Life cycle assessment of anoxic treatments for cultural heritage preservation

Abstract

Cultural heritage professionals want to better assess sustainability in order to make environmentally conscious choices in the conservation of art and historic objects. Anoxia is commonly used for pest remediation or long-term storage to slow the degradation of oxygen-sensitive materials or objects. In this work, the environmental impacts of three popular methods for achieving anoxia were compared using life cycle assessment, including product or gas manufacturing, packaging, transportation, and incineration waste management. Scenarios with an oxygen scavenger, nitrogen gas, or argon gas were compared for 4-weeks of pest remediation and one- and five-years of long-term storage. Across all settings and treatment lengths, scenarios exclusively using argon gas to reach anoxia had the greatest environmental impacts, while scenarios that used the oxygen scavenger were typically environmentally preferable. The sensitivity of the results to various treatment design parameters was tested, providing guidance to preservationists in designing new methods and choosing among treatment options.