[NHCOLL-L:2752] Plastic vials

[Paul Callomon]

We looked into plastic vials when we were planning the rehousing of the collection here. With 500,000 vials to replace, something cheap, lightweight and durable was essential. We came to the conclusion that no-one makes a plastic vial that can be guaranteed not to deteriorate over even part of the life of a Borosilicate item. The very nature of plastics, which are essentially very thick fluids, means that you cannot tell how a particular vial will look 50 years from now. The same is true to a lesser extent of glass, but there are now 50-year-old examples of Pyrex (which is Borosilicate), so we at least have some idea how well that will bear up. We thus went with glass again.

PC. 

Paul Callomon
Collections Manager
Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
Department of Malacology
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
Tel 215-405-5096
Fax 215-299-1170
Secretary, American Malacological Society
On the web at http://erato.acnatsci.org/ams/