Linda and anyone else interested,
Squames are a well known contminant of sections and the water
bath is, I suspect, the major cause.  However, I don't know if
anyone has actually established the water (floating out) bath as the
source.
I am an offender for leaving my squames in large numbers on slides
but I definitely do not have an obvious dry skin or desquamate
noticeably.  Fingers obviously take the greatest blame (I don't bite
my nails either), but I suspect they may also fall from hair -
dandruff (which is also not a particular poblem of mine.)
My colleague (female), who uses the same water bath quite often,
both before and after me, does not have the same porblem with her
slides.
I am therefore driven to believe they must come from my fingers
when i pick the slides up from the knife.  However, I have tried a
small experiment wearing gloves - again without significant gain
and the gloves were a real nusiance.
It must be the way I clean the coverslips!!  Of course, I have been
too lazy to test that, but I may now you have stimulated me.
One of life's mysteries, like diffuse blue, nuclear meltdown, nuclear
bubbling or whatever you call it (please don't send me the thousand
reasons for that multifactorial artefact (more to the point, do you
spell that "artefact" or artifact"?

Russ Allison,
Dental School
Cardiff
Wales