The Third Seminar on the Survey and Management of Conservation Environment: Chemical Substance Absorbent for Air Cleaning
A series of seminar on the survey and management of conservation environment is organized annually, targeting the curators in charge of conservation for materials in museums and researchers engaged in conservation of cultural properties. These seminars aim to share common understanding on the surveys, assessment methods and improvement of conservation environment, and materials and tools for safe storage. The first and second seminars were organized by the National Center for the Promotion of Cultural Properties (CPCP) and the third was held with a co-sponsorship of CPCP and the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN.)
In the first seminar, titled the Survey and Assessment of Air Environment Using Kitagawa Detection Tubes, usage and appropriate assessment methods of Kitagawa detection tubes, which were widely used for quantitative analysis of chemicals in the air in the exhibition and storage rooms, were explained. In the second seminar, titled Neutral Papers as Materials Used for Document Conservation, the scientific character of paper, characteristics and standards of neutral paper, and appropriate usages of conservation containers made of neutral paper were explained with hands-on practice. Neutral paper is widely used as a material to create document conservation containers in storage and stack rooms.
The theme of the third seminar was chemical substance absorbent. Recently, concerns about chemical substance emission from the building and interior materials and its impact on the documents, as well as methods to improve the situation have attracted people’s attention. However, we are still exploring the best possible ways to clean the air in exhibition and storage rooms. Therefore, we invite a company that develops chemical substance absorbent to explain methods of selecting appropriate chemical substance absorbent, as well as the adsorption phenomena, principle and structure of absorbent, and environmental factors related to adsorption efficiency.
We conducted this seminar with eight participants in person and distributed it online for the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 infection. A total of 30 people participated in the seminar. Participants provided their opinions on the usefulness of the seminar because they could learn from the principle to the practice, stating, “I could well understand the types and mechanisms of gas adsorption,” and “as I understood the principle of gas adsorption and measurement methods, it would get easier to assume the solutions.”
We plan to continue the seminars by setting themes that are necessary for daily practices, from the viewpoint of conservation science.