Ozone treatments

James Druzik <jdruzik<-a t->getty< . >edu> writes

> In short, it's far better to consider odor from fire/smoke damaged
> objects to be a self-correcting problem and an opportunity to remind
> administrators whenever they smell it,  for both good fire
> suppression and disaster preparedness, risk assessment, and chemical
> filtration in air conditioning.

James Druzik's cautionary message re ozone to treat odors may be
more applicable to works of art than to large quantities of archival
records, where a mass treatment is often necessary.  Earlier this
year, I sent about 600 large volumes of court records and about 70
record cartons of loose papers for ozone treatment.  About 1/4 of
the records were also wet and were also freeze dried.  The volumes
were also vacuumed by hand to remove dirt and dust.

The materials had been discovered in a damp, leaky basement and
reeked.  The materials had been in the basement for at least 20-30
years.  We needed to move them out of the basement and into our
clean, odor-free record storage center, in which several staff
members have work stations.

The treatment removed virtually all traces of the odor.  No damage
was detected as a result of treatment.  There were a few
black-and-white photos mixed in with the records and even they
showed no effects, even though ozone is known to be damaging to
photographs.

While we didn't do any scientific tests to measure, for example,
fading of ink or loss of paper strength, there certainly were no
obvious deleterious effects of the ozone treatment.

Gary D. Saretzky
Coordinator, Public History Internship Program,
Rutgers University and Archivist, Monmouth County, New Jersey

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:46
               Distributed: Wednesday, November 19, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-11-46-001
                                  ***