Art conservation using saliva wins chemistry Ig Nobel

This year’s chemistry Ig Nobel prize has been awarded to three Portuguese conservation scientists who showed that human saliva could be used to clean paintings and historical artefacts.

Paula Romão, Adília Alarcão and César Viana’s 1990 paper revealed how the trio collected saliva and measured how effective it was at removing dirt from 18th century gilded sculptures, noting that conservators had long been using their own saliva in preference to other solvents when working with delicate materials such as gold leaf and ceramics.