Several house
beetles, various moths, and booklice can destroy materials, objects, and
building parts. Termites, cockroaches, and other pests or insects are also
common in museums and libraries, and their presence results in even greater
damage to wood and paper materials. What is worse than mice or cockroaches
feeding on breadcrumbs in your kitchen? It is finding them munching on
invaluable paintings and important artifacts in your museum or library. These pests
are responsible for a lot of damage to museum objects, historic books, and in
buildings of historical or architectural importance. Insects do not always infest
all items in equal ways, however. At the highest risk of infestation are
natural history collections, dried insect collections, dry plant materials,
stuffed animals, items containing fur, and keratin or chitin-based materials.
Usually, items made from these vulnerable materials are stored together in dark
areas, making the spread of infestation easier and more successful.
Although isolation of
contaminated items is not an IPM treatment per se, this method can be used to
indicate the presence of an active infestation, which is a crucial part of any
IPM plan. Isolating, inspecting, and cleaning items entering the institution
helps avoid granting pests access to the rest of the collection and building. In
the past, pest control Brisbane in such collection-holding institutions involved regular
applications of insecticides to the infested areas and the objects themselves.
Recent health and safety concerns, however, have convinced many institutions to
move away from spraying toxic chemicals in favor of a combination of proactive
and preventative measures collectively. Freezing, also known as a controlled
low-temperature treatment, is common pest control Brisbane and
inspection method in museums.
Freezing is also
carried out by some museums as a preventative measure whenever collections are
moved into a new facility or if bulk collections that cannot be individually
inspected are acquired. A lot of museums use baiting systems, typically using a
nontoxic material, to instigate large-scale consumption within the pest
population. When insect workers are seen feeding, the original nontoxic bait is
replaced with bait containing a slow-acting insect growth regulator that ends
up disrupting the breeding cycle of the colony. As the worker population is
reduced, the colony soon starts collapsing and dying. This method is
particularly successful at eradicating subterranean termites and is used as a
safer treatment option because it eliminates the poisoning of non-target
insects.
Heat treatment for
infested artifacts is perhaps the most effective pest control Brisbane
for ensuring 100% efficacy in eradicating insect pests. Museum managers prefer
this method for treating both small individual objects and entire multi-story
buildings. It is inexpensive compared to other treatments, easy to conduct, and
can be applied to a variety of objects. The use of atmospheric gases such as
nitrogen or argon gas in sealed enclosures to eradicate insect infestation of
museum objects is another effective alternative to toxic substances. This
method works by introducing gases that reduce the oxygen levels in an infested
area to 0.1%, which interferes with the glucose production of insect pests,
resulting in weight loss and eventually death. Almost all art objects can be
treated with this pest control.
