[Nhcoll-l] Freezing as preventative pest treatmenet

Thu Apr 15 06:59:51 EDT 2021

Yes, definitely don’t freeze slides! You will create all sorts of problems!

With all good wishes, 

Simon Moore MIScT, RSci, FLS, ACR
Conservator of Natural Sciences and Cutlery Historian,

www.natural-history-conservation.com

> On 15 Apr 2021, at 11:25, Hawks, Catharine <HawksC at si.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi Tonya
>  
> I concur with Dirk – there is a greater risk of damage to the slides from freezing than from pests.
>  
> Cathy
> Catharine Hawks (she, her, hers)
> Conservator
> Collections Program
> MRC 170 Rm M85-J
> National Museum of Natural History
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> From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Dirk Neumann
> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:54 AM
> To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Freezing as preventative pest treatmenet
>  
> External Email - Exercise Caution
> 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
>  
> 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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