Deteriorating Negatives... Save or Destroy?

[Arkady001]

While I expected some dust to have accumulated on my old negs, I was surprised to find that some were showing quite noticeable signs of decay after only 40 years (in some cases only 25 years). The damage also seems to be quite random at first...
All the film that I processed myself by hand is in perfect condition for the most part, while films i sent off are the ones exhibiting the worst damage.
Damage is also randomly occurring on the individual films - one strip on a neg sheet might be fine while the one below it shows really quite bad damage...

This is one which displays all of the damage I'm noticing... what looks like crackelure from heat or cold damage as well as 'spider trails' of what looks like fungal spore damage - each with a distinct 'centre'.
If it is fungal infestation, should I bin all of the affected negs to prevent it spreading?

I've already ordered new neg sheets and replacement folders for the cardboard/leatherette ones and have sanitised the plastic folders with alcohol...

The photo was taken in 1983, at the artist's request at the obvious comedy spelling mistake... Luckily it was just a mock-up. In pre-computer days, we did all this sort of thing by hand.

 

[john.margetts]

The spider trails will be mould. Mould spores are everywhere - every breath you take has at least hundreds of mould spores in it so don't worry about it spreading from one negative to the other. The gelatin on the negatives is very nutritious and the only preventative is keeping the film very dry.

Where there are visible spider trails of mould, that will keep growing even if the film is dessicated, the mould uses metabolic water to keep growing. I would chuck out the visibly infected negatives and get the rest very dry: ventilation is your friend, plenty of air space around the folders.

 

[Arkady001]

That was the problem prior to now - the folders were originally stored upright in a cabinet when I was still shooting film. Then when I moved to digital in around 2001, the files were carefully boxed and stored at my parents house while I was in the Army moving around.
Unfortunately the specific instructions I gave weren't adhered to and when I finally collected them about 3 years ago, I found they had been taken out of the plastic storage boxes (with those giant silica gel packs you can get for your car) and repacked and stored flat in cardboard boxes in a secondary attic above the bathroom! The plastic boxes I found in the laundry room full of my step-mother's hobby-crap...lol
In addition to a lot of dust, moisture had definitely been able to get in there as there was visible rust on some of the binder rings... *sigh*

 

[FishyFish]

Make good quality scans if you have to dispose of them. At least you'll have a copy. If there are too many to scan them all, then at least scan the ones that are most important (whether for quality or sentimental reasons).

 

[Arkady001]

Make good quality scans if you have to dispose of them. At least you'll have a copy. If there are too many to scan them all, then at least scan the ones that are most important (whether for quality or sentimental reasons).

Yeah, that's what I've been doing - none of the damage is really visible until you see the previews. Obviously when the contact sheets were made, everything was fine.