Dangers Explained

Now, to go along with my previous post I have to say that many museums have dangerous objects in their collections. Dangerous objects are a part of history. Museums might have everything from loaded guns, live cannons, rocket fuel, to radioactive materials. In fact, at the last New Mexico Association of Museums conference there was a session on dangerous materials in museums. The examples included what I’ve already said. Loaded guns require the proper knowledge (usually calling in the police) to check and disarm the weapons. One person was driving around with a cannon ball in their car not knowing that, sure enough, it was live. My friend’s museum is the one with the rocket fuel. They found a canister in the collections and there was a liquid in it. The label didn’t say for sure but there’s a good chance it could be rocket fuel. Like us with the bomb, they want to keep the canister but definitely not what’s inside. Finally, another museum had radioactive material that was affecting the woman’s bathroom because the storage room was on the other side of the wall. Now it wasn’t too dangerous but it still was radioactive and could be dangerous with prolonged exposure. My point to all this is that almost every museum has something that can be considered dangerous so this really isn’t anything new. It’s still scary, but not new. The best thing to do is not to handle it yourself but to call in an expert whether that be the police or the air force or whoever. They will know the proper procedures and will have the proper equipment to deal with the situation. And if they say evacuate…do it! I’m just really happy that we didn’t have to have the bomb here too long before the State Police came out to look at it. We shall see what happens.