Fumigation of collection of land snails

One of our natural history curators here is receiving a donation of
a collection of land snails that has been stored in wooden cabinet
infested with silverfish and wood borer. The land snails have very
sensitive proteinaceous shells that cannot tolerate even small
changes in humidity and can't be frozen to kill the borer. The
curator would like to send the snails to be fumigated with methyl
bromide at the Ministry of Agriculture facilities. Does anyone know
what impact (if any) methyl bromide has on proteinaceous land snail
shells?

I fear heat treatment to kill the borer would be even worse than
freezing, and we are not set up for anoxia at present.

Valerie Tomlinson
Conservator
Auckland Museum
Tamaki Paenga Hira
The Domain, Private Bag 92018
Auckland 1142, New Zealand
+64 9 306 7068


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 25:13
                Distributed: Saturday, September 3, 2011
                       Message Id: cdl-25-13-025
                                  ***