Stone, ceramic and metal objects can be damaged by volatile acids and the salts these form by reacting with these objects or the soluble salts often contained in them. Because many people working with these objects in museums often do not recognize the problem or lack (re)sources to identify the salt species and therefore its origin, efforts to exclude sources of acetic acid from display or storage areas are usually not pursued. This article offers alternative, simple and inexpensive methods for the identification of these salts, including microchemical tests and polarized light microscopy, and compares the results with those of modern analytical methods. -- MCI