Books with mercury salts

Eugenia Stamatopoulou <stamatopoulou [at] deste__gr> writes

>We found in our collections some books treated in the past for
>desinfection with mercury salts. We have an urgent need to clean up
>the residues of the salts and for this reason we request any
>information about how to proceed and if anybody has developed a
>technique for this (special filters etc.), since the mercury is an
>extremely hazardous material for human health.

They could talk to a company called PSAnalytical in England. They
make the finest mercury analyzers in the world. Specifically I
recommend they speak with Dr. Warren Corns.
<URL:http://www.psanalytical.com/>

If they could determine the air borne mercury concentration they may
be able to avoid costly clean up procedures if the concentrations
are below acceptable limits. If they need to survey contamination on
solids this can be done as well, again in order to reduce the cost
of rectifying the situation by targeting the specific books that
need to be cleaned.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:27
                 Distributed: Sunday, November 9, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-22-27-007
                                  ***