Museums and cultural sites that carefully control their humidity are being overtaken by mold anyway. I worry about our camera lenses, which we care so much about yet won’t be able to protect from these molds that can grow with barely any water or nutrition.
In fact, molds like these are probably responsible for a lot of lens infections, since most people are careful enough to not get them wet or dewy. And of course there is not a lot of organic matter on the elements for the mold to feed on. Dust is enough for these guys.
These molds […] devour the organic material that abounds in museums
so I would not be too concerned about my lenses at this point, as AFAIK they contain no organic* material.
(*: using the terminology of chemistry, plastics are organic as they contain carbon, which I love pointing out to my US friends who go to great lengths to obtain “organic” foodstuffs; but in everyday language of course it means matter that came from a living organism)
It would be nice if plastics were “organic” in the second sense. Then they would be much better biodegradable. Would be a problem for our equipment though.
Other times the spores land on something the mold can’t directly consume, such as metal, glass, rubber, plastic or limestone. But some of the restricti species are “capable of living on almost nothing,” Pinzari says, surviving off the nutrients in motes of dust. In these cases, damage to artifacts is collateral, resulting from the mold’s remodeling activities and digestive processes and from the dying off of the hyphae…
The saint’s breakout came as a surprise on two counts. Not only has the cathedral been climate-controlled since the 1950s, but its wall paintings are buon frescos, meaning they were made of mineral compounds that contain no organic materials for mold to live on.
Yeah, it’s possible for a lens to be perfectly clean, but I don’t think my Tamron was made in a semiconductor fab. Hell, I can see dust in it.
Sure, but can you see mold? Chances are that the fungi mentioned in the article are already in your house (as they are found in household dust), but cause no issues. I am not a mycologist, but I assume that the dust in the museums comes from their exhibits, so they contain the same material, which is like a dinner invitation for the mold.
What I find interesting in the article is how people freak out about mold: museums would sooner admit to running a meth lab in the basement than having mold. But all museums of old organic stuff have mold, you can smell it as you step into the exhibition space. Just like libraries, that lovely “book smell” is mold.
Doesn’t need to be, there’s bacteria that nom plastic. I think we’re good, most lenses won’t be made from PET, I think, but that might be next in the evolutionary ladder…
