[NHCOLL-L:3041] Re: shipping in propylene glycol

[Matthew Sarver]

I use Prestone LowTox antifreeze, available from Wal-Mart and other retailers.   It is 95.2% propylene glycol, though I'm not sure what other additives are in it.  It's fairly expensive (about $8.99 per gallon, if I recall) but easier to deal with than trying to deal with ordering propylene glycol in bulk from a chemical supplier.

  -Matt
   
  Matthew Sarver
  Wildlife and Heritage Service
  Maryland DNR
   
  
Steve Halford <halford at sfu.ca> wrote:
  Doug,

Wasn't propylene glycol recommended for pitfall traps a few years ago on Entomo-l?  IIRC consensus was to buy it as "ecologically friendly" antifreeze from the camping stores.

Cheers,
Steve.

  On 4/7/06, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:  Thanks to those who responded so quickly to my inquiry - it does seem
pretty definitive that PG should be fine for shipping specimens, even
if not 100% effective for long-term DNA preservation, and the extra
labor (draining off EtOH and replacing with PG at the shipper's end, 
and rinsing off the PG and replacing with EtOH at the receiver's end)
may certainly outweigh the MAJOR difficulties in using EtOH for
shipping.

Now comes the important follow-up: what are the best and cheapest 
sources of bulk PG?

Thanks,
--

Doug Yanega        /Dept. of Entomology         /Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
               http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82





-- 
Steve Halford (halford at sfu.ca)
Museum Technician
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. Canada
V5A 1S6 

		
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