A new technology with potential interest for conservation of cultural heritage: vaporized hydrogen peroxide sterilisation (VHPS)

The VHPS technology can be considered as a safer and more environmentally friendly method for decontamination of works of art, and environments, colonized by microorganisms (fungi, bacteria). The application of this technology allowed that: the procedure has to be performed on site; the procedure has to be repeated in several runs; the procedure has to perform microbial biocide and sporocide; the human toxicity has to be controllable (safe working environment); the gaseous mixture has to avoid creating a cumulative chemical toxic burden; the validation and reproducibility of the decontamination process. In the present work we put together the information coming from the application of sterilization procedure from different field such as medicine, pharmacology, nanotechnology, in order to develop new applicative protocols, particularly for cultural heritage field.