Thanks, everyone, your responses so far have been very helpful. What questions should I ask when making inquiries about freezer trucks or CO2 bubbles? I don’t believe either services are readily available locally, so I’ll have to look farther afield.
Dee Dee A. Stubbs-Lee, MA, CAPC Conservator / Restauratrice New Brunswick Museum 277 Douglas Avenue Saint John, New Brunswick E2K 1E5 Canada (506) 643-2341 From: 'bugman22' via MuseumPests [mailto:pestlist@googlegroups.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 2:20 PM To: pestlist@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [PestList] RE: IPM for huge incoming collection of mounted mammals Dee - Having worked on Teddy Roosevelt's animal collection at the Smithsonian, the first thing you have to do is test the fur of the mounts for the presence of arsenic. If they are old, they probably have been treated with arsenic and will be protected from any kind of insect attack. Of those which have not been treated with arsenic, I would recommend a freezer truck or 40' container. I've rented them in the past for disinfestation purposes. They can maintain -20 degrees F. Leave the items on pallets so the air will circulate around them freely. Three days should be sufficient. Tom Parker -----Original Message----- From: Anderson, Gretchen <anders...@carnegiemnh.org<mailto:anders...@carnegiemnh.org>> To: pestlist@googlegroups.com<mailto:pestlist@googlegroups.com> <pestlist@googlegroups.com<mailto:pestlist@googlegroups.com>> Sent: Wed, Sep 9, 2020 12:48 pm Subject: [PestList] RE: IPM for huge incoming collection of mounted mammals Hi Dee, Don’t you just love the challenges of a natural history museum. This one sounds like a doozy! Is there any chance for you to visit the collection before it arrives? In that way you could see if the extent and activity of the mold and do a better assessment of the needs. Then you could do a few tests to see if the mounts are predominantly laced with arsenic. Ok – First, to your question about methods. Since your curator wants to fumigate – see what is actually legal to do in your area – that might just answer the question. As you know, traditional fumigation is not only a human health problem, but can also cause trouble with the specimens. Find out what fumigant would be used, if you can. Get the SDS ….etc. I would not recommend fumigation. Have you considered anoxic? Perhaps a CO2 bubble – That will take longer than freezing, but it is an option. You would probably have to rent or find a company who does it. My preference is for thermal control. Either freezing or heat. The preparation is the same – double bag things (that is a lot of plastic!), but both methods work extremely well. The advantage to heating is that it takes less time. And, there are more pest management companies who are set up for a heat treatment now – they use it for bedbugs now. Done properly, heating and freezing is still the most effective (both cost, safety of people and collections, and kill rate) method. Now on to Isolation/storage. Is the room you describe going to be the ‘permanent” storage for the specimens? It sounds like it. The best would be to use thermal treatment and then move them into the cleaned space. 1. Prep the space – clean, seal all cracks, add sweeps to the doors. Pay specific attention to the walls shared by other collections. 2. Monitor prior to moving taxidermy in. See what is present and address the situation through housekeeping and improved seals. 3. Determine how you are going to most efficiently store collections. I am sure you have been thinking about this! Keep things off the floor (if possible) so that you can clean under them – especially important for monitoring. Hang whatever you can on the walls – the head and shoulder mounts are ideal. Another method is to attach each one to a pallet (or several to a pallet) and put them on warehouse shelving. Create plastic sheeting containment for them. I did this by attaching them to a wood pallet what had a deck on it (it was before plastic pallets were available). Attachment was a few screws into the backboard of the mount. A wooden frame was attached and then stretched with plastic sheeting. Blunder traps were placed inside. Full body mounts were done the same way, with their bolts being attached to the pallet. This made them easy to handle. In your situation you might not have to seal in plastic. 4. Ongoing monitoring. – You will have to do it whether or not you run the specimens through thermal treatment or not. Set a monitoring and housekeeping schedule and stick to it! Pros and cons of isolation/monitoring only – Pro: This is the easiest and overtly cheapest way to do it. You have to have a plan as to when an infestation is found. Also, you will have to do a detailed exam of everything as it is coming in, and possibly clean as things are coming in? Cons: There are no natural barriers in the room so it will be harder to isolate if there is an infestation. There is no baseline of condition or infestation. Cleaning will be an immediate priority. Email me if you want to talk through some scenarios. Gretchen Gretchen Anderson Conservator Carnegie Museum of Natural History 5800 Baum Blvd. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 anders...@carnegiemnh.org<mailto:anders...@carnegiemnh.org> (412)665-2607 From: pestlist@googlegroups.com<mailto:pestlist@googlegroups.com> <pestlist@googlegroups.com<mailto:pestlist@googlegroups.com>> On Behalf Of Dee Stubbs-Lee Sent: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 10:35 AM To: pestlist@googlegroups.com<mailto:pestlist@googlegroups.com> Subject: [PestList] IPM for huge incoming collection of mounted mammals The New Brunswick Museum has acquired a very large collection of over 400 mounted mammals. Some are very large species. About 60% are head and shoulder mounts, the other 40% are full body taxidermy mounts. Some have some associated diorama materials. These will be coming to us from an off-site, non-museum out of town location, where I am told they are densely stored in about a 1700 square foot space on private property. I have not seen this collection in person, only from photos. I am they need to be moved to the museum’s collections storage imminently, possibly within a few weeks and with as short as possible a processing turnaround time. The space that is being considered for housing them is the museum’s current preparation workshop, which is about 1780 square feet. We are no longer able to use this room for preparation work (wood working, painting, etc.) due to ventilation not meeting current health and safety guidelines. The workshop has direct access to a freight elevator and to an exterior single size door. It has a concrete floor and is located on the museum’s basement level. The adjacent collections storage rooms house our most pest-vulnerable collections: textiles and ethnographic collections. This workshop room is located directly below the conservation lab and loading bay. We have a small walk in freezer for IPM that is used by all museum departments, but this is not adequate to process this large acquisition, and many of the mounts may not physically fit in any case. The curator in charge of the project would like to avoid hiring freezer trucks, and prefers fumigation. These mounts are from within the last 50 years or so, so I am hoping that arsenic and related hazards may be less of an issue than with older mounts, although I worry about health and safety aspects of fumigating on site, especially as my office is immediately above this space. In addition to my pest related concerns (mainly protecting our other collections), I have been told that some of the mounts have visible mold growth as well as a musty odour, so these are challenging on many fronts I am looking for advice on freezing vs fumigation (onsite or off site) vs inspection and HEPA vacuuming only, and for dealing with this on an extremely tight time frame and with extremely limited resources. I have never dealt with an IPM project of comparable size and scope before, so all advice is appreciated! Dee Dee A. Stubbs-Lee, MA, CAPC Conservator / Restauratrice New Brunswick Museum 277 Douglas Avenue Saint John, New Brunswick E2K 1E5 Canada (506) 643-2341 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MuseumPests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pestlist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:pestlist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. 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