block disposal

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From:Gayle Callis <uvsgc@msu.oscs.montana.edu>
To:histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu
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Date:Tue, 20 Apr 1999 08:53:22 -0600
Content-Type:

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



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