Air quality guidelines for museums, archives, and libraries

Christopher Muller

Purafil, Inc., USA

There has been much discussion as to what properly constitutes a true "preservation environment" with regards to gaseous pollutants. Numerous research efforts have evaluated the effects of gaseous pollutants on materials but they have not been able to postively establish the cause-and-effect relationship between levels of specific pollutants and the amount of damage the occurs or length of time it would take for this damage to occur. An environmental classification scheme has been developed that can effectively gauge - in real time - the destructive potential of an environment and provide an indication to conservators of the risk factor the environment poses towards exposed artifacts and materials. This classification scheme relies on reactivity monitoring to perform environmental assessments and is being used in facilities around the world to assess and maintain the general indoor environment, storage areas, as well as the microclimates inside of display cases and cabinets. This paper will present a summary of some of the more relevant research on gaseous pollutants, discuss reactivity monitoring and the environmental classification scheme in its current form, and results of monitoring from a number of museums

Part 2: Slides from presentation

Author to whom correspondence may be addressed:

Christopher Muller
Purafil, Inc.
2654 Weaver Way
Doraville
Georgia 30340
USA

E-mail: chris_muller@purafil.com