The Use of Explosion Proof Freezers in Plastination: Are they really necessary?
C.A.C. Baptista, P. Bellm, M. S. Plagge and M. Valigosky
Summary
At first it was suspected that personnel safety might be a drawback of plastination with increased exposure to toxic chemicals for those involved with preparing and processing the specimens. The data from this study suggest that health and safety are not a major problem as long as proper precautions as described above are observed.It is recommended, however, that all precautions be taken to minimize the risk of explosion. Although not considered optimum protection it is possible to modify domestic deep freezers, by removal of motors, compressors and lights to achieve some degree of protection.
Despite our results showing the danger of explosion to be minimal, it should be noted that optimal conditions are used throughout our laboratory. Since these optimal conditions are not always possible, it is wise to modify the freezer as suggested by Gubbins (1990).