[Nhcoll-l] Freezing as preventative pest treatmenet

Thu Apr 15 09:31:38 EDT 2021

Hi Tonya,

I also agree. I know with some of our collections we have slide label deterioration in some places due to silverfish and psocid activity. The risks are the same as explained previously, and we never freeze the wet mounts we have in addition to the solid mounts, but they can be damaged by pests.

If you want to treat the slides because there is evidence of label damage due to pest activity and anoxia treatment would be an alternative. It is longer and more expensive, but would take care of pests and be less risk to the slides. (Or so I am led to believe but welcome a conservator to jump in and correct me.)

Good luck
Genevieve

=================================================
Genevieve E. Tocci (she, her, hers)
Senior Curatorial Technician
Harvard University Herbaria
22 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138  U.S.A.
Phone: 617-495-1057  Fax: 617-495-9484
glewis-g at oeb.harvard.edu

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Simon Moore
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 7:00 AM
To: Hawks, Catharine <HawksC at si.edu>
Cc: NHCOLL-new <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Freezing as preventative pest treatmenet

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.natural-2Dhistory-2Dconservation.com&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=EYdhJ0HrhAMcA2aVQ-I4N7lml00zxsXPbHYeP7843No&m=lvi0MisllqzfU8popo8nBgTkYSagykxvs2nPgG_TqdU&s=HTPlO9gj_fWeuAZyHFO4H8OskJfvz-kmZRi5HlAYCAI&e=>

[cid:image001.png at 01D731D9.E56959F0][cid:image002.jpg at 01D731D9.E56959F0]

On 15 Apr 2021, at 11:25, Hawks, Catharine <HawksC at si.edu<mailto: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
10th Street & Constitution Ave NW
Washington DC 20560
w 202.633.0835 or 4041  c 703 200 4370
hawksc at si.edu<mailto:hawksc at si.edu>

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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

_______________________________________________
Nhcoll-l mailing list
Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l

_______________________________________________
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
Advertising on NH-COLL-L is inappropriate.

--
<image001.png>

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

Besuchen Sie unsere Sammlung:
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)

Visit our section at:
http://www.zsm.mwn.de/sektion/ichthyologie-home/

_______________________________________________
Nhcoll-l mailing list
Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l

_______________________________________________
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
Advertising on NH-COLL-L is inappropriate.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20210415/044ce37c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 29034 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20210415/044ce37c/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 19375 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20210415/044ce37c/attachment.jpg>