Access denied: Asbestos contamination as catalyst and hindrance to collection retrieval and preservation

Asbestos abatement industry standards for items exposed to a contaminated environment generally call for disposal. This option is not acceptable for museum objects that have been contaminated by asbestos. For many years the Smithsonian Institution has worked to define and refine artifact asbestos decontamination procedures and approaches. The Building 17 Artifact Asbestos Decontamination Project plan was developed through a series of institution-wide meetings that ensured sufficient staff and other resources existed to meet contractual obligations and that provided a clear work process under which the project could proceed. After the project started, the plan, which was always considered to be dynamic, was altered to accommodate the many known and unknown challenges and hazards discovered within the space. Working with collections at risk forced the museum to make difficult collections management and preservation decisions and to remain dynamic and flexible in the management of the project. The purpose of this article is to review the planning process, to examine the balance of decontamination methods with preservation practices, to discuss the various decontamination protocols planned, and to outline the differences between what had been planned and what was discovered during implementation.