Ruth: I all reality none is good. Both alkanes or D-Limonene are either as dangerous or more than xylene, and all perform below the xylene standard. Any one requires modifications of all procedures, they seldom dewax adequately and all constitute a processing "compromise". Many cannot de recycled. Please go to http://www.histosearch.com/rene.html and read about xylene substitution. The optimal solution to eliminate xylene consists on: 1- dehydrate with 2-propanol (or "pure" isopropyl alcohol or IPA) 2- do not use any ante-medium and go from IPA directly to paraffin wax or ideally to mineral oil:IPA at 1:1 3- infiltrate as usual 4- dewax sections with 2%aq. sol. of dishwater soap at 90ºC for 1 min twice 5- stain as usual 6- dehydrate stained sections in a convection oven at 60ºC for 5 minutes 7- coverslip as usual. As you can see xylene is nowhere to be found in this sequence that produce optimal quality slides. Try it! René J.
________________________________ From: "Yaskovich, Ruth A (NIH/NIDCR) [E]" <ryaskov...@dir.nidcr.nih.gov> To: "'Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu'" <Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 11:18 AM Subject: [Histonet] Xylene Substitutes I know this question has been asked before but what's the best and safest Xylene Substitute? Ruth Yaskovich N.I.H. N.I.D.C.R. _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
