[NHCOLL-L:3316] Re: Recrystallizing naphthalene on natural history

[sam]

I think it's a common problem.
But what to do about it?
You do want to remove the crystals,
as it's a health issue.  Can't just brush
or blow it off, as that would mostly like
leave some remaining on the specimens.

Try putting the bats in a drying cabinet.
This is not so much to lower the RH, but
rather to raise the ambient temperature
enough to cause  the naphthalene to
sublimate off your specimens.  If it works,
it might take a while, so use a common
specimen for an experiment.  If the crystals
start shrinking, test it when you can no longer
see any white bloom.  You don't want to
keep the specimens at an elevated
temperature any longer than necessary,
but you don't want to leave any invisible
residual stuff remaining either.

Good luck!

Sam Sumida
Avinet

(Prolly people that have experience and expertise
with the problem will weigh in here soon, but, oh well,
I took the time to write this up, so I'm hitting the send
button anyway.)
______________________________________

At 09:29 AM 2/2/2007, you wrote:
>A large number of the bats exhibit a white crystalline powder on the outer 
>surface of their skin, particularly around the legs and wings.


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