Most textiles harbouring infestations can be effectively treated by drycleaning, which has the added bonus of getting rid of the dirt.
The solvents may not actually kill all stages of the insects, but by cleaning out the livestock as well as the debris, the desired effect is equally well achieved.
However, some textiles cannot be safely drycleaned and many other object types are vulnerable to infestation too.
Over the last decade or so "freezing" has become the pest eradication method of choice in many museums around the world. In fact, the pest control potential of low temperatures has been exploited by people in China, Siberia and North America for hundreds if not thousands of years, using free winter cold.
In museums, the technique is a very simple one using a domestic freezer, but that is not to say that the method is not based on extensive scientific research as well as collation of much anecdotal data.
Because the technique is so simple, effective, cheap and safe, the treatment is feasible for even the most valuable or fragile artefacts. This kind of rapid response can be critical in avoiding irreparable damage to irreplaceable collections.
When Liverpool Museum (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside/ NMGM) was recently refurbished the collections were moved to temporary storage. Before being moved back, almost all of them, which had previously suffered sporadic attacks of carpet beetle and biscuit beetle, were subjected to a rolling programme of freezing and kept sealed in polythene.
This solution to pest control is regarded in such a positive light that The Conservation Centre, Liverpool (also part of NMGM) had a large walk-in freezer installed specifically for this purpose when it opened in 1997. With this facility we have successfully treated thousands of items at -30C.
A freezing service offering -30C or lower could find a market in cultural heritage as well as in more obvious sectors.
For the many museums without a largish freezer of their own a trundle down to the local drycleaners with the odd Victorian stuffed hyena could be a welcome alternative to nasty chemical fumigation by the pest control people.
Tracey Seddon
National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside
