Since your results are variable, I am not sure this is the problem, but in the
past I have grown fungus in my light green counterstain, which could be one
source for contamination.  I keep it in the refrigerator and make it up often.

"Scott, Allison D" wrote:

> We are having  a problem with a contaminate fungus that is being picked up
> with the gms stain on cytospins.  The patient slide is contaimated with a
> fungus.  We use sterile water for our water rinses, and the stock and
> working solutions are made up with sterile water also.  We don't make the
> cytospins.  Th cytology person makes them.  This happened with a case last
> week and also this week.  The other cases that the gms was done on did not
> have anything else staining that was not supose to.  These were case that we
> cut.  The water baths have sterile water also.  If anyone has a probable
> solution for this problem, that we have not considered please reply.
> Allison Scott