Spores on textile

Zu-Chun Liao <zchun [at] mail__nmns__edu__tw> writes

>Some scientists come to visit my museum recently, and I was informed
>that lots of spores are on several pieces of textiles. Those spores
>are collected and are going to be examined.  Until now, these spores
>have not bothered my collection; in other words there is no fungi
>problem on those textiles. Should I clean those spores? Is there any
>way to clean those spores up? How could I deal with these spores?

Spores or conidia of fungi are distributed by the air and normally
settle on all surfaces.  They presently are not causing a problem
but their presence on the textiles indicates that if an abnormally
high RH or water damage occurs, they may germinate and then cause a
problem.

The logically way of removing spores or conidia is by vacuuming the
surfaces of the textiles according to conservation standards. After
vacuuming they could be cover with some light clean textile or
felted material such as reemay as a dust cover. In the future these
dust covers can be removed and washed and further vacuuming of the
textiles would not be necessary.

If there is an abnormally large number of spores or conidia on the
textiles an effort should be made to determine the source of these
spores, i.e. association with some mouldy materials in their past,
adjacent mouldy materials or from building materials. etc. The later
two can be determined by a visual inspection of the area or by spore
monitoring.

Mary-Lou Florian
Conservation Scientist
Research Associate, Royal British Columbia Museum


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:55
                 Distributed: Friday, February 8, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-55-002
                                  ***