1st SEMESTER: Principles of Conservation (Foundation Course)
National Museum Institute, Delhi
Topic: Understanding Biodeterioration and Biodegradation in Art Conservation Studies
The term Biodeterioration was first defined as “any undesirable change in the properties of a
material caused by the vital activities of organisms” (Hueck, 1965, 1968), and the microorganism
or organism that causes damage to the materials are called Biodeteriogen. The term
biodeterioration and biodegradation tends to be used interchangeably, but hold distant differences.
As biodegradation refers to the biological processes through which organic macromolecules are
decomposed, with particular reference to the transformation, by means of microorganism, of toxic
compounds into less toxic or harmless compounds. Therefore, while biodeterioration has a
negative connotation of damage, biodegradation generally implies a beneficial or positive
process.
The process of biodeterioration of materials is a complex system of inter-relationships among
organisms, materials and environment. Different phenomena acting together results in the
biodeterioration of materials: physical or mechanical processes leading to cases such as loss of
cohesion, rupture, or disaggregation and chemical processes that leads to degradation,
transformation, or decomposition of the substrate. These processes usually occur simultaneously,
but one type can predominate over the other depending on the kind of substrate and the biotic
community, as well as environmental condition. It should be noted that there is no clear separation
between the chemical and physical causes of deterioration on one side and the biological ones on
the other, since any physical or chemical process can induce or influence the activity of organisms
(Pinna & Salvadori, 2008).
