Film & Contaminated Food Exposure?

<p>While I was out of town, the power to my fridge went out for an unknown number of days, possibly as long as 2 weeks. The freezer had both film (exposed and unexposed) and frozen meat in it. The meat has become extremely rancid.<br>

Should I be worried about contamination to my film? It's not like I'm going to stick the stuff in my mouth or anything, but I won't be able to develop the exposed film for quite a while. Anything that might eat film as well as food will have a while to feast before I was planning to get back to the darkroom.<br>

Are there any other concerns I need to worry about? Chicago got quite hot during that period and my apartment's A/C blew as well, so anything might have happened in that freezer.</p>

<p>Don't think it will be a problem if you are keeping it all frozen after the fact.</p>

<p>Hopefully your film was in sealed containers or packages - and it should be ok once you extract it from those packages.</p>

<p>Rancid meat Whoooo but I bet though the film may smell bad it should process.</p>

<p>Haha, reminds me of my university days! I think your film will be fine as long as its in its package unopened. A bit of rancid meat never hurt anyone ;)</p>

<p>If the film was in the plastic containers, just wash them off and spray with Febreeze sort of stuff.</p>

<p>Otherwise, if it was free in the film cassette itself that's bad news in the first place because of water condensation inside the cassette, and I'd develop the film soonest, and send off whatever you can to a <em>remote</em> processor (here the phrase, "like a rotten raccoon," somehow comes to mind). Wear rubber gloves and don't touch your mouth, eyes, and nose.</p>

<p>I bet it should be OK as one time a dog ate a roll of my 35mm film and I found it in a large brown pile a few days later. I processed it and other than it was taken with a cheap toy camera it came out OK.<br>

I am not kidding here.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=690065</p>

<p>I agree with JDM that if the film is in the plastic container or in the unbroken foil wrapper (rollfilm?) it should be fine with a little cleanup. ". . . like a rotten raccoon. . . " brings back some memories! Ooof Dah! You don't specify the meat as in "red or white meat" but I had some inventive recipes for critter chili back then, when times were tougher! "A little rancid" was okay then and I always appreciate that the gods invented hot sauce for those special times!<br>

:-)</p>

<p>Don't worry about it.</p>

<p> Odds are the fridge may have become a mold factory, with the rotten meat smell overwhelming the mold odor. If the <strong>unexposed</strong> film was in its sealed container, wipe <em>the container</em> off lightly with a weak bleach solution. If it wasn't sealed, I would not expose my camera to it. Otherwise, it should be fine.</p>

<p>That's awesome stuff Larry! Thanks for the laugh.</p>

<p>Was this sheet film, roll film or 35 mm? B&W of Color? The sealed stuff should be fine, like everyone else has said. I think the exposed film should be processed right away. When a fridge or freezer is turned off and then warms up it will hold the heat in. If it got especially hot in your apartment then I think your fridge probably retained the heat all night long. Do you not own any film processing equipment yourself? It might be time to invest in some I would think. It wouldn't take much to get started, especially if you are doing B&W. There was<a href="00WfzL"> a recent post </a>in this forum that had some pretty good lists of what you might/should need. Good luck and keep us posted as to what you do and your experiences with it. Thanks.<br /> <br /> Larry, I showed this post to my wife and it caused her some pain, she is 29 weeks along with twins and she laughed so hard it hurt. No serious injury was sustain though. She did enjoy the slide show and wonders what kind of camera it was that made the pictures. She also wonders if you knew the dog had eaten the film or if you just found it that way?</p>

<p>Well it was a LOMO Pop 4. No the film went missing after it fell out of my pocket and 2-3 days later I was in my kids back yard and saw this Yellow thing sticking up in the back yard... As for the film it was some bulk loaded AGFA 400 I think and it was in a yellow metal KALT canister. It had chew marks on it but the ends were some how crimped on by the teeth marks... I loaded it with rubber gloves.. :)</p>

<p>Larry</p>

<p>Does passage through Clays dog push or pull the films speed?</p>

<p>From the dogs viewpoint it is pushing.</p>

<p>Not my dog. Pushing I imagine. Larry, your dog? Your kid's dog? Your kid's neighbor's dog? I don't imagine that you reused it, the emptied cassette that is. Very funny story. Liked your pictures in your gallery.</p>

<p>Amul Kumar, I believe your refrigerator was probably off for quite some time for meat to go really rancid. Days if not for at least a week.</p>