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RE: Disposal of Pathology Blocks and Slides 

	Hi Sue:

	The following might be of some use to you.  You may have seen the
earlier inquiry on the Sci-Tech-Health Care listserv already; my reply was
also supposed to be posted to the list but that may not have happened.

	Cheers,
	Jim Carson
	College of American Pathologists

	****************************

Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 06:32:20 -0800
From: LeGwynne StateCollege 
Subject: unusual donation
Sender: Archives & Archivists 

Hi all,

This concerns an unusual, and slightly nauseating
donation we have recently received.

We have on campus a retiring biology professor who has
researched many subjects and topics over the nearly 50
years of his career.  Perhaps ten years ago a former
director made an arrangement with this professor to
accept his "papers."  For the most part this is no
problem.

Then last week fourteen boxes filled with small
plastic canisters arrived.  These are over 3000 stool
samples he collected when he was studying the problem
of low country children infested with worms.

This professor stated in the document that arrived
with these samples that this was one of his most
important bits of research and actually helped lead to
much improved health care for these children.  As such
"eliminating" (sorry) these boxes is out of the
question.

Our problem is obvious.  These have been kept in a
cold storage room in the science building, we have no
such facility.  Further, what in the world do we do
with this stuff?  Does anyone have any experience with
this sort of problem?  I believe these do not belong
here, but I have no other alternative suggestions.

Help!!!

Sincerely,

Katherine  Haynes
LeGwynne State College
LeGwynne, SC

**************

There has already been some discussion on ARCHIVES about whether this 
donation should have even been accepted or not (especially considering 
that biological samples previously kept in cold storage have now been 
sitting at room temperature for over a week in the archives--sounds 
like a job for the local HazMat crew at this point, with a strong 
rebuke for the biology department that shipped the materials 
unrefrigerated, I think).

As an archivist who has refused some old stored body parts (I referred 
people variously to the school of medicine's pathology department and 
to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology), I would also be interested 
in learning what guidelines list members use for accepting and/or 
redirecting (e.g. to museums) biological specimens (preserved specimens 
on glass slides, jars of tissues, taxidermied animals, etc.) with their 
collections.

Russell Johnson
STHC-L administrator

**************

We (the College of American Pathologists) don't have "guidelines" as such on
materials of this sort (though I'll be doing some thinking about whether we
should).  We function only as an organizational archives for the College,
not as a "discipline history center" for the field of pathology; so this
tends to prevent such issues from arising.

We did confront a somewhat similar problem recently in connection with one
of the many laboratory proficiency testing programs we operate.  The
programs in gynecologic and non-gynecologic cytology use slides of tissue
samples, collected from members' laboratories and distributed to
participating labs as Kodachrome slides.  Previous staff of the program had
warehoused all the original glass slides (and "warehouse" does indeed mean
no temp. or humidity control).  In this case, however, there was no dispute
that the slides had to be disposed off; the only point of discussion was
whether we would treat them as biohazardous waste or not, and we decided to
err on the side of caution.   (We are maintaining a record set of the
Kodachrome duplicates.)

As to Ms. Haynes' specific problem, I would *strongly* second Russell
Johnson's recommendation that the samples have be disposed of.   ASAP.
They are dangerous. I would consider whether the accompanying documentation
could be preserved with some reasonable expenditure of effort (photographing
labels, perhaps?).  This should satisfy the professor's concern about
keeping the significance of the project on record.  But the samples
themselves have definitively lost any primary research value they might have
had as a result of the lapse in refrigeration.  If, perish the thought, they
aren't documented in any way, their value as historical records of the
professor's research is already down the, uuhhh, tubes anyway.  *Get rid of
them.*

James Carson
College of American Pathologists
jcarson@cap.org
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