question was about institutional fear of bringing in first responders. Of course, the fear is having them come in and having them say, doors closed, you need to fix this and there's no budget to fix it. Can you kind of, you know, weigh the benefits and touch on that subject a little? Well, that's a really, it's a really hard nut to crack. One of the things that I suggest is that you just have a one-on-one offsite with one of your first responders and just give them the low down. They may know that you have difficulties. But if you make an effort to say we'd really like to begin to address this, we aren't quite sure what our priorities are. We'd like to address this and see if one of them will come out of uniform. See if one of the first responders would be willing to come in his civil citizen clothes and not in his official fireman gear. That way it gives him a little more leeway to give you some advice in a little more user-friendly way and help you develop a plan. That's why I suggest if you have a planning team, one of my tips is try to get one of your first responders as a private citizen to come help you. Also, you could bring it to your attention if you're comfortable with your administration by alerting them that because you're paid staff, by law, you are covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA rules. And if you ask the State OSHA Board, not the Federal OSHA Board, but your State OSHA group, if you invite them and you have to invite them to come in, they will come in and they will show you what needs to be done and they will work with you. You have to make a commitment to work towards compliance. So you can't just have them come in and then put your head in the sand again. You really have to work towards compliance and it may not mean you have to have the best sprinkler system. You just maybe need to do some simple things right off the bat. And if you have them working for you and you have this list, you will have no fines. No fines will be given to you if you invite your local board in, whereas if your federal board comes in to do an inspection, and this usually is a result of some of a disgruntled employee, they will not only close down your institution, they will put a large fines on the institution to comply. So those are a couple of ways to begin. Another way to begin is to come to next. The next webinar on Thursday, and I have some mitigation tips and some ways you can begin to do your own self-assessment and begin to make some steps going forward. So that's a long-winded answer there. Sorry about that. No, and Cindy also weighed in and said, with her experience with first responders, they will often give you 30 days to correct any issues. So also good to keep in mind. Yes, and your first responders, they want to work with you. We in Rhode Island with our station fire, everybody in Rhode Island now has to have fire suppression systems, and it was very costly. And the churches, all the public space has ground over it. But the fire department, the first responders are really, they're really working for you, and they really want you to do better. And more often than not, they provide quite a bit of leeway to help you move along. You just have to be willing to move forward and not just say no. It is a two-way street. All right, so we had a question from Christy when we were going over pharmaceutical collections, and she says, that's my entire collection, our medical collections. She's curious, are there any good resources for evaluating medical collections? I'm not sure if one of these was included on the handout, Alex. You try your university chemistry department. You can also try your state police. They can help you. With, I find the university chemistry department really helpful, very user-friendly to do that. Your pharmacist can also give you some suggestions. And then Robert also had a question which I think that also helps answer his is if someone found, say, a glass file that's believed to be part of a medical collection, how does one go about the task of getting it analyzed? You mean if there's a substance in it? Well, if you can, sometimes there are labels on it that give you some hints. So if you take it, or you ask the university chemistry department, or you ask the state police, or the FBI, and as long as you tell them, look, these are historical collections. So please don't, we really need the vial to come back to us, and we really need the label to come back to us. The contents are not necessarily that important to us, but we don't want you to break up the container. The container is a primary resource for us. So if you educate them on that level, quite often they look at it as a history detective opportunity, and they can get quite excited about it. It's like having your dentist x-ray something for you. It's like, oh, it's better than a tooth. So think about those resources, and they should be able to help you. We have another question. I thought this is such a good question. Jeanine in New York had a question about how to maintain equipment, for example, vacuums that are in contact with potentially hazardous or toxic substance during the normal cleaning process. And I know someone posted a resource from the Canadian Conservation Institute. But Alex, do you have any suggestions? I'm not quite sure if I understand the question. So if you are doing regular cleaning of a collection, and that collection is potentially hazardous, are there special steps that you should take in cleaning your cleaning materials, to say a vacuum? Oh, I mean, oh, for the vacuum itself, I was thinking you had a vacuum. You had some compressor that was a historical item. I'm sorry. I'm going to go over the whole handling and protocol for what you do for your own cleaning and health and safety issues. Basically, if you have a vacuum, you'd want to use a heap of vacuum or a high-efficiently particulate air filter vacuum. And then after you've done your cleaning in that area, you would dispose of that filter and put in a new one. There are also your personal protective equipment that you'd wear, your gloves and your mask. You might wear a lab coat with it. Hope that begins to address the question. We have another question when we were discussing pathogens from Susan, who's curious. Is the hands of virus everywhere in the United States? It actually is everywhere. It's more dominant in the drier regions because the dust is more apt to become airborne. But it is everywhere. OK. Let's see. We have a question from Juanita. She says, they have a small basket with a lid that has vials that are full of spices and topped with a cork. And I assume that you're not exactly sure what the spices are. Should that be treated as a hazmat situation? Well, it depends if you know what the contents really are. The most important thing is to find out what the contents really are. So if someone can help you identify that, and then you can put it in your collection management so you know that that's what it is, that would be really helpful. If you think that you know what the spices are in there, but they haven't been confirmed, you could always empty out the spices that are in there and put in known spices. So you have a curry or you have oregano or you don't want to smoke the oregano. But in that way, and then you can mark in your collection management database, this spice was put in here or these herbs were put in here and they are at this date and they were known. And then you can seal that cork. And then we had another question from Michael in Georgia. And I'm not sure I'm going to do it just as he just says, what about anthrax spores in leather book bindings? Well, I think you'd probably know right away, if you had that usually, the anthrax spores come from unprocessed leathers. So they usually these days, this type, this time, in the 21st century, you will find them from unprocessed drumheads or leather that comes from Africa. It's very rare. Okay. So I do, I'm holding on to a few questions. We had some questions about cornbread and wine, but I'm going to hold on to those to the end so we can get through Alex's presentation. But I have them and I will ask, I promise. So Alex, feel free to move on. Oh, all right. Well, let's see where we go from here. Oh, I think now we're going to move on to geology. So of the 3,600 different minerals that we have of the 3,600 different mineral types, only a small subset pose a potential health hazard. Most minerals are on the whole safe. However, you should be aware of the problems that do exist, as there are about 200 types of minerals known or suspected to be poisonous or cancer causing. It is important to know which minerals are present in the collections in their chemical composition if at all feasible. This allows you to identify those that may pose a potential health hazard, and that requires special precautions for storage and handling. Proper identification is therefore the first step. Examples include specimens that contain arsenic, asbestos, mercury, and those that are radioactive. Some rocks and fossils can also be a source of radon, which is produced by the natural breakdown of uranium. Some people, like in my house, we actually have a radon meter that goes next to my smoke detector because I have an open basement. Some mineral specimens are hazardous because they have sharp edges, crumbly easily, or fibrous. Skin contact can cause irritation, and dust can also be an inhalation problem. Perhaps you know clay and quartz dust, for example, or industrial hazards, and hazards you'll find in art departments at the universities. Asbestos minerals are recognized human carcinogens, and no safe level of exposure is acceptable. And of course, some minerals are radioactive. The most toxic, however, fall into the category of the heavy metals, and these are arsenic, lead, mercury, and salium. Now, if you don't have individual samples of mineral specimen as part of your collection, you can still find exposure through your historic collections. Let's look at some examples. A range of collections can contain mercury due to the process by which the item was manufactured. Mercury is really an acutely toxic substance, and mercury vapor readily enters the bloodstream when inhaled. As early as 1713, the ill effects of mercury vapor poisoning on professionals, including mirror makers and hat makers, were well known. You may be really familiar with the phrase, matter than a hatter. That's because in the hat making industry, when the beaver hats and the fell hats were, when it was all felted, it went into a mercury nitrate solution, and people were working with unprotected hands, and this then created nerve damage, which is why they became known as matter than a hatter. Now, historical collections that have mercury include barometers and thermometers, and those of you that are probably older than, were born before 1980, might remember playing with the silver balls from thermometers as a child when they broke. You'll also find them in ship gimbals if anybody has a nautical collection, and lighthouse lenses. Historic mirrors have traditionally been silvered with mercury tin amalgam, and the amalgam is inherently unstable, resulting in liquid mercury beating. It'll beat up in the bottom edge of the mirror frame between the mirror glass and the backing board and the dust cover. An example of beaded mercury from a mirror is the image on the lower right. So you have that piece that's the tin mercury amalgam that looks sort of like a piece of paper, but then the beads on it, or where the mercury is actually bled out and is now free from that amalgam. Now, the dust or debris that comes in contact with that liquid mercury must be treated as mercury waste. So there's special powders that you dust over it when you find mercury, and then you can just sweep it up or vacuum it up and you dispose of all the products, including your vacuum bag and your vacuum filter, and label it on the outside. And then it goes into your special, you may have special collection days within your community, and you can take those for those special collection days. Either holdover sources of mercury include blood pressure monitors, antique medical instruments, you may find it in defunct chemistry sets, and even photographic daguerreotypes if they're taken out of the case and manipulated. If you keep them in the case, they're fine. Persons who collect antique hats or milliner supplies, for example, can also be exposed to residual mercury in the felt, a threat that curators of museum-based costume collectors have to take really seriously. Now, those of you with historic buildings be aware that light switches can contain mercury. It was used as the ballast to keep the switches in the desired on or off position. And a mercury specimen known as cinnabar was used by Chinese communities as both a pigment for decorative purposes, as well as in jewelry and carved containers. So any of you with historic sites may find these examples in personal effects or in your decorative accessories. Check your collections for any of these and take precautions in storage, display, and handling. They're simple precautions, but they're protective precautions. I'll go over them at the end of the presentation. I just want to get through all of these categories. Now, asbestos is another mineral that can be found in artificial ashes and embers sold for use in gas-fired fireplaces, as well as in older household products such as stoves, fireproof gloves, and stove pads. So for those of you interpreting 1950s or earlier houses, 1960 houses, or kitchens, just be aware that you may have asbestos in some of those products. You can also find them in ironing board covers and certain kinds of hair dryers. It can also be found in automobile brake pads and linings, clutch facings, and gaskets. Another area that you can find it is in building materials such as insulation around pipes and pipe chases, as seen as the image on the left. This is really what drove the whole asbestos level of awareness with everybody and all of those asbestos insulating materials around our pipes had to be removed from so many of our buildings. Now, sometimes it is found in specialty collection materials themselves, as in the painted theater curtains that we see on the right. Theater curtains were commonly coated with asbestos as a fire retardant in a large public space. Because these items are most commonly found in local theaters, they are not considered part of a museum collection. And for those of you in communities with them, they may need to have a special dispensation from the fire marshal to stay on site. So, zinc heavy metals, when you think about your collections, collections made of lead and zinc are less than green friendly. They contain toxicity levels that require precautions for handling and storage. The list is broad and includes collections made from pottery to building materials and metalworking supplies. Weighted silks may contain arsenic and lead added to the silk during the manufacturing process, and thus they can pose a serious health hazard. Do not handle such items without either your nitrile or latex gloves. A personally fitted respirator with a high efficiency particulate air cartridge, we call it HEPA, should also be worn as airborne dust containing arsenic or lead can cause respiratory cancers when inhaled. Old house paints and old artist paints are also a risk as the heavy metals that created the saturated colors we enjoy were not removed from paints until the late 1980s. Now, I will make the assumption that you will not eat these, but be aware that they have disposal concerns and the heavy metals can be absorbed through your skin and the dust that you inhale. You may be more aware of preserving fluids for taxidermy, especially those prepared before 1975, and the pesticides that may have been rubbed over the exterior surfaces over its history. They often contain a combination of heavy metals, such as arsenic and macuric chloride, which are very hazardous to anyone's health and safety, either when they're handled or when you breathe the dust or you can absorb them just by handling them through your skin. Because there's really a reason many of these stuffed animals remain so well preserved. Whatever pests thought they might be tasty found in early demise in these pesticides and preserving fluids sprinkled all over them. So labeling, bagging, and handling protocols always using gloves are important for the storage and handling and exhibition of all of these collections. Now, pesticides are not restricted to natural history collections. Many cultural collections from around the world made from furs and feathers are at risk of contamination by a wide range of pesticides. We now know that these well-informed efforts by past custodians to keep them safe from damage due to rodents and other pests have long-term health and safety concerns. A best practice again is to consider undocumented collections made from furs, feathers, and skins that they will have a special management need. Identify them as potential risks with tags and mandate a managed system of care with gloves and sometimes even a mask. We'll go over these at the end of the webinar. Now, the historical use of pesticides are a notable albeit well-intended man-made hazard coming back to bite you. Over 150 have been used in the past but are now outlawed. They were effective, however, because their potency and some of your collections may be contaminated with those residues. If you have any knowledge, any historical knowledge of any use such as DDT or arsenic or macurochloride in the collections, precautions need to be taken and handling. Items need to be labeled and bagged and the cases and shelves vacuumed with that heap of filter and then thoroughly washed and then after vacuuming, the filter in the vacuum needs to be disposed of. Now, a particularly helpful resource is this publication, Old Poison's New Problems, if you wish further historical and technical information. This is a good resource to let you know more about where to look for these things and how to still use the collections but how to protect yourself and visitors from any potential risk they might still have. Now, for those of you who may have fossils or petrified wood and bones, be aware that they too can be radioactive. Radon can also be found in minerals and in geological finds. The gas is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that is invisible and odorless. It forms from the radioactive decay of small amounts of uranium and thorium naturally present in rocks and soils. All of these items need to be clearly labeled and put into self-contained storage boxes for health and safety of all handlers. Storage cases need to be opened and left to air for 15 minutes before objects are retrieved for study. Even though these specimens have a very low level of radioactivity and are safe to keep with observed handling and storage protocols, the safety procedure, the sort of airing of the cases will dissipate any build-up of radioactive levels that may be a health and safety risk. Now, there are a large number of radioactive minerals, but most of these are rare and unlikely to be encountered in most museum collections. You can find these items anywhere, however, so those of you who are in non-museum environments pay attention. Look at these sparkling bits here. These sparkling bits were in a box marked uranium, and the archivists at the Howard H. Baker Junior Center for Public Policy raised their eyebrows when they found it in the most unlikely of places, the collection of the late U.S. senator, his papers and memorabilia. The archivists thought it was a joke gift and more likely glass bits, but it was labeled as a Christmas present. It was ultimately determined that the material was naturally occurring uranium, which is slightly radioactive, but not dangerous, but it goes to show that special needs collections can be found anywhere, so everyone beware. And the way these were detected is that the archivists had a geiger counter from the science department of a local university. They could read the level. Now, are any of you old enough to remember going to the shoe store and having your feet x-ray to determine what shoes might fit best? I remember this in the late 1950s. With the discovery of radiation by Marie Curie, the world thought radiation was a panacea. Inventors took hold and produced some imaginative equipment using this unregulated technology. Although we now know to be much more cautious with radiation, you may find history, medical and military collections tucked in your shelves. After 1898, some objects were painted with a mixture containing radium to make them glow in the dark. Although most no longer glow, they are still radioactive. Such items include clocks, watches, compasses, instrument panels, light switches, doorknobs, religious satuary, and, I love this, chamber pot lids. So be suspicious of any health cures with rad, that's R-A-D, or rad-I, which is R-A-D-I, in the title. Now, here in this image here, the Revigorator is a water dispenser made from a ceramic infused with uranium ore that was sold as a health cure. You kept it in your icebox to take daily drinks of refreshing water to make sure that you were really going to be in tip-top shape. If any of these candidates are detected, your storage should include a well-labeled lead-lined box or a closet to contain these items. And then, here's another example of an item from an airplane museum. The red-covered item at the end of the aisle is a low-emission radioactive trajectory. They've labeled it with a bright color. It's in their database, and it's been approved just to be stored as it is. Now, some collections have higher-level radiation devices. They may have a level of radiation that needs special handling or regulatory procedures. You will need a permit to keep collections with radiation emissions if they exceed a detectable level. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state radiation regulatory agencies protect people and the environment with a strict stat of regulations for exposure, handling, and storage. You can seek advice from them. But items at exceeded noted level must be removed from the site and given to the regulatory commission. So do reach out to them if you think you might have a problem or might have something like that in your collection. This is especially if you're a military institution or an institution that has lots of arms and armament to it. So I promise you that I would wrap up with some control exposure hints here. So when you find a collection item made of hazardous materials, these are the protocols to follow. Controlling your exposure is the recommended practice and the ultimate goal you are seeking. The first step is to inventory and assess the condition. Seek advice if you need help from any of these agencies we've mentioned to help you determine the hazards and even if you have a hazard. The second step is to employ a clear and obvious labeling protocol to identify hazardous collections. Document the information in the collection database. That's just one step. Use a clear labeling on the object, that's the second step, and another one on the shelving, that's the third step. Then you must educate everybody on the safe handling procedures. These are essential practices. So keep yourself and your staff or volunteers safe too. Practicing good housekeeping will keep levels of contaminated dust at a minimum. If items are particularly dusty, store them in order that the dust does not contaminate surrounding spaces. Practice good personal hygiene, which means wash your hands and face after these items have been handled. And before you handle them, wear appropriate personal protective equipment, including your gloves, a mask, and a cotton work coat. Wearing a cotton lab coat is a good practice no matter what you are handling as very few of our collections don't make us a wee bit dusty and grimy anyway. This has the added benefit of keeping not only our clothes clean but it's also very simple to wash. It reminds me frankly of the arm covers accountants used in the earlier days of the 19th and 20th century. Another responsibility you have is to maintain the MSDS sheets. These are material safety data sheets and to keep them on file. Because of OSHA, employers must communicate the health and safety information to employees exposed to hazardous materials by posting warning labels, having the material safety data sheets, MSDS sheets, and provide annual training on the health and safety information. So those are the good handling and storage protocols. If you do want to dispose of them, make sure you dispose of them properly. You can, in some cases, you can take them to the special collection days in your community. In other cases, you'll have to give them to a HAZMAT team or a HAZMAT agency in your area or to the regulatory commission. It will depend on what your need is. But most of all, don't hesitate to ask for advice and most of all, continue to seek your own professional development and training to raise your own level of understanding of what hazards might lurk in your collection. So we've come to the end of the webinar today. In summary, let me say that the mission of many of our viewers today includes the mandate to collect and preserve artifacts. However, some of the objects and the artifacts are bound, we're bound to preserve and to protect from harm. We have the potential, if not handled properly, to harm us. Being aware of which ones are in your collection is a best practice. But above all, don't overlook the importance of protecting yourself. In 1987, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration required that employers of non-factoring manufacturing sectors, and that's where we fall in, establish a program to inform employees about the hazardous materials associated with their jobs and train them in the safe use of materials. So you can bring that to the attention of your administrators if you want to see the discussion. So how about questions about today's webinar? I see we're running down to the end of the wire here. I'm sorry. We are. So we have a ton of questions. Let me pull over the homework assignment here. So this is our homework assignment 3. It will also be on the website. I'm also going to take our group login right now. So if you logged in by yourself, you entered your first name and last name, we have you in our attendance and you're taking care of. But if you're watching with somebody else and you're earning a certificate, go ahead and have your group leader enter in all your names here. I do want to mention quickly, we've noticed a lot of people who are not actually registered. So you've not gone through the online process of registering, which isn't a problem if you don't want a certificate. But if you do, please contact us. And Alex, let me go ahead and get to some of these questions. So we had a question when we were going over geology from Anita who's curious. I'm not sure. I'm so sorry if this was about the asbestos or the other objects you talked about. She said, that they are naturally radioactive and they're not a threat if they have not been processed. Is this true? Asbestos? No, I'm not sure it was in regards to asbestos or the other mercury that you were discussing. Mercury is not radioactive but it is a hazard for handling. So it needs to be handled with gloves if you happen to have it. If you do have loose mercury beads that you're trying to clean up then there is a Mercury hazmat spill kit that is basically a special kind of powder that chemically chelates and attaches itself to the mercury and then you can just vacuum up the powder and you've cleaned your space that way and then you have to dispose of the vacuum bag and your gloves and everything in its own plastic bag and label it and give it to your special collection group. Okay. I don't know if that answers the question. Speaking of mercury though I need to have another question. She's curious how you would keep mercury so it's safe but visible in the exhibit and she said she meant the actual mercury. Ah! As long as the beaker or the thermometer is not broken, it's not cracked and you I would not remove it. I would not drill out. I would not remove it from its container. As long as it's in a sealed container and you know it's there, what I would do is I would label it in your collection management database as you know we have mercury here so make sure this is going to be handled carefully and you might put some sort of tag on the back of or on the bottom wherever you put your accession number for instance. Just so when somebody picks it up they are alerted that oh there's a hazardous material that's part of this piece of equipment. Okay. Let's see. We had another question about mercury and some of these might be a little specific Alex but I'm going to throw them out there to you. How far back in time was mercury used in mirrors? So what's the time frame of when it started and what was it about? Well the first recorded use was in the early 1700s. So I'm glad I asked because you knew it. Well it's around I think it's around 1713 I know it's been recorded it could have been before that but the historical 10 mercury amalgams go back into the 18th century. Okay. I'm just going to interrupt the questions today. If you can't stay past 3.30 we completely understand but we'll try to get through some of these questions if you are able to hang on. We may lose our closed captioners past 3.30 and our backup sound but we will keep moving ahead. The next webinar and the last webinar of this course is Thursday February 14 at 2pm and keep your questions coming and we will try to get to them. So let me move back we have another mercury question another kind of specific question if you know Catherine is curious when mercury was stopped being used for hats. I don't know when the process actually stopped I can't help you I would imagine it's in the beginning of the 20th century but I do not know for sure. It's probably when we ran out of beavers. And Nina she followed up with us on our earlier question about geological specimens. She said she was speaking about uranium minerals and whether or not they are radioactive unprocessed. I would refer to a geologist but my understanding is that any uranium derivative has some level of radioactivity. They are very low you are not going to glow in the dark when you have touched them once but there are certain protocols for any of those minerals that are important for storage because if you contain them which is what you are supposed to do of course your container if it's a metal specimen case radioactivity that level will begin to concentrate if the longer it sits inside that closed case. So I believe all uranium have some level of radioactivity and they do decay over time because they all have half time. Okay let's see we had a question out of Georgia are there any dangers in antique magnifying glasses when it comes to mercury? Antique magnifying glasses I don't think I think of magnifying glasses with mercury so I I have to see the object itself to advise him any further I'm sorry. Okay usually those are ground glass. And again folks it's 3.30 now so we completely understand if you can't hang on with us we'll keep going through these questions. Alright so another question about asbestos not another our first one and so we have a question out of Nevada their collection has an old stove from 1926 and she's curious how would she know if there's asbestos in it? I'd have to we'd have to look at the inside and see what sort of insulation is in it where you want to be really careful with these pieces is if the insulation is beginning to fray and that means the asbestos will be loose and become more airborne so it depends on whether it has been refurbished or not. Okay we had a question about lead let's see from Cheryl she says any advice for handling old building components that are made of lead what type of gloves do we need a respirator and then the particulates remain on clothing and harm children when we go home from work? The best thing for you to do is to use your personal protective equipment which is going to be put on your lab coat put on your an N100 or N95 dust mask and make sure you wear at least your towel or your latex gloves if they're really heavy pieces you can use your leather gloves too and then I would always keep those usually with the lab coats we wash them every day or every week depending on how exposed we've been and then they're fresh what you want to do is to limit your exposure to this and that's what the personal protective equipment does it just limits your exposure okay let's see another question Veronica was curious about arsenic in green dye for 19th century fabrics another really specific one Alex do you have any knowledge? There are arsenic dyes that are green so you would have to test the dyes you'd probably need a textile conservator to advise you any further for instance some of the arsenic dyes their use is colorants and wallpaper for instance but again for all of these you can protect yourself you're not going to eat them nobody's going to put them in their mouths at least not we're beyond that stage I hope so using your gloves and a mask and wearing your cotton overcoat is your best course of action okay so moving on to your slide about radioactive material I'm curious about early 20th century glow-in-the-dark items she said a few of the aircraft equipments have markings that are treated to be luminescent yes those quite often are indeed radioactive paints so you can tell those with a gaga counter and then normally again you just want to limit your exposure to it it's the accumulated exposure for a long period of time so you would store those in an enclosed container a metal container if you can find a lead put a lead lining in your container then that's always a very good practice too but they're very low levels but again you're just trying to limit your exposure to it most of the places I visit they have a lead line closet and they just keep their items in there and then when they want to take something out of there for a half an hour before they actually remove the item from the collection we had another question is there a good resource for radiation testing is there a low cost solution for a small institution you can easily ask your state police somebody will have a gaga counter and that's the easiest way for you to be able to determine that okay moving on to taxidermy Veronica in California is curious feathers that are used on a non ethnographic clothing like hats and fans were they treated with the same type of chemicals as taxidermy mounts depending on when they were done quite often yes it was very popular in the Victorian times to have complete birds put on your or complete bird wings to put on your hat many of those yes would have been treated in the same kind of hazardous material and the common ones and there are many different kinds but the common ones are an arsenic derivative or a mercuric chloride derivative okay and Kristen Lace over here at Heritage Preservation just informed me that mercurian hat making was outlawed in the US in 1941 thank you very much thank you I have another question and I'm afraid I might have missed the context Jeanine says does this mean that an antique leather covered doll should be used on its mount in an acrylic or glass enclosure does that make any sense Alex I'm not sure I think if it's an antique doll if it's an old doll and she has leather body parts leather is going to be either a calf or a goat which means it would have been tanned those are tanned leathers that have been tanned to be waterproofed and they go through a completely different process they either would have been vegetable tanned or alum tanned so they were not preserved they were tanned to be still used as a functional item and not as a stuffed animal okay and then I have another question from Heather she has apparently 30 taxidermy birds do you have any suggestions on how something like this could be stored well normally we suggest that they just be bagged in a plastic bag you can before you bag them you can vacuum them with a dust one of the very fine dust brush nozzles with a HEPA filtration filter in your vacuum that'll take off any of the loose dust that may be contaminated if you have pesticides in there or if you have a preserving fluid in there there's some excess with that and then we bag them and then we just label them with a label that says potentially this and again most taxidermy hazardous solutions were done before 1970 or 1972 most of these were outlawed around 1972 okay we have a couple more questions about film Kathy is curious let's see is it safer to not store laminates with paper just as films should not be stored with paper laminates what does she mean by laminates I'm not quite sure we'll move on to the next question unless you're on here Kathy and you can give us some more details so Claudia has a question about how you can dispose of badly deteriorated nitrate negative well the best thing to do is to look up in the preservation leaflet from the Northeast Document Conservation Center and it's usually you would want to have them reformatted and there's a whole series of protocols to do that so you can learn a great deal about that it's about a five page handout it has lots of resources and lots of agencies that can help you okay so we have about five more questions I'm not going to keep you past 345 so we'll see what we can get to the others that we aren't able to get to I'll try to be in contact with you all personally so let's see we have a question from Cheryl who says that they have about 100 or so year old bottles of wine that still have quarks but are half full presumably because the quark has dried and wine has evaporated that's a question do you think that's why they're half full yes that is definitely why they're half full and fortunately what she's producing in there is vinegar her chance of having something like botulism is very is very low okay this is an interesting question from Ramona in North Carolina she says they have a piece of cornbread that was sent home during World War I and it's currently in a Tupperware type container let's see do you have any suggestions it's one of their known pieces of it well what you want to do is keep it away from mice so I would encourage you you could put it in a Tupperware that's okay I would also consider either a glass container with a ground glass top the way you would just so the mice don't get in it that's all if the mice really want this and I guess after all these years they probably don't mice will chew chew through plastic okay let's see another kind of food question Pam O'Reilly says we have a bear that was carved from not food sorry we have a bear that was carved from lard would this present any potential hazards and how do they preserve it so a bear carved from lard oh pretty interesting I've heard a lot about these types of food products well I would think you would want to keep it cool and I would think well it's going to be made out of fats and protein so it may the oils are going to probably oxidize over time so you'd want to keep it cool and you'd want to keep it away from any form of dust so that's the best that I can give you an idea of I don't think it should be hazardous in fact I think I just read about some old lard that was discovered under an archaeological underwater ship maybe the Romans so I think you're probably okay just keep it clean and keep it cool okay let's see Linda says she's out in Texas in the 1950s there was a celebration of a local oil well and they gave out a brochure with a sealed packet of oil so what's the best way to store a sealed packet of oil I guess it depends on what it's sealed in huh well I would encase the container leaks because this may be a case where you want to keep the oil that would be a decision that you all would have to make from your perspective I don't know what the package was made of but the risk you have is from the packet leaking so the best thing to do probably is to keep that packet in a container so if it does leak it leaks only in the container so you'd need to know a little bit better about what the packet is made of so to know how best to keep it I usually like to try to keep things in glass with a glass stopper because I know that's really inert okay so I think that I've actually been disconnected but I'm still over the phone and I have my last saved question Alex you've been a trooper Robert is curious are aerosol containers a possible problem for explosion yes they are alright there's things under pressure there and I welcome questions if anybody wants to email me alright guys well that's I hope all of them if we missed any please feel free to email us at info at heritagepreservation.org the last course is Thursday at 2 o'clock Valentine's Day we'll see you there thank you Alex well thank you very much Jenny and thank you Hope anytime thanks you guys great session and we'll see you on Thursday okay I'm gonna put my arm down