[Histonet] RE: Plants in the Histology Lab

[Monfils, Paul]

I don't know about plants in the lab (never had any) but I recall a problem from years ago.  It was a hot summer day and the air conditioning was having problems, so we opened a couple of screened windows in the lab.  At the end of the day one of the techs who was reviewing the slides that had just been stained called me over to look at something she couldn't identify.  Neither could I.  It looked like a little octopus, a central body with several tapering extensions going off in different directions.  The whole object was maybe 100 microns wide.  A minute later, another one on a different slide.  Then three of them on another section.  Some on the H&E slides, some on the special stains.  And the objects themselves were stained!  Finally figured out that they were something coming from plants outside the windows, not sure what.  They didn't look like pollen, but whatever they were they were blowing in the windows, coming right through the screens, settling on the water baths of the techs cutting sections, and getting picked up on the slides with the tissue sections.  I did a wipe of the benchtop next to the water baths and there were hundreds of them.  So, no more open windows after that.  And I would be careful what plants I brought indoors on that basis.