Indoor air quality of a museum in a subtropical climate: The Oscar Niemeyer museum in Curitiba, Brazil

Abstract

The assessment of damage to indoor cultural heritage, in particular by pollutants, is nowadays a major and growing concern for curators and conservators. Nevertheless, although many museums have been widely investigated in Europe, the effects of particulate matter and gaseous pollutants in museums under tropical and subtropical climates and with different economic realities are still unclear. An important portion of the world's cultural heritage is currently in tropical countries where both human and financial resources for preserving museum collections are limited. Hence, our aim is to assess the damage that can be caused to the artwork by pollution in hot and humid environments, where air quality and microclimatic condition differences can cause deterioration. As a case study, particulate matter as well as gases were collected at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON) in Curitiba, Brazil, where large modern and contemporary works of art are displayed. NO2, SO2, O3, Acetic Acid, Formic Acids and BTEX, in the ambient air, were sampled by means of passive diffusive sampling and their concentrations were determined by IC or GC-MS. The particulate matter was collected in bulk form and analyzed with the use of energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence and aethalometer. The chemical compositions of individual particles were quantitatively elucidated, including low-Z components like C, N and O, as well as higher-Z elements, using automated electron probe microanalysis. The gaseous and particulate matter levels were then compared with the concentrations obtained for the same pollutants in other museums, located in places with different climates, and with some reference values provided by international cultural heritage conservation centers. Results are interpreted separately and as a whole with the specific aim of identifying compounds that could contribute to the chemical reactions taking place on the surfaces of artifacts and which could potentially cause irreversible damage to the artworks.

Modeling of the aerosol infiltration characteristics in a cultural heritage building: The Baroque Library Hall in Prague

“…It was found that the model failed to generate several peaks of indoor particle concentration. Although, the indoor concentration of coarse particles at the size interval 3-20 µm was negligible in all three seasons, it was assumed that this [7][8][9]26,49]. Thus, in order to determine appropriate values of k and P for coarse particles, the indoor concentration was compared in parallel with the outdoor.…”

“…Indoor pollutants in cultural heritage buildings may originate either from indoor sources or penetrate indoors through the building envelope [4,[7][8][9]. Common indoor sources include heating, smoking, cleaning or walking.…”

“…Numerous studies have already focused on indoor air characterization of libraries and museums with regard to chemical pollutants, indoors sources, chemical reactions and environmental factors [4,[6][7][8][18][19][20][21][22][23]2,24]. Moreover, the characteristics of indoor PM in museums were also studied with regard to the outdoor environment [7,9,25,26].…”

Binary logistic regression—Instrument for assessing museum indoor air impact on exhibits

“…On the opposite, a high value of the humidity favor mold development (Anaf et al, 2013;Janssen and Christensen, 2013) and could represent a favorable environment that accelerate the degradation of artifacts. Moreover, the destructive effect could be accelerated by the high concentrations of gaseous compounds from indoor air (Godoi et al, 2013;Saraga et al, 2011); for example, the sulfur and nitrogen oxides could directly react with materials of the artifacts, damaging them. This harmful effect could be amplified in the presence of humidity (Kontozova-Deutsch et al, 2011) and metal cations-catalysts of oxide transformation, in strong and corrosive acids (Loupa et al, 2007;Kontozova-Deutsch et al, 2011;Chianese et al, 2012).…”

Simultaneous measurement of nitrous acid, nitric acid, and nitrogen dioxide by means of a novel multipollutant diffusive sampler in libraries and archives

“…Diffusive sampling can overcome these problems since it represents an easy to use technique which exploits the spontaneous diffusion of species collected by specific absorbing media. Diffusive samplers have been used for air quality monitoring of single gases in cultural Open Access *Correspondence: maskova@icpf.cas.cz 2 Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the CAS, Rozvojová 135, 165 02 Prague, Czech Republic Full list of author information is available at the end of the article heritage buildings [20][21][22][23]. Nevertheless, when conditions which promote the formation of HONO are present (high air moisture content and surface to volume ratio), especially indoors, monitoring of NO 2 by diffusive sampling can result in overestimation since the interference of the former pollutant is not negligible [24].…”