John Havermans
TNO Built Environment & Geosciences. Department Indoor Air Quality and Health. PO Box 49. 2600 AA Delft, The Netherlands (e-mail john.Havermans@tno.nl )
Keywords: chemical-pollutants, indoor-air-quality, cultural-heritage, environmental chemistry
Introduction
At present, 20 years of European Research Initiatives are being carried out in the field of Cultural Heritage. The main goal is to reinforce the scientific basis for the establishment of measures and methodologies for the protection and rehabilitation of the European Cultural Heritage.
One of the instruments to reach this goal is networking. Networking activities can be found in the European Framework programmes but also in COST actions. COST, European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research, is one of the longest-running instrument supporting co-operation among scientist and researchers across Europe.
On June 28, 2006, COST accepted a new action, COST Action D42“Chemical Interactions between Cultural Artefacts and Indoor Environment (EnviArt)”.
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| Paper deterioration Cause: acidic pollutants initiated hydrolyses. |
Historical Ship & bronze canon deterioration Cause: 800.000 moisty visitors initiated salt formation followed by acid formation and fenton-type reactions. |
Summary
The conservation of cultural heritage is a duty for all nations, due to ethical reasons. Only very slowly decision makers start to understand that caring about cultural heritage and especially about museum, library and archival collections is also a valuable long-term investment for their economy and in the interest of their citizens.
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Simplified schedule deterioration organic polymers (Havermans 1995) |
The quality of the indoor environment is decisive for the preservation of a collection. Sensitive materials, displayed in an aggressive environment may suffer from chemical attack of pollutants, leading to irreversible damage within only a few weeks of inappropriate exposure.
Environmental monitoring campaigns in storage rooms, galleries, showcases and libraries are performed, wherever skilled staff and sufficient resources are available. However, in order to establish the concept of “risk assessment” for the more sensitive categories of objects, there is a profound need to improve the knowledge of the effects of the indoor environment on the ageing of cultural artefacts. The interpretation of results on the impact of pollutants on the degradation of the artefacts (in combination with other environmental parameters, such as humidity and temperature) and consequently, any appropriate measure to prevent damage requires a close collaboration between multidisciplinary key players: chemists concerned with environmental effects and material degradation, conservators, conservation scientists, art historians, curators, environmental engineers, show case manufacturers, and even politicians and decision makers concerned with international standards.
Within the EU Research Initiatives (1986 – 2006) 106 projects have been dedicated to cultural heritage. Among these projects, 20 were dedicated to the role of the indoor environment and the deterioration of cultural artefacts.
This COST Action D42 shall establish the links between the Old and New European Research Initiatives and broadens it with new sections and co-operation initiatives. Aim of COST D42 is to explore chemical interactions between cultural artefacts and typical indoor environmental conditions through field studies and laboratory experiments and transfer the results into preventive conservation practice.
The Action focuses on the chemical impact of pollutants on materials, thus also considering physical and environmental aspects, materials technology, chemical analytics, emission and standardisation. Within this action (duration 48 months) there will be 3 working groups active:
- Working group 1: Preservation (with task group 1 ‘degradation and stabilization’ and task group 2 ‘Prevention’).
- Working group 2: Analysis (with task group 1 ‘materials’ and task group 2 ‘environment’)
- Working group 3: Guidelines (with task group 1 ‘methods’ and task group 2 ‘storage and health’)
Follow this link for the detail page of the working groups!