Re: [Leica] preservation of photographic materials

[Henning Wulff <henningw@archiphoto.com>]

At 9:54 AM -0800 3/8/01, S Dimitrov wrote:
>I have to keep a fire extinguisher in my darkroom. I became concerned
>that if there was a fire and I used purple-K as to what would be the
>damage to my materials. I asked the Getty's conservation dept. about it
>and never received a concrete answer. They do however have a specialist
>there on the grounds that is an expert on fire related damages, which
>includes the use of fire fighting agents.
>I'm thinking of switching to Halon or CO2, to keep things simple.
>
>Slobodan Dimitrov
>
>
>Erminia R Quinn wrote:
>>
>>  Hello again:
>>
>>  Here are a couple of sources of info on preservation of photographic
>>  materials:
>>
>>  http://lcweb.loc.gov/preserv/careothr.html
>>
>>  and
>>
>>  http://lcweb.loc.gov/preserv/othresou.html
>>
>>  Both libraries and museums have been dealing with the nightmare of trying to
>>  preserve collections for some time now, and many of them are excellant
>>  sources of info on this issue.  Since the general public increasingly want
>>  to buy only "archival quality" prints, it might be worth your while to check
>>  out these sources.  (They're free, ya know.)
>>
>>  xoxo,
>>  Erminia
>  > (former special collections cataloger)

Halon is not legal anymore here (Canada) due to the flourocarbons. 
The last time I did a Halon installation in a computer room was over 
10 years ago. For a few years it was still possible to use Halon for 
special applications, but now that has been phased out as well. This 
is all with respect to architectural installations, so there might be 
some exceptions still in the military that I don't know about. That 
seems unlikely in Canada though, as our military probably never got 
around to hearing about Halon in the first place.



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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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