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Re: Particle board shelving



Folks -

In the early 1980s the Provincial Archives of Manitoba refurbished a
building as the records centre.  Particle board shelving on steele supports
was used...and within a month many had sore throats and watery eyes....it
appears that urea femeldahyde (sp?) was used in the glue in the particle
board.

Now I don't know if either side of the border has banned the use of this
stuff in glue for particle board....but if it is still there, then yes,
off-gassing is a real concern.

Cheers!

Mark



At 03:45 PM 03/28/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>I was going to be smart and stay out of this one, but....
>
>Particle board will not necessarilly fall apart quickily.  I use it in my
>Records Center and have 20 letter/legal boxes to the 60" shelf, stacked two
>high and two deep.  Of course, I have front to back supports in the middle
>of each shelf.  Approximately 50,000 cu. ft. of my shelves are 10 years old
>and the only failure was one shelf where someone neglected to install the
>support.
>
>If off-gassing is a legitimate worry, don't count on the shelves to fail
>first.
>
>That said, is off-gassing a real concern?  I am dubious because metal
>shelves are a relatively recent innovation.  (Were there metal shelves
>before the Woodruff-Green filing system, ca. 1865?)  On this subject,
>however, I'll defer to the conservations, such as Michael McColgin
>
>Paul R. Scott
>Records Management Officer
>Harris County, Texas
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Fred Lautzenheiser [SMTP:LAUTZEF@CCF.ORG]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 3:15 PM
>> To:   ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
>> Subject:      Particle board shelving
>>
>> Don't worry about their being chemically active - they will fall down long
>> before the offgassing does anything at all to the papers.  We had
>> temporary shelving of particle board upstairs in a temporary space from
>> last September to this past January, and some of the shelves were already
>> bending in the middle.  Most were very short but were still bending under
>> the weight of full boxes!  If this is what happens in 4 or 5 months, with
>> very short shelves holding only 5 or so Hollinger boxes, their materials
>> will be on the floor very soon after they put them up if they use shelves
>> of ordinary length.  This is an incredibly short-sighted substitution and
>> an excellent example of false economy.   Re: the chemical problem - maybe
>> painting them all around with some kind of inert paint would keep gases
>> in???  But that doesn't help if the shelves disintegrate under the weight.
>>
>> Fred Lautzenheiser
>> Cleveland Clinic Foundation
>> lautzef@ccf.org
>>
>
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>
>

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

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      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>