[Nhcoll-l] Cleaning a roadkill freezer

[William Shepherd]

Hello Matthew,

	I don't have much experience in getting rid of corpse smell from freezers but smells tend to get into everything. Bleach would probably help but when all is said and done you'll probably still smell it to some extent. If there are any fluids or left overs frozen to the freezer, cleaning that out will help too. My best recommendation for the smell would be to clean it well with soap, possibly give it a wipe down with bleach, and then put bowls or pans of baking soda in there for a while. The amount of baking soda will depend on the size of the freezer but you can't have too much. The flow through boxes may work too but you have limited surface area being exposed to the smell. The longer you leave the baking soda in there the better, but this may depend on how quickly you need to get the freezer back into use. In the conservation world baking soda is often used to remove or reduce smell from items with relative success.

William Shepherd
Collections Officer
Swift Current Museum
44 Robert Street West
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
S9H 4M9
Phone: 306-778-4815
Fax: 306-778-4818

Archives: http://sain.scaa.sk.ca/collections/swift-current-museum
Library: https://www.librarything.com/profile/SwiftCurrentMuseum 
Website: http://www.swiftcurrent.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Matthew Becker
Sent: November 21, 2018 8:58 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Cleaning a roadkill freezer

Hi everyone,

We have a freezer where we store dead on recovery animals before sending them to our taxidermist to be mounted for exhibition and storage. We are in the process of the cleaning out this freezer as some of the dead animals at the bottom of the freezer are dated back to the 1990s! 
Getting rid of the old specimens isn't so much of a problem...the real problem is that at some point in the past the museum lost power and the roadkill freezer thawed leaving a horrible dead smell inside (beyond the regular dead smell from the animals).

My question: Does anyone have recommendations for cleaning a roadkill freezer? My inclination is just to go at it with bleach, but if anyone has any better/less toxic suggestions I would very much appreciate it!

Thank you.

Matthew Becker
Curator of Collections
Museum of Natural History + Planetarium
Roger Williams Park
1000 Elmwood Ave., Providence, RI 02907
401-680-7221
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