Asbestos in the Cambridge geological collections: past, present, and future

Naturally-occurring asbestos poses a threat to curators of geological collections, as well as to other staff, researchers, and members of the public who may come into contact with it. UK law mandates to document and mitigate the risk from asbestos in non-domestic settings, including museums. However, there are no formal UK regulations applying to natural asbestos in geological specimens. In the absence of such regulations, museums have to devise their own local policies. The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge hosts one of the largest geological collections in Britain. Its petrological and mineral collections comprise some 200,000 specimens, additional uncatalogued material, and material deposited by other institutions; all of which include a small but significant number of asbestos-bearing specimens. The ongoing migration of part of these collections into new, improved storage facilities necessitated the development of a policy that allows rapid identification and management of risk from naturally-occurring asbestos for tens of thousands of specimens. We report on the development and implementation of this policy, which builds on existing policies at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and may serve as a template for similar policies elsewhere.