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TeACH Project

The protection of the cultural heritage: new instruments for the monitoring of the impact of pollutants on surfaces

Contract. n. 212458 -2008

Starting date: 1 december 2008       Duration: 36 months

Most buildings of cultural interest are located in urban environments, where the pollution caused by road vehicles, heating in housing and industrial activities have harmful consequences on marble, bricks, stones, plaster, creating black, oily layers, due to the depositing of gas and particles which are very difficult to remove and are particularly dangerous for the integrity of the surfaces. The present day scenario available on the European and world-wide level indicates that the emissions produced in the industrial and civilian sectors and in transport constitute or will constitute a seriousdanger for the cultural heritage in terms of phenomena of corrosion and blackening. The high costs of preventive conservation and maintenance of the cultural heritage therefore require urgent measures, starting from the identification of the future changes of the composition of the atmosphere following the emissions and the incisiveness that the multi pollutants emitted will have in favouring the process of damage, in order to safeguard the sustainable protection of the cultural heritage itself.

Objectives
The idea at the base of the project is that the pollutants responsible for the weathering of cultural heritage are changing and will continue to change in their future. This change needs to be monitored and its effects controlled by means of new and appropriate devices and tools. TeACH Project aims:

1. to provide an advance to the state of the art, giving first a future vision of the oncoming weathering of cultural heritage, identifing the pollutants that will play the most important role in the future

2. to develop a simple, economical, compact kit comprising existing and new devices, as a basic instrument for monitoring the overall weathering of cultural heritage

3. to produce a new tool that can correlate the changing damage patterns outdoor with the likely damage to cultural materials indoor.