Serious question - why do natural science staff never wear gloves when handling their artifacts? I could see maybe a rock, but bones and other organics? (Plus what about the chemical treatments from days of yore). Is there something I'm missing?
Sorry it’s taken me a little while to respond! Serious questions call for serious answers and I didn’t want to give an unsatisfactory answer! So to start off, I wasn’t sure if this was a question regarding personal safety and health or proper specimen care to ensure specimen preservation. I’m only really knowledgeable in botany, geology, and entomology handling. So I tried to ask around to find out more about the other specimen care.
So in terms of Botany and Insects, there is little direct contact with the actual specimens. Botany specimens are generally dried on sheets of paper and insects on pins. But in the event that specimens are directly handled, a lot of times forceps are used. But for a lot of things in economic botany, we do use cotton gloves if the the objects are fragile. There are only a few cases where Botany specimens pose as safety hazards and those are drug plants or very old specimens that were treated with something poisonous… (the name of it escapes me…) but the treated sheets aren’t harmful unless you you licked it or something.
So in terms of anything in ethanol, which includes, fish, insects, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles, the health risks of Ethanol include tiny amounts of alcohol absorbed through the skin and drying your skin out. And in terms of the specimen, the ethanol pretty much breaks down organic fluids so our oils really don’t do anything to contaminate the specimens.
Bones, and skins are preserved pretty naturally from what I understand and so personal health and specimen care aren’t really issues unless you put it in your mouth. Taxidermy is generally the stuff that’s preserved in weird stuff but we don’t do taxidermy in house. Most taxidermy studios within museums discontinued in the 60s i believe (but don’t quote me on that).
Some fossil specimens and fossil bones are treated with a sort of chemical skin but that’s to allow the safe handling without gloves.
And anthropologist are always wearing gloves with their artifacts from what I’ve observed….
I’m sorry… I feel as though this is an insufficient answer… So its prompting me to go down to the fish labs this week, and do some reporting on specimen handling! So hopefully this answers some of your questions… but hang on, I’ll have another post addressing some specifics later! And I'll pass on the question to the Brain Scoop. Hopefully Emily can answer some of the specimen handling questions I'm unable to address on her tumblr or in an episode.
