SUBMITTED PHOTO THOMAS HULIT
Some of the artifacts in the museum collections at the Esplanade have toxic elements, which means staff take seriously the phrase “handle with care.”
Toxic: from the Latin toxicum meaning “poison.”
Sitting on a dark shelf, waiting. Causing no harm, an old, old bottle sits. The label painted on the side reads in a fancy script Liq. Arsenic. A gloved hand reaches up onto the dim shelf and with great care lifts down the toxic treasure.
While this might read like the beginning of a dime-store mystery novel, it really is what happens on a fairly regular basis in the Esplanade museum collections. We have almost 25,000 artifacts in the museum, and some of them are toxic. We need to keep this in mind as we work with the artifacts, particularly when handling them. In order to stay safe, museum staff need to know what the artifacts are made of and whether or not they need special handing.
In the past society was much less concerned with the toxicity of everyday items. In the 19th century many items either contained poisons or used toxic elements during manufacture. Victorian era wallpaper and fabric dyes often contained arsenic, particularly green and sometimes purple. If your great-grandmother’s quilt has panels of green in it, it may have trace quantities of arsenic in the dye. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the quilt, but the trace elements are there. These dyes were often poor and would fade with time, so the cloth may now look very pale green or off-white in colour.
Lead was also very common in daily life in early Medicine Hat. It was used in everything from pigments to water pipes to early cosmetics, as part of paint formulas, for bearings in mechanical items, in stained glass windows, toy soldiers and ammunition for firearms, and much more. We now know how much it can damage our health, so it isn’t used as often as it was in the past. Still, lead isn’t too much of an issue if one takes suitable precautions.
There are many other potential toxins in a museum collection such as the mercury in old thermometers, old tetracycline fire extinguishers (the kind with the liquid in a glass sphere), children’s chemistry sets (when they still contained all the really interesting chemicals). At the Esplanade we even have an extensive collection of the chemicals used by Altaglass to make different colours of glass. They are stored safely and we have the MSDS safety data sheets on hand in case we need them.
In addition to the poisons in the collection we also must consider the biological toxins. The biggest biological problems we face at the Esplanade Museum are mold and mouse droppings. Sometimes the items that are donated have been poorly stored and need cleaning before we can take them into the collections. If they are very dirty and difficult to clean, we probably just won’t accept them.
We use protective equipment when necessary, such as respirators and safety glasses and especially cotton or nitrile gloves (we never use latex gloves because they contain too much sulphur, which can harm the artifacts). I really enjoy researching and working with the museum collections, but safety really does need to come first. Paying attention to the objects that surround us is always important, and even more so when they contain 150 years of potential toxins!
Thomas Hulit is museum technician at the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre.
