What we have found especially on skin specimens is that the use of sponges 
produces lots of carryover of solutions.  We have found out that the drying 
artifact that is produced when the first paraffin becomes too saturated with 
xylene carryover and then the tissues are exposed to mostly xylene at 60C.  It is 
probably a combination of the heat and the xylene.  The other times that this 
can happen is if the solutions on the tissue processor are not consistently 
full to the fill line on the bottle and this can cause drying out of the tissues 
in the chamber and lastly if during gross, the tissues that are in cassettes 
waiting processing are not covered completely with solution.  I hope that this 
helps you out.

Debbie Siena, HT(ASCP)QIHC
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