chemicals, poisons, toxins

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? That's what I spent yesterday learning about in my collections class. Who knew there were so many bad things floating around in museums. I figured we would just be learning about the poor arsenic-lined taxedermied animals common from the 1700's up to the 1970's in natural history museums, but there are far more problems than just arsenic floating around, some mostly because of museums (stereotypical) status as old places and the resulting old practices that we've now learned are not so good for humans or the collections. We've got pesticides, DDT, Hantavirus, lead, tetanus, old stored medicines, radiation (from some rocks and minerals in collections), fungal diseases, mercuric chloride (the stuff that makes you mad as a hatter) and asbestos, just to name a few. And did you know copy machines release ozone (which is a respiratory irritant)? And if you are working in an office you should not have your desk right next to the thing? I didn't.  (It really made me think about how many bad chemicals we use even in our daily life. I now feel the need to go live outside just to escape it all.)

After we spent an hour discussing OSHA in the classroom yesterday, our class took a tour of KU's Natural History Museum. We will be doing a project this semester that consists mostly of cataloging and cleaning BIRDS! Long-dead ones that is, that have been on display at the museum for some time now. We went back to one of the storage rooms and were taking a look at all the pretty feathered things, when I look up and resting up in the rafters is a GIANT alligator! I'd never seen one so big. It, too, had visited the taxidermist long ago and was not in very good shape. Since we saw the underside, it had a long slice down the middle of it to frame the skin, and it was not closed. Not a very appealing sight to begin with, but I pointed it out to my friend, and all she and I could think of was the arsenic we had just heard about was surely just floating down to us...

Now, this probably wasn't the case since the people working in this museum are the same ones who had just warned us of the health hazards, so hopefully this alligator was not as old as it looked!

Speaking of birds, the Smithsonian actually has a Feather Identification Lab at the National Museum of Natural History, created during the 1960's. Currently, one of their projects is to use the remains from bird strikes on airplanes to research patterns and identify species; this information is then used to modify habitats surrounding airfields.

Smithsonian bird collection

Side note: I love the Google.com design today (in honor Jules Verne's birthday)