[Nhcoll-l] Museum Study Skins and Mitigating Formalin

[Duke Rogers]

Hi all,

I have a question about how to mitigate formalin on museum study skins (bird and mammal specimens).  As background, administrators at Brigham Young University Hawaii decided to close the small natural history museum associated with their university and as a result, vertebrate research specimens have been dispersed to other institutions.  BYU Provo received ~1,700 mammal specimens including  ~500 skins and 1,200 skull/skeleton only preparations as well as ~4,000 bird specimens.  Unfortunately, the “fumigant” used in the Steel Fixture cases was powdered formalin.  Apparently formalin powder was used this way for decades.  The powder was removed from the museum cases prior to shipment from Hawaii to Utah.  However, the wooden trays, specimen boxes and of course, the specimens themselves are permeated with the stuff.  I can replace the wooden drawers with metal ones and put the skulls/skeletons in new containers.  I am also considering soaking all the skeletal material in water to get rid of residual formalin.  I can also cleanse the inside of the metal cases.  However, I am not sure how to deal with the museum study skins themselves.  Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Duke
_______________________
Duke S. Rogers
Emeritus Professor of Biology
Emeritus Curator of Mammals

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20230828/a9ccf99e/attachment.html>