[Nhcoll-l] Cleaning a roadkill freezer

[Gali Beiner]

We had our own mammal freezer failure, in plural. We moved all specimens
into closed bags (for skeleton retrieval) in new freezers, hosed down the
previous freezers, did them over several times with bleach and disposed of
them. During work, we wore full body tyvek suits, goggles and masks, and
double labs gloves on top of which we wore heavy duty rubber gloves. The
biohazard potential is simply huge.

Gali Beiner (ACR)
Conservator, Palaeontology Lab
National Natural History Collections
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Berman Building, Edmond J. Safra campus, Givat Ram
Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Fax. 972-2-6585785
gali.beiner at mail.huji.ac.il
http://nnhc.huji.ac.il/

בתאריך יום ד׳, 21 בנוב׳ 2018, 16:58, מאת Matthew Becker <
m.becker at musnathist.com>:

> 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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