Re: Glutaraldehyde: a cautionary tale (LONG!)

Loris Medici wrote:

"Second Keith's message word by word...

Katherine, glut. related or not, it's horrific what happened to you. Get
well soon (if you still feel no-good), I hope you never experience such
a bad incident again... "

Hi Loris,
I'm really quite fine now, thank you. My purpose wasn't to elicit
sympathy but to communicate information, but I appreciate your
thoughtfulness and concern.

I haven't read most of the responses to my post, since I have a low
tolerance for stupidity (not that I consider all responses to my post
stupid, but simply that a few stupid responses were enough to make me
weary and averse to reading the rest of the thread) I do want to say
one more thing in response to the few I've read:

I want to make it clear that I don't believe I did anything particularly
stupid in my handling of the glutaraldehyde. I made up the solution in
my studio with the window wide open a foot from where I was standing and
a breeze blowing past strong enough to blow papers across the room. The
fact that I had to spend quite a lot of time coaxing the liquid out of
the ampule was the fault of the way the ampule was designed, not my
fault. I coated the papers outside, and while I didn't have a window
open in the kitchen where the papers were hanging overnight, the windows
upstairs where I sleep were wide open as always. So if the
glutaraldehyde affected me (which I do think is the most reasonable
explanation, though it's only an anecdote and can't be considered a
scientific finding) it affected me in spite of quite a lot of air moving
around. This was my point, which may have been lost somehow, that there
are ways to harden gelatin that aren't so dangerous, and I haven't been
convinced that there is an advantage to the glutaraldehyde that
outweighs its potential dangers, even the dangers that are well
documented.
Katharine
Received on Wed Mar 31 16:04:23 2004