44th Annual Meeting – Research and Technical Studies, May 17, "Investigation of Fogging Glass Display Cases at the Royal Ontario Museum" by Helen Coxon et al

This was one of the sessions I tweeted (@taradkennedy), so this won’t be a long post, but I will give you a summary with lots of slide images!
So the problem: these brand-new exhibit cases were mysteriously fogging up for no apparent reason. And even better: once they were cleaned, the fog would roll right in; coming right back like a bad check. Some awesome examples of what was popping up on the inside AND the outside of the glass:

 

 

 

So what was this mysterious fog? Turns out it is a mix of things (it always is): definitely free sodium from the glass along with lactic acid, plasticizers, aromatic hydrocarbons… the digital shots of the GC/MS results are mostly illegible unless you have the peak locations memorized, but I did get a shot of where all of this stuff came from:

So, everything from the air around the cases to the materials that they were cleaned with to the goo that they lubricated big, heavy machines with that moved the glass pieces around like this:

So, now what? Luckily Stephen Koob, King of the Glass Conservators, had a nonionic formula that worked!
Here’s the recipe. I hope you can read it.

Hilariously, the glass manufacturer felt bad and came up with this six-stage cleaning kit for the museum to use. The museum was like… um, thanks, but no thanks. Yeah, not even the fussiest of conservators wants to do that much cleaning.
This talk was one of my favorite talks of the conference: folks presenting a practical problem in an accessible way that was thoroughly researched with a practical (nonionic) solution… SOLUTION, get it???
OK, I’ll stop now.