National Library of Canada
and Wei T’o Receive EPA Award
The National Library of Canada and Matteson, Illinois-based preservation company Wei T’o Associates were awarded a Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency September 28. The award, which recognizes exceptional contributions to global environmental protection, cited the team’s technical excellence in chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-free archive preservation.
In 1997, after 16 years of developing a mass-deacidification process to convert acidic books and manuscripts into stable alkaline material, Wei T’o president Richard D. Smith discovered that an environmentally-preferred hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) catalyst worked better than the CFC-based solvents he had been using. The use of CFCs in aerosols is prohibited in the United States because they deplete stratospheric ozone.
The new process also had no effect on soluble or sensitive inks. Based on results in deacidifying the library’s Canadiana collections, the award noted that Smith’s “formulas are suitable for mass deacidification on all types and sizes of books and boxes of archive paper in general collections.”
Posted October 11, 1999.
|
