By Shin Maekawa and Kerstin Elert

Museums throughout the world face the challenge of finding nontoxic methods to control insect pests. This book focuses on practical rather than theoretical issues in the use of oxygen-free environments, presenting a detailed, hands-on guide to the use of oxygen-free environments in the eradication of museum insect pests.

This volume discusses the use of nitrogen as the inert gas used to replace oxygen, as well as the use of a few specific types of containers as treatment chambers. An initial chapter explains the general advantages anoxia offers museum conservators. Subsequent chapters discuss methods and materials, small-scale anoxia using an oxygen absorber, large-scale anoxia using external nitrogen sources, and protocols for insect eradication using nitrogen anoxia. Appendices include a list of manufacturers and suppliers of material and equipment used in nitrogen anoxia.

Shin Maekawa, coauthor of Inert Gases in the Control of Museum Insect Pests and Oxygen-Free Museum Cases, both from Getty Publications, is a senior scientist at the GCI. Kerstin Elert is a research fellow at the University of Granada, Spain.

Tools for Conservation series
224 pages, 8 1/2 x11 inches
6 color and 50 b/w illustrations 25 line drawings
ISBN 0-89236-693-1, paper, $60.00

This book can be ordered online by visiting www.getty.edu/bookstore/.