>I'm not sure that I totally agree with this statement.
>
>>  Soda-glass is supposedly safe, but I have soda-glass tubes which have
>glass disease.
>
>see http://nautarch.tamu.edu/class/anth605/File5.htm
>
>I would consider glass make with soda lime and potash (K+) to be suspect;
>as you imply in the second part of your statement. I tend to favor
>borosilicate glass and maintaining a somewhat dry environment where I
>store may specimens (RH 45-55%).

Yeah. I wish someone would test the commonly-available vials & tubes
eg Kimble & Samco for even the slightest hints of reactivity with
calcium carbonate. I'll have to look at that article (I HATE using
the net, so put such things off). Whatever, dryness is the main
thing... even reactive glass won't cause a problem if the atmosphere
within is sufficiently dry (and plugtopped vials like the Samco
G050/26 below are not airtight (specimens stored in ethanol suffer
from SLOW evaporation past the cap, and in some cases the cap may
visibly leak).

The containers I use are:

Samco
Specimen tubes soda glass poly stopper 50x18/19mm
BS5750:2 CERT.585 CODE: G050/26
These come in boxes of 100 and price at about $1.00NZ/tube and are
ready-to-use; the Museum of NZ uses them too, and neither they nor I
have had glass disease problems with them. I assume that "poly" means
polyethylene, though it could as easily be polypropylene.

Samco
Test tubes soda glass; bacteriological; rimless 50x6mm CODE: G002
These come in boxes of 144; they are wrapped in paper & shredded
cellophane and are oily... and are fiddly to clean. I bought about
24,000  of them at a technicians' sale at my university hospital and
have used them extensively for micros since about 1985. I use natural
cottonwool to plug them and have copy-paper labels within. The ones I
have at home have had zero problems BUT a number of specimens stored
for about 7 years at work have developed 2 types of crystals, and
this is glass disease (small white cuboids and fine fuszzlike
colorless needles normal to the shell surface; in neither case are
the crystals necessarily where the shell & glass were in contact).
--
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin
New Zealand
Fossil preparator
<[log in to unmask]>
Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut

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