Degradation of monuments in marine and continental environments
The European Commission, DG XII, has published the proceedings of the EC workshop on the "Origin, mechanisms and effects of salts on the degradation of monuments in marine and continental environments", which took place in Bari, Italy, in March 1996. The workshop, organized within the framework of the Community's Environment and Climate programme, focused primarily on the presentation and discussion of research results achieved under the EC project "Marine spray and polluted atmosphere as factors of damage to monuments in the Mediterranean coastal environment". In a more general context, the state-of-the-art in this field, in the European Union and beyond, was also examined. The content of the workshop presentations covered a range of issues, including: - The nature and distribution of salts on architectonic surfaces; - The evolution of a salt system through origin, transport, evaporation, concentration, precipitation, crystallization and disruption; - Expert chemical models able to assess the risks of the actual environmental conditions, with reference to salt damage in porous materials; - Role of salts crystallization on decay of stones exposed to different environmental conditions; - The relationship between climate and weathering in terms of increased dampness and time of wetness, equilibrium pressure in solutions, and effects of sea-salt on freezing-thawing cycles.