Plastic films

I am forwarding this on behalf of a colleague who is not on this list.
Responses can be sent either to him or to me. I have sent him some info
but thought that he might benefit from hearing from more than one person.
Cheers, Sally Shelton

    From: jerry_bode<-a t->wcr< . >ucsd< . >edu
    Subject: Plastic wrap

    Sally,

    I am going crazy trying to find out physical and chemical
    properties of commercial plastic wraps.  No one seems to know.
    Steve had a nice handout that showed water and gas
    permeabilities of various wraps, but I would like a more
    extensive listing if one exists.

    One question about the handout.  When they say that Saran Wrap
    emits chloride (or is it 'chlorine?), what is meant by this?
    What form does the chloride take?  I noticed the same notation
    in some info I got off the web, but there was no explanation as
    to what is meant by the term.

    The reason for my interest is the new ODP Curator is wanting to
    eliminate storing wet sponges {SYS note: biological sponges, not
    the kitchen kind} with our cores and their periodic rewetting by
    either wrapping them with a plastic wrap or placing them in a
    sealed plastic tube.  I am concerned as he seems to be
    uninterested in running tests prior to encapsulating our entire
    collection and would like to gather at least some published data
    to ease at least my state of mind.

    My contact with distributors and manufactures have been less
    than satisfactory with them passing me on to people who are
    using them just for this purpose.  They, too, have no idea of
    what the long term effects are.  One person even said he wasn't
    too worried as he could go out and resample as his were cores
    from lake bottoms and easily resampled.

    Jerry

Sally Shelton
Director, Collections Care and Conservation
San Diego Natural History Museum
P.O. Box 1390
San Diego, California  92112
619-232-3821
Fax: 619-232-0248

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:15
                  Distributed: Friday, August 8, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-11-15-014
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