Dear Shirley,

	I agree, but conditionally.  I hate to waste anything, & most of the time
the amount of picric acid you find is <100 g.  If you call the bomb squad,
they take your chemical away, & you don't get to use it.

	I once dealt with >400 g of dry picric acid this was a real knee trembler,
heart in throat type discovery.  Fortunately this was a large open mouth
jar with a cork lid.  The cork was so completely desicated it was almost
ready to fall into the jar.  I was able to remove the lid, refill the jar
in situ with distilled water, & eventually get it into a more appropriate
container.  Then I called in the chemical disposal people.  After all that
it was way too much to ever get used in the little lab I was in.  They were
really unhappy about such a large amount & would only accept it on the
condition it was completely saturated.  (In fact they left the room until I
could confirm it was completely saturated.)

	Certainly, all care should be taken, but having half your building cleared
for a small amount of material can be hard to explain to some administrator
types who know no science & are more concerned with lost productivity.

	Regards
	
	Rob.
	
At 12:18 PM 8/10/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Better still, leave it alone, and call the bomb squad.  Craters can be
made with a
>small amount of "ancient picric acid".  It may cause some media coverage,
but better
>than the alternative if it blows in your face, protective covering or not.
>
>"R.Wadley" wrote:

R. Wadley, B.App.Sc. M.L.S, Grad.Dip.Sc.MM
Laboratory Manager
Cellular Analysis Facility
School of Microbiology & Immunology
UNSW, New South Wales, Australia, 2052
Ph (BH) 	+61 (2) 9385 3517
Ph (AH)	+61 (2) 9555 1239
Fax 	+61 (2) 9385 1591
E-mail	r.wadley@unsw.edu.au
www	http://www.micro.unsw.edu.au/caf.html