"Asking a curator if their museum has problems with mold is like asking if they have a sexually transmitted disease. It’s contagious, it’s taboo, and it carries the inevitable implication someone has done something naughty."
[...]
"These molds—called xerophiles—can survive in dry, hostile environments such as volcano calderas and scorching deserts, and to the chagrin of curators across the world, they seem to have developed a taste for cultural heritage. They devour the organic material that abounds in museums—from fabric canvases and wood furniture to tapestries. They can also eke out a living on marble statues and stained-glass windows by eating micronutrients in the dust that accumulates on their surfaces. And global warming seems to be helping them spread."
[...]
"That leaves conservators with only a basic tool kit for containing a fungal outbreak: quarantine infested objects, vacuum off the worst of the mold, and treat affected items with ethanol when possible. That’s what they ultimately had to do at the Roskilde Museum, the Danish institution where Bastholm found the xerophiles."
Gamma rays are used to sterilize medical devices, but are also a bit damaging to materials. Maybe the damage is still less than what the mold would cause though...
Between NASA discovering that their clean rooms have become a haven for very specialized microbes precisely because of the unique conditions, and our now decades-long battle with resistant strains of staphylococcus among other species, we’re eventually going to have to accept that nature is highly adaptive and can only be controlled by natural means.
There’s always a virus, bacteriophage, or other exotic little life (adjacent) form somewhere out there that’s harmless to us but would love the chance to feast on whatever’s ailing us. The technological challenge will be that of collecting, indexing, and archiving a massive repository of such highly-specialized specimens. There’s no such thing as a broad-spectrum antibiotic equivalent in the world of phages because most of them evolved to prey on a single species of bacteria.
Over a long enough timeline, we will almost certainly see resistance emerge in this strategy as well, but such is the nature of nature. We’re rapidly depleting our arsenal of antibiotics and desperately need to shift tactics before even the strongest ones stop working. As it is now, the only antibiotics that work on the most resistant strains of staphylococcus are themselves so intense that many patients die from the antibiotic rather than the bacterial infection.
We're gonna have to start using modified or engineered bacteria and molds ourselves to combat the growing problems we're facing; It's pretty clear these days that attempting any kind of isolation from the natural world isn't a viable tactic in the long run, for us or our preservation attempts.
Kinda obvious in hindsight, but money speaks; And we wish it'd shut up.
Hopefully they'll figure this problem out before something important is lost; I imagine it is motivating and cheaper to find a solution than losing something irreplaceable.
Natures most important job is to consume old things to make space for new things. Nature was getting nowhere and had to send in the extremophile team to clean up
Technical_savoir | a day ago
Makes you think about all the private art collections that don’t even have museum grade controlled environments
scrumplic | a day ago
"Asking a curator if their museum has problems with mold is like asking if they have a sexually transmitted disease. It’s contagious, it’s taboo, and it carries the inevitable implication someone has done something naughty."
[...]
"These molds—called xerophiles—can survive in dry, hostile environments such as volcano calderas and scorching deserts, and to the chagrin of curators across the world, they seem to have developed a taste for cultural heritage. They devour the organic material that abounds in museums—from fabric canvases and wood furniture to tapestries. They can also eke out a living on marble statues and stained-glass windows by eating micronutrients in the dust that accumulates on their surfaces. And global warming seems to be helping them spread."
[...]
"That leaves conservators with only a basic tool kit for containing a fungal outbreak: quarantine infested objects, vacuum off the worst of the mold, and treat affected items with ethanol when possible. That’s what they ultimately had to do at the Roskilde Museum, the Danish institution where Bastholm found the xerophiles."
Article is pretty interesting overall.
SouthCarpet6057 | a day ago
What about displaying the artefacts in a nitrogen atmosphere? It's an easy fix, they are already behind glass.
Genoism_science | a day ago
very interesting. thank you
doveup | 23 hours ago
Or for artifacts that can tolerate water, is this mold one which Hypochlorus kills?
antiduh | a day ago
I wonder if they could use something like x rays to irradiate the sample and kill the mold.
Blue_Rook | a day ago
X rays are destructive not only to living tissues but also to materials.
elsjpq | a day ago
Gamma rays are used to sterilize medical devices, but are also a bit damaging to materials. Maybe the damage is still less than what the mold would cause though...
RHX_Thain | 22 hours ago
The dust that hungers. The decay that lives in the air and digests all. The microbial eraser.
SocraticIgnoramus | a day ago
Between NASA discovering that their clean rooms have become a haven for very specialized microbes precisely because of the unique conditions, and our now decades-long battle with resistant strains of staphylococcus among other species, we’re eventually going to have to accept that nature is highly adaptive and can only be controlled by natural means.
There’s always a virus, bacteriophage, or other exotic little life (adjacent) form somewhere out there that’s harmless to us but would love the chance to feast on whatever’s ailing us. The technological challenge will be that of collecting, indexing, and archiving a massive repository of such highly-specialized specimens. There’s no such thing as a broad-spectrum antibiotic equivalent in the world of phages because most of them evolved to prey on a single species of bacteria.
Over a long enough timeline, we will almost certainly see resistance emerge in this strategy as well, but such is the nature of nature. We’re rapidly depleting our arsenal of antibiotics and desperately need to shift tactics before even the strongest ones stop working. As it is now, the only antibiotics that work on the most resistant strains of staphylococcus are themselves so intense that many patients die from the antibiotic rather than the bacterial infection.
Fallatus | a day ago
We're gonna have to start using modified or engineered bacteria and molds ourselves to combat the growing problems we're facing; It's pretty clear these days that attempting any kind of isolation from the natural world isn't a viable tactic in the long run, for us or our preservation attempts.
Kinda obvious in hindsight, but money speaks; And we wish it'd shut up.
Hopefully they'll figure this problem out before something important is lost; I imagine it is motivating and cheaper to find a solution than losing something irreplaceable.
ph33rlus | a day ago
Natures most important job is to consume old things to make space for new things. Nature was getting nowhere and had to send in the extremophile team to clean up
triggz | a day ago
Wonderful news. One day, no matter what, Nature wins and religion and control cultures die.
YarnSpinner | a day ago
They’ve got good taste!
Major-Librarian1745 | a day ago
Dust to dust
ra0nZB0iRy | a day ago
People should just make new art to replace the old art.