Photographic negatives damaged by oil

Cheryl Jackson wrote via Rachel Wetzel:

>    A couple of years ago I would have recommended Rachel purchase
>    some Kodak Film Cleaner, but it is no longer available as it is
>    an ozone depleting substance.  Kodak Film Cleaner is (was) 1,1,1
>    trichloroethane, though, so you could try washing the film with
>    that.

and Douglas Nishimura wrote:

>Just a note of clarification. Only the motion picture film cleaner
>with lubricant was 1,1,1-trichloroethane and since it contained the
>lubricant, it was only used by mp people. The other Kodak film
>cleaner for still negatives consisted of
>1,1,2-trichloro-1,2,2-triflouroethane (Freon 113) (which is why it
>was discontinued) and n-heptane (in approximately a ratio of 70%
>Freon 113 to 30% n-heptane.)
>
>Many chlorinated hydrocarbons are used in industry as grease cutters
>(oil solvents) and 1,1,1-trichloroethane should work. While none of
>the chlorinated solvents are particularly nice to use, unlike many,
>1,1,1-trichloroethane hasn't been classified as an occupational
>carcinogen (as far as I know. 1,1,2-trichloroethane, on the other
>hand, has been.)

Cheryl Jackson appears to be correct when she referred to Kodak Film
Cleaner (cat 405 5984), used for cleaning photographic film. The
container is labelled as containing 1,1,1-trichloroethane.  It may
also contain stabilisers, however this is not indicated on the
label. There was no evidence of lubricants such as silicones and
waxes in the cleaner.

The film cleaner that Douglas Nishimura describes, could be Kodak
Movie Film Cleaner.  This was 1,1,1-trichloroethane with a
lubricant. This film cleaner is for instance described in Kodak
Publication H-23.

In this Laboratory we rarely use any chlorinated solvents for this
purpose and use hydrocarbons such as heptane, hexane, cyclohexane
and even light naphthas (60-80C).

Ian Fulton and Adrian Lautenbach
Photographic Conservation Sub-section
Australian War Memorial
Canberra Australia

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:69
                Distributed: Tuesday, February 23, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-12-69-008
                                  ***