Yeah Science! Vinegar Syndrome: Part 2 Testing for the Problem

This is the second installment of a multiple part series about Vinegar Syndrome at Minnesota State University, Mankato.  

Testing for Vinegar Syndrome:

Upon discovering the degradation of negatives in the Archives collection, my colleague researched the problem. The symptoms were clear; the plastic portion of the photo negatives were shrinking, buckling, more brittle, and even had the slight smell of vinegar syndrome. But before treating the issue, we needed to make sure that was the actual problem afflicting these negatives. Otherwise, our time, effort and resources would be put to the wrong use and would not help the situation at all.

The Scientific Method in Action:

Though my colleagues and I are not scientists, we realized that an experiment needed to take place in order to provide the collection with the best treatment plan possible. Here’s what we did:

Our Question: Do these negatives have vinegar syndrome?

Research: Please see previous blog post for more information about our research of the problem. We Googled the symptoms and came across many academic and non-academic articles, blogs, and posts pointing to the same thing.

Hypothesis: Some of the negatives have vinegar syndrome, but with varying points of deterioration. 

The Experiment:
We purchased A-D strips, dye-coated paper strips that can be used as a measure for level of deterioration from vinegar syndrome. This was the safest method we could find to detect vinegar syndrome and measure the severity of it. Since vinegar syndrome causes some acidic off-gassing the strips were to change color if vinegar syndrome was the issue.

1. We placed strips in each wooden drawer that contained negatives, closed them up, and waited at least 24 hours to read the test strips.

The negatives were stored in these

2. After 24 hours, we compared each strip in each drawer to the color reference pencil which showed the colors and strip levels.The color blue (the color the strips were initially) showed that there was no Vinegar Syndrome present. Any of the other colors on the spectrum indicated the severity of the Vinegar Syndrome plaguing these negatives.

These strips turned a yellow-green indicating that the severity of Vinegar Syndrome was high

Our Data: 

We numbered the drawers and used the chart below to determine severity level. 0 = Vinegar Syndrome-free, everything else indicated otherwise.

Here's how these strips worked

  Results:

We found that there were several drawers of negatives that were afflicted with varying levels of Vinegar Syndrome. Our hypothesis had been proven correct.

Though many negatives were also shown as Vinegar Syndrome free (see our Data above), we decided to take a measure of precaution for all of these. Please stay tuned for our next post on what we did next!

First 3 images courtesy of MNSU Archives/Preservation Department. Last 2 images courtesy of Image Permanence Institute.