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Hello Jerry and thank very much you for these relevant informations, Air filtration together with negative air pressure devices enabling to isolate pollutant rich collections from permanent working spaces is indeed part of the main tools we can rely on to resolve museum indoor air quality concerns. However, activated carcoal and potassium permanganate has been tested but it quickly reach saturation point (this due to the indoor relative humidity) versus all lipotropic (hydrophobous) airborne persistant pollutants and EDC's. And they show a strong desorption for these contaminants as soon as the airflow is interupted, cancelling most of the benefits of the air purification. There is a more aimed way to catch and neutralize these species of indoor air lipotropic pollutants that are more specifically found in museums and national heritage buildings (although they also may be found in domestic and other occupational indoors too). This new method reproducing and amplifying the depollution ability of forest foliage as an air purification technique is patented, simple and very effective (with first chemical validation ready). I may explain it briefly if you wish. Microclimate Technologies International may be interested, along with managers of museums and national heritage buildings who wish to reduce staff exposure to cumulative harmfull indoor airborne micropollutants. Best regards, Bruno Bordenave ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Shiner" <[log in to unmask]> To: "Indoor Air Quality in Museums and Cultural Heritage Buildings" <[log in to unmask]>; <[log in to unmask]> Cc: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 1:54 PM Subject: Alternatives to Smog-busting paint Hello to the list members: This discussion occurs at an interesting time for Microclimate Technologies, as we are currently developing a series of pollution control devices. Some of these pollutant filters will function as accessories to our microclimate generators, others will be self contained devices. At this point, all our prototypes consist of a combination of pumps, fans and filters to either: 1. recycle enclosure air through a series of pollutant filters and back to the enclosure, or 2 to force filtered air into an enclosure, and then maintain a slight positive pressure balance inside the enclosure We are looking for direction and comments from the conservation community as to the "best case" filtration. That is: Ideally, what would you filter out, and what elements /materials would you use for the filtering? The "best case" scenario will likely be beyond our reach at a reasonable cost (it usually is!), so we are also looking for a compromise solution. At this point we are experimenting with activated charcoal (with potassium permanganate), along with relatively fine particulate filters. We are VERY interested in suggestions from the IAQ group for filtering parameters and devices. Thank you all in advance for your suggestions- any and all comments will be gratefully received!!! - hope to see many of you in Padova next fall js Jerry Shiner Keepsafe Systems; for low oxygen environments, and Microclimate Technologies International; for active humidity and temperature control in museum enclosures [log in to unmask] www.keepsafe.ca www.microclimate.ca 800 683 4696 416 703 4696 -----Original Message----- From: Indoor Air Quality in Museums and Cultural Heritage Buildings Sent: 2/10/2004 6:22 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Smog-busting paint Dear Morten, thank you very much for this interesting information that could be usefull in reducing outdoor airborne pollutants. However, this inovative technology seems to be well adapted to airborne pollutants of Nitrogen-oxides (NOx) type, wich are not specifically the type of airborne contaminant found in Museums : aging preservative chemical residues ranging from mercury dichloride and arseniates for the most ancients to polyaromatic chlorinated molecules that have to be taken into account together with "usual" indoor air contaminants such as PBDE flame retardant degradation by-products, DEHP diethylhydrophtalates from paints and plastics, SCCP small chain chlorinated paraffins and sometimes organotins in paints, foams and rubbers as fungicide and preservative. All these compounds (considering that the HgCl2 and Arseniate exposure risk has been correctly reduced to acceptable levels in case of ancient museological collections in natural history, anthropology, wooden objects etc.) are persistant organic pollutants or endocrin disruptive compounds, which, eventhough they are rather large molecular weight compounds (with low vapor pressure at room temperature) can have fragments cleaved by oxydative degradation (with oxygen, ozone, organic acids, nitrogen oxides) or hydrolytic degradation (with water from relative humidity). The chemicals formed from this degradation are necessarily of lower molecular weight and therefore of much higher vapor pressure (more volatile). They hence may persistantly contaminate the indoor air both by micro & nanoparticulate matter and by molecular elements for the most volatile species. Therefore, eventhough this new technology seem promizing for many potential applications, specific reduction of the indoor air persistant organic pollutants (POP's) and endocrin disruptive compounds (EDC's) can be acheived with other methods that seem to be much more adapted to Museum IAQ concerns. If some of the Museum IAQ discussion list participants are interested in data on specific ways to monitor and control the breathing exposure levels for museums and cultural heritage building staff, please ask. Best regards, Bruno G. Bordenave Researcher in Botany PhD of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris) [log in to unmask] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ryhl-Svendsen, Morten" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 12:59 PM Subject: Smog-busting paint Dear List, In the latest issue of New Scientist (7 Feb 04) there is a story on a new air pollution reducing type of paint. Maybe this could be useful also for museum applications. I have copied the text from the NS website (below) regards Morten ryhl-Svendsen List-owner, IAQ.dk web master