Thousands of scientists could be unwittingly ruining their own experiments merely by using standard plastic lab equipment, according to a study reported a couple of months ago in Nature News doi:10.1038/news.2008.1212 (subscription). Various researchers comment that the plastic tubes they were using were leaching the disinfectant di(2-hydroxyethyl)methyldodecylammonium (DiHEMDA) into water, and the lubricant oleamide into methanol and DMSO. Altough there has long been distrust of plastic materials, this study seems to be the first time that specific contaminants have been identified. Eppendorf, a major manufacturer of lab containers and similar equipment, says “so far, we have not experienced any product problems with our customers due to the substances mentioned by McDonald et al. Principally, all highly sensitive assays may be influenced by the surface properties of vessels, made out of any kind of material. For scientists this is common knowledge.” Several readers added their experiences to the article – here is one example: “We had this very problem in our own lab, when chemicals leaching from plastic tubes increased the UV absorbance of our samples, and confounding nucleic acid quantitation. Even very simple assays can be significantly impacted by these effects.” (Yarek Rivers.)
Do you know about this problem? What’s your experience? Let us know, either here or add to the comments at the Nature news website.