[Nhcoll-l] Cleaning Taxid Mounts with Rodent Droppings

[Kathryn Makos]

Dear Kristen,

As an industrial hygienist, I cannot comment on your collection care
treatment methods, but you first need to concern yourself with safe handling
of those rodent droppings.  To prevent Hanta virus or other disease
transmission (or simply asthmatic-like or pulmonary reaction to the dust),
you'll need to take precautions not to overly aerosolize the droppings and
debris while you're sweeping up, use gloves etc, maybe clean storage
surfaces with a disinfectant as much as the collection area can withstand,
and dispose properly.  

But you are in luck that you belong to a University with a fully staffed
ES&H department that surely can help you through this.

Best regards,
Kathryn Makos, MPH CIH
(Ret) Smithsonian OSHEM
Research Collaborator, NMNH


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2019 18:38:00 +0000
From: "Nicholson, Kirsten E" <nicho2ke at cmich.edu>
To: "nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu" <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] best methods for cleaning taxidermy mounts when...
Message-ID:
	
<DM6PR05MB648948C6C8F5FF939A08AF31936D0 at DM6PR05MB6489.namprd05.prod.outlook.
com>
	
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

So we had a rather upsetting mouse invasion to a display case offsite that
held several mammal and bird mounts inside. I'm going to hazard a guess that
these were deer mice rather than house mice because they seemed to be more
after the cotton batting on the inside of the birds. They dismantled nearly
all the bird mounts and didn't seem to touch any of the mammal mounts. That
said, the mammals had mouse droppings on their stands, but otherwise,
appeared to be untouched.


After carefully looking them over, we decided to brush off obvious signs of
mouse activity, bagged them up and placed them in our freezers for a week.
My thought after that was to perhaps spray them with EtOH and hepa-vac them
while using a gentle brush. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best
way to clean these (or would you just dispose of them or what)?


Thanks for any assistance!


Kirsten


[CMU]


Kirsten E. Nicholson, Ph.D (she, her, hers)

Professor | Biology Dept & Institute for Great Lakes Research | 2104
Biosciences

Natural History Curator | Museum of Cultural & Natural History | 103 Rowe

Central  Michigan University  |  Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859

P: 989-774-3758 or 3829  |  F: 989-774-2612 or 3462

E: kirsten.nicholson at cmich.edu

Office Hours Spring 2019: Tues. & Thurs., 12-2pm, 2104 Biosciences