Determination of Indoor Air Quality in Archives and Biodeterioration of the Documentary Heritage

Abstract

Documentary heritage is permanently subject to suffering from physical, chemical, and/or biological alterations. Biological deterioration by microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) causes undesirable changes on material properties. Microorganisms affect different organic, natural or synthetic substrates (cellulose, polycarbonates), metals, and compounds of optical and magnetic devices (CD, VHS). Paper made by vegetal fibers, functional additives (glue, optical polishers, consolidating agents), and inks with organic bindings are used as sources of nutrients. The environmental microorganisms that form the microbial charge of indoor air at repositories (archives, libraries) storing cultural heritage can deteriorate the different supports of heritage importance and affect human health as allergies and skin affections. The aims of this research were to study microbial contamination of the environment and its influence on biodeterioration by the biofilm formation and to analyze the relationship between environment microbiota and biofilm formation in materials stored at three archives in Argentina and in two repositories of the National Archive of the Republic of Cuba.

Microbial Air Quality in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

“…They however differed in their mode of result presentation. Of the 5 studies, only 2 represented the results of their study as CFU/m 3 (Udochukwu et al, 2015;Emuren and Ordinioha, 2016).These studies did not however describe how these values were obtained, and reported values ranging from 5.33 -227.33 CFU/m 3 . Two other studies (Wemedo et al, 2012;Agbagwa and Onyeamachi, 2014) presented their results as CFU/30min and simply as "no of colonies".…”

“…Total bacterial count was determined using nutrient agar (NA). Following this, CFU/m 3 determined using the Omeliansky equation (Borrego et al, 2012) N = 5a × 10 4 (bt) -1 .…”

“…A World Health document outlining the WHO guidelines for indoor air quality, describes healthy indoor air as a fundamental human right. This is particularly important considering that a significant number of people have been reported to spend the majority of their time (between 80% and 90%) indoors (Hospodsky et al, 2012;Hayleeyesus and Manaye, 2014 (Nevalainen and Morawska, 2009;Borrego et al, 2012;Naruka and Gaur, 2013;Kabir et al, 2016).…”

Comparison of anti-Aspergillus activity of Origanum vulgare L. essential oil and commercial biocide based on silver ions and hydrogen peroxide

“…EOs have seldom been tested in vitro against fungi isolated from cultural heritage objects. Examples include isolates from the documentary heritage (Borrego et al 2012a), royal tomb paintings (Sakr et al 2012), stone and wooden artifacts (Stupar et al 2014). Reports regarding the implementation of natural products in the fi eld of conservation of cultural heritage are scarce.…”

“…(Garg et al 1995, Florian 2002. They are also involved in the degradation of a broad range of organic substrata (Goldman and Osmani 2007) due to their proteolytic, cellulolytic and amylolytic activity (Borrego et al 2010, 2012a, Eida et al 2011. A vast number of microfungi, including Aspergillus species, are able to produce different organic and inorganic acids during their metabolic activities on monument surfaces (Farooq et al 2015).…”