What did you do with your blocks that were fixed in mercury fixatives?  We
are faced with this dilemma here.  Any advice would be appreciated.

Sheila Tapper
SMDC Health System
Duluth, MN


	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Gayle Callis [SMTP:uvsgc@msu.oscs.montana.edu]
	Sent:	Tuesday, April 20, 1999 9:53 AM
	To:	histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu
	Subject:	block disposal

	We incinerated the blocks, to insure disposal was total.    It
	was more a matter of people digging around in a city dump and
finding them,
	with questions asked and potential criticism/slapping of hands of
	institution who used garbage can disposal.  

	Most tissues are rendered noninfectious with NBF/processing.  It
could be
	a sensitive issue, if termination tissues in a block are recognized.
	people come unglued with this discovery.  The probability of this
happening
	may not be very high, but the potential for it happening still
exists.

	What about paraffin embedded brain?  Is this considered
biohazardous, if there
	is Cruzfeldt-Jakob disease present in blocks from years past, even
	though you, the technician, were not aware of the problem/diagnosis
	there are OLD brain blocks sitting around on shelves which COULD be
suspect.  
	Any discussion on this? 

	I would opt for incineration to insure all bases are covered,
particularly
	for those politically sensitive issues, with wet tissues and blocks
disposed
	of the same way. 

	Gayle Callis