Abstract
Pharmacologically active natural products including toxins can survive in ethnobotanical objects stored long-term and can remain stable in quantities great enough to represent a potential hazard to museum personnel. In April 2006, twenty-one samples from suspected hazardous ethnobotanical objects identified by the Science Museum of Minnesota's Oh No! Ethnobotany program (Kubiatowicz and Benson 2003), ranging in age from twenty-five to one-hundred-fourteen-years old, underwent organic residue analysis using gas and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Samples were taken from the following objects: curare-tipped darts, poison-tipped arrows, barbasco vine, ayahuasca branches, yoco vine, opium pipe, kava roots, tobacco cigar, tobacco plug, clavo huasca vine, quinine branch, Precatory pea seed, Ceylon drug bundles and a Tibetan altar bottle. Pharmacologically active natural products were identified in twelve of twenty samples tested (60%). The toxin tubocurarine was identified in four of six curare samples in quantities great enough to represent a potential hazard to museum personnel.
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