[Nhcoll-l] Freezing as preventative pest treatmenet

[Dirk Neumann]

Hi Tonya,

my personal thoughts are that this depends a bit on potentially 
different expansion coefficients of the slides embedding agents and 
cover slips and potentially unwanted condensation effects when moving 
the slides out of the freezers again.

Birger Neuhaus at the MfN in Berlin published a really comprehensive 
piece on the conservation of microslides which is available here 
<https://www.biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4322.1.1>

He basically says the same cautioning that mounting media might suffer 
from shrinkage and also the glass itself (depending on the quality 
especially in historic objects) might be damaged from this harsh 
temperature shock.

Hope this helps
Dirk

****

"/Recently, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin established in the frame of 
a pest management program a quarantine and freezing station for incoming 
parcels with special attention to entomological items returned from the 
borrower. Material from wet collections and microscope slides are 
excluded from this practice, because both mounting media (Brown 1997, p. 
6) and coverslip seals containing polymers (Shashoua 2008, p. 203) would 
suffer from shrinkage or formation of large hexagonal ice crystals, 
which pierce cell membranes and the like during the freezing process 
(Florian 1990; Allington & Sherlock 2007a, 2007b). The latter authors 
demonstrated that damage occurred already after freezing coverslip seals 
just a few times. The consequences of these processes have already been 
recognized at the Natural History Museum in London (Brown 1997)./"



Am 15.04.2021 um 00:59 schrieb Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace):
> Hello all,
>
> I am wondering if any of you have insight into freezing everything in 
> a collection before moving in to a new building. Specifically, I am 
> wondering about things like slides. Are histology, etc slides safe to 
> be frozen at -30 to -40C? Is there anything else that I should be 
> thinking about?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tonya
>
> Dr Tonya Haff
> Collection Manager
> Australian National Wildlife Collection
>
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-- 


Dirk Neumann

Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
neumann(a)snsb.de

Postanschrift:

Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Zoologische Staatssammlung München
Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Storage
Münchhausenstr. 21
81247 München

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http://www.zsm.mwn.de/sektion/ichthyologie-home/

---------

Dirk Neumann

Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
neumann(a)snsb.de

postal address:

Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Storage
Muenchhausenstr. 21
81247 Munich (Germany)

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