Hi Julia,

I'd create ethafoam housings for them and put those into a polyethylene tray or container to catch any spill if it happens. You also need to store these in a stable environment where you will not get high temperatures even if the HVAC system goes down. You might also want to get a mercury hazardous materials spill kit just in case.

Here is a helpful web site:
http://www.epa.gov/hg/spills/

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Senior Conservator and Museum Consultant
Los Angeles CA



On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Julia Silver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I am currently working with a large collection of vacuum tubes to process, accession, and house them. A few I have come across have liquid mercury inside of them, some in larger quantities.

We are searching for a way to store these tubes and I would really appreciate some opinions on how to do this.

Our thinking right now is that an unbreakable (i.e. plastic) container that is entirely seal-able would be best as all the vacuum tubes are going to be stored in two large cabinets. This way, if these containers holding the tubes fall, and the tube breaks inside of it, the mercury doesn't contaminate the whole collection. So we were thinking of properly labeling something like Tupperware to store them in.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Has anyone encountered a problem like this before?

Thanks so much!

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