Who When Where

NIce to know that TNA take so little concern that these records have been open to researchers for almost TEN YEARS and could have infected researchers. A total failure by FCO and TNA to protect us!. These are the records that the FCO said didn't exist until they were taken to the High Court and admitted that they did exist!.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/abo ... s-fco-141/

Disgusting isn't it they should have destroyed the records instead of spraying them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously these days there is very little cause for concern as chemicals such as DDT are only harmful when they build up in the body, the exposure risk these days is very small, unlike in the 50s when it was used on foodstuffs and even in the home.
The average researcher is in more danger of death or injury travelling to the TNA to view the records than searching the records every day for a week.
Cheers
Guy

Obviously TNA have concerns NOW, of course there were the MOD records with asbestos and there were the destroyed important Treasury files which were covered with sewage from the River Thames!.

This related blog article, dated 29 June, may be of interest:
https://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/blog/rec ... d-archives

As queried in the above blog - "Is it possible that FCO so treated the collection during the long years it was stored in its various UK repositories?"

On a side note:
In the USA, until about 1980, chemical fumigation was routine in some library and archive collections.
"While some institutions fumigated only occasionally, some institutions - especially those who regularly acquired materials from insect-ridden regions such as Asia and Africa - carried out wide-scale programs of systematic prophylactic fumigation in which large portions of the collections were fumigated".

Interesting article regarding the FCO 141 collection: "Open secrets: the British ‘migrated archives’, colonial history, and postcolonial history"
https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/93/1/95/6535581