Objects covered diesel fuel

I am working on general guidelines for disaster response for the
Swiss Government. We are a joint team with the firemen association,
the civil protection agency for cultural property of our government
and conservators with experience in disaster response.

At the moment we are discussing what should be done with
objects/artifacts when there is a fuel film present on water. We all
agree that--as long as the objects are submerged in the water, the
fuel is on the surface. So with some kind of "binder"--in a
practical context of collections e.g. towels or paper--the film
should be removed/reduced before rescuing the submerged objects. But
what should be done with objects having a fuel film on them as the
water was pumped off and the film was able to get "stuck" to
objects? Would such a fuel film be visible at all on the object? How
could it be removed on site? Should it be removed on site? What
happens if such an object dries with the fuel film in place? Will
the fuel evaporate with virtually no residues left in place? Can the
fuel residues be removed later?

As in many cases of larger disasters, there are fuel tanks leaking:
would we have to assume that all objects are affected? Or can this
problem be neglected all together because of the relatively high
evaporation rate of fuel?  in general or only as long as there is
not a substantial fuel problem?

I welcome any comments, experiences (good and bad) as well as maybe
second thoughts you had (long) after something similar happened to
your collection and you now can observe (long term) behaviour of
affected objects.

If you prefer, you are welcome to send me your thought off-line. I
will summarize the offline comments for the list.

Karin von Lerber
Prev art GmbH - Atelier fur Textilkonservierung
CH - 8405 Winterthur
Oberseenerstrasse 93
+41 52 233 12 54
Fax: +41 52 233 12 57


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:35
                 Distributed: Monday, December 8, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-22-35-020
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