Detecting emissions from museums’ display materials

Abstract

Before a museum displays a piece of art, conservators need to test every new material used to build the enclosure. The wrong paint, fabric, or wood can off-gas volatile compounds that could harm the objects it’s meant to protect. Museums typically test for these harmful emissions by conducting an Oddy test , which exposes copper, lead, or silver strips—used as stand-ins for the artwork—to one of the materials in question. But the process takes 28 days and is typically conducted at elevated temperatures and humidities, which are not representative of indoor environments. Sarah Styler, an atmospheric chemist at McMaster University, and graduate student Kay McCallum developed an alternative to the Oddy test that can produce results in less than 3 h and under more realistic conditions. McCallum presented the new technique during a poster session at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2022 in Chicago. The new method uses a