Hi Joel and Thump, OK, don't laugh... Depending on how serious the hazard, how valuable the piano, how much trouble the customer wants to go through, and what facilities are available locally, you can have the entire piano sterilized with gamma irradiation. (Don't worry. It won't make the piano radioactive or anything.) Steris does a lot of this work. In fact it's the usual way that medical supply companies sterilize things like syringes, surgical instruments, etc. They just package everything in a nonsterile environment, box it, crate it, load it onto flats, park the flats in a gamma irradiation warehouse, roll out the cobalt-60, let sit, roll the cobalt-60 back in, and the sterilized flats are ready to ship! :-) This method would involve a round-trip move, plus sterilization cost. My guess is a few hundred dollars for the whole thing. Check http://www.devicelink.com/company98/cat/1263.html for a location near you. I actually tipped the Postal Service to this idea a long time ago, after buying Steris stock. The idea was that they could very cheaply sterilize entire trucks full of mail, rendering any anthrax harmless enough to be sprinkled on one's meal. They opted for electron beam sterilization instead, which is slower, costlier, and less effective. :-( (Go figure... Hey, it's the USPS.) Ah well, STE jumped up a tad anyway, and I made a small profit for my trouble. Peace, Sarah
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