pXRF Field Site Visit

At the St. Bernard Catholic Church school of Cologne I worked with a team of conservators from the Minnesota History Center to test their 40+ piece collection of bird and small mammal taxidermy for the presence of heavy metals such as lead or arsenic. This taxidermy collection was created by the nuns of the St. Bernard convent as early as 1911, and had been housed in a glass and wooden cabinet in a classroom for the last thirty years of the school’s history.

During this project, we decided to take representative samples from the cases due to the volume of the collection and the hazards of the project included suspected presence of arsenic and the precarious stacking of the specimens.

My main tasks during this visit included transporting the taxidermy from the cabinet to the test station, running the pXRF machine, helping interpret results of the testing, and returning the objects to the cases. We determined that the entire case of objects contained dangerous levels of lead and arsenic, and advised the St. Bernard Catholic Church staff on containment procedures.

“St. Bernard’s Taxidermy Collection Examined” - Hometown Source

“Local History News Field Note” - Minnesota Historical Society