[BrianT]

in reply to: VAT on Embalming machine #5581

Hi Callum,
I have claimed a VAT exemption on pumps from Dodge in the past so cant see why they wouldnt take a VAT exemption cert now. Its up to the supplier to accept a VAT exemption cert so best check with them and dont take the piss as Customs and Excise (or what ever they are these days) can really ruin your day!

best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: HSE – GB public survey: use of biocidal chemicals when handling the deceased #5100

Hi Sarah,
Thats interesting as we have just had a survey/questionnaire that came via the Med Schools Council about the same thing except this has an EU ad UK spin. Ive cut and pasted the intro as you dont seem to be able to attach stuff in the forum and i havent found a link. They are after as much info as possible about the impact of not using formaldehyde and the potential impacts of not being able to use it. If you email robert.jones@tsgconsulting.com. you should be able to get a copy of the questionnaire or could we use the mailing list to circulate them so we can get as many replies in as possible?

best wishes
Brian

Questionnaire: Formaldehyde in embalming products

The European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) are deciding whether to allow the use of formaldehyde in embalming products.

Formaldehyde is covered by the EU’s Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR), which includes products like disinfectants, pest control products, repellents, preservatives and embalming fluids. Under the BPR, active substances in these products (including formaldehyde) must be assessed. If they are approved, then products containing them must be authorised, otherwise it is unlawful to sell or use them.

The approval process for formaldehyde in embalming products is still ongoing in the EU and UK. If formaldehyde is not approved, all embalming products with formaldehyde will be withdrawn from the market and cannot be used.

We need your help! We think you might rely on formaldehyde-based embalming products in your organisation. If these products are important to you, we need to hear from you.

Please fill out this questionnaire and return it by email to robert.jones@tsgconsulting.com. This will help us understand how important formaldehyde is for your work and what would happen if you could no longer buy or use products containing it.

A non-approval decision means formaldehyde could no longer be used in embalming products across the EU and UK. The more responses we get, the stronger our case will be. If industry does not come forward to defend formaldehyde as an embalming chemical then it may not be approved. Organisations lobbying against formaldehyde can also give their input during the approval process so it is important that your views are heard.

This questionnaire is designed to answer questions we have received from the EU regulatory authority currently assessing formaldehyde as an embalming chemical. Please feel free to share it with other organisations that might want to help.

[BrianT]

in reply to: Types of masks and filters used whilst embalming #4740

Hi Callum,

I have used the Jupiter 3M air fed hoods with filters (A2B1E1K1P) on a belt for a few years now, the jupiter system has been discontinued but you can still get the filters. They are much nicer to use than half masks, avoid any face fit issues and multiple people can use the same belt you just need different hoods. Keele have air fed hoods on hoses that are fed from a compressor in the plant room which would have been ideal as a new build but we didn`t have room in our plant room for another bit of kit.
From testing we know that we arent creating lots of fumes, barely detectable during the embalming process and our air handlers run at 4 cubic meters a second when we are embalming, so the advice to me was to change the filters every six months. If you were operating in a heavily contaminated environment with multiple chemicals and had lots of dusts the filters might only last a few hours. Hopefully you arent in a heavily contaminated environment :-)

best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Importing an Anatomage table #4660

Hi Marise,

We went through Anatomage but its up to the customer to sort out the Customs clearance paperwork. All the people that were involved in that 5 years have left so no one had a clue or was willing to admit to anything. Getting it off the back of the van was interesting, too long to go on the lift and to wide to be turned in the van. It had been put on lengthwise from a same level loading dock and we dont have one of those. The delivery driver sorted it but it wasn`t pretty!

[BrianT]

in reply to: Importing an Anatomage table #4658

I ended up using commodity code 8471 4100 00 and procedure code 4000000 and it was delivered yesterday.

Samar from Anatomage then got in touch today with

For institutions that are VAT exempt and can provide documentation of this status, the codes below are used:

Customs Procedure Code: 40 00 C13

(HS) Customs Commodity Code: 9023 0080

For institutions that are not VAT exempt and can provide documentation of this status, the codes below are used:

Customs Procedure Code: 40 00 000

(HS) Customs Commodity Code: 9023 0080

[BrianT]

in reply to: Body acceptance weight limit #3902

The Newcastle Uni/Newcastle Surgical Training Centre upper limit is 90kg with the lower limit at around 40-45kg. Quite often its the best guess of the person you are talking to so we have gone over and under that before. At Sunderland we have had the luxury of being able to put in handling equipment and set up the facility to handle "semi obese" not that we are fully up and running yet but getting there. Recently we were less fussy about the lower weight limit and that has been OK if they are in proportion its only when the medical history talks about cachectic (v thin/lost muscle mass that we start to worry.

best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Health and Safety – Formaldehyde levels #3846

Hi Sarah,
I had several chats with our safety bods about this and as far as we can tell the change would have need to be voted on in the UK Parliament to become law. Due to lack of parliamentary time they are unlikely to do this so the legal WEL will remain at 2ppm in the UK for the time being (not sure that counts as a definite answer). According to them the HSE have basically given up updating there website and don’t really go in for giving advice any more.
What we have done, is to decide to adopt the 0.2ppm as an aspiration that we work towards. Formaldehyde is a potential carcinogen and you should keep your use to as low as reasonable practicable, the WEL is a limit not a target and all that. That aspiration is helped by the fact that for most of our work, the testing proved that the formaldehyde levels were almost undetectable. I would like to bring the ventilation spec in one of our staff working areas up to a decent standard rather than just legal, so am using this to try and leverage that.
We had been injecting the abdomens with 250ml of syncav which has a slightly higher level of formaldehyde than the embalming fluid and was a bit eye watering when you first opened the cavity, this came back at around 0.2-0.3ppm in testing. We have dropped the syncav injection from the embalming protocol and the plan is to retest when we open up the abdomens and see what that does for the results.

They key thing for me is to be able to look my reproductively viable/pregnant colleagues and students in the eye when I tell them that it is probably safe for them to be around the specimens but it’s up to them and if anyone develops an unfortunate cough we can defend ourselves. Our occ health department still thinks we bath in the stuff. There was some data somewhere that a new build house in the USA was around 6ppm due to all the MDF and fumigants on furniture and carpet and stoping that was one of the original drivers for this.

best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Embalming Fluid #3816

Hi Samuel,
I have been using Dodge Chemicals at Newcastle for a while now and worked with Ben from Mazwell on a few things and been really pleased with the results. The academics and students much prefer the results to the more traditional fluids that we used in the past, the colour and flexibility of the donors being the main thing. The main issue can be academic resistance to change but I was lucky with that and they let me run with it as long as I didnt do anything that couldnt be undone. They havent asked me to stop yet and its been a few years now :-)
If you have any specific questions or want to have a chat give me a call on 01912086969 or brian.thompson@ncl.ac.uk. I am leaving Ncl on Thursday before starting a new job as Technical Manager Anatomy at Sunderland Uni on 1st Sept so there might be a break in service for a couple of weeks.

best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Health and Safety – Formaldehyde levels #3754

Hi Charlie,
All well in Newcastle, I have even managed to fit in a holiday to Norfolk :-) I was looking at one of these https://www.ribble-enviro.co.uk/product/multirae-lite/ Then the university had a visit from the H.S.E. (not us specifically) and one of the outcomes of that is that we have been advised to try and outsource that sort of testing to external occupational hygienists. Turns out someones autoclave checks and calibration wasnt as up to spec as they thought it was and therefore a bit of a question mark about if it was actually effective!

best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Postgraduate courses- sourcing fresh pigs #1985

Hi Jo,
Sorry would have replied sooner but I dont appear to get notifications when somebody posts in the forum anymore, I only came on today to see if it was still here. We use a company called Med Meat he is an ex paramedic his father in law was a butcher. We use him for our PERT course so the pigs stop just below the diaphragm and cost about £90 but depends on market rate. You just need to be careful that you dont end up with a manual handling problem as we had some whoopers one year 90kg upwards and I said I would turn them away if they tried that again. It wasnt Grants fault he was just supplying what the course convener wanted who hadnt really thought it through. Contact details Grant Spencer medmeat@aol.com 07720709298

best wishes
Brian Thompson
Newcastle University

[BrianT]

in reply to: Ventilation #1453

Hi Sarah,
My experience of embalming is restricted to a specific genus of Primates, some of whom might have visited Greggs a bit to often but hopefully this will help. All our labs /body store are set up with air in at celling height and extraction at floor level, aiming for 12 changes an hour. In the embalming room we have an additional low level extractor that we can turn on, on demand, for an extra 36 air changes an hour for that room.
I have no experience of down draft tables.
We only used respiratory protective equipment (half masks) when we were injecting ammonia for the vascular latex injection but have lost that course now. We still have half masks around somewhere just in case. However if you were looking at RPE for embalming I would seriously consider the powered respirators, as although they cost more to start with, you will have less issues around face fit etc

Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Measuring phenol levels #1446

Hi Steven,
We used to use Vickers no 4 and although we went looking for formaldehyde we never went looking for phenol. Largely because the management were only really interested in Formaldehyde levels, as that was traditionally the problem in DRs.
If I was going to do it, I would employ an Occupational Hygienist to do it for me, with air pumps and accredited labs etc. There are other ways of doing it yourself but these are not particularly reliable/sensitive. If you employ an O.H. you do get a result that will stand up in court/ University level Safety Office and give staff confidence in the result.
We looked for a few things when we changed to the Dodge fluids and ended up with 4 tubes and air pumps hanging off us. We also got a 126 page report out of it, which has kept everybody quiet :-)
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: The Forum #1424

Hi,
As another none user of facebook I would miss it even if it doesn`t get used very much as it does provide a safe space (sorry), where you can ask questions about our work with out the fear of pressing the wrong button and scaring your “normal” friends.
The social media verses more formal forums pendulum does swing backwards and forwards over the years, so as long as it doesn`t cost to much I think there is room for both.
best wishes
Brian

[BrianT]

in reply to: Specimen printer and labels. #1418

Hi,
I don`t think Isabelle from Sheffield has joined the IAS yet, although I was working on her! We changed over to SET tags as worn be sheep which gives you a unique number for everything and ours contain a machine readable RFID tag so we can track things around the department. That was after much faffing about with laminating barcodes and trying to attach them to specimens. I wasn`t very popular with Lynsey and Jess but it kept them out of trouble! In the several thousand we have used there has only been one failure, it was still machine and human readable but the plastic had cracked around the point where it snaps together. We get them from http://www.shearwell.co.uk/c/238 . Isabelle was going to try them so I don`t know if it was those that you saw. I have her contact details if you want them send me an email.
Brian (brian.thompson@newcastle.ac.uk)

[BrianT]

in reply to: Notifiable Disease #1365

Hi Bob,
At Newcastle University we take donors for the anatomy lab where they are embalmed and for the Newcastle Surgical Training Centre where they are used un embalmed. When we are getting the medical history we specifically ask about Hepatitis, AIDS/HIV, TB, CJD, MRSA, C DIFF, septicaemia and then “any other infectious diseases”. I am not aware of anywhere in the UK that does serological testing before accepting so it basically means they haven`t got it or are asymptomatic at time of death.
You may already be aware that the term “notifiable disease” has a legal connotation in England and there is a legal obligation to report even the suspicion of the disease to Public Health England. It`s all the stuff that you really don`t want and we wouldn`t take if mentioned as a current disease, full text can be found here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report. Given the nature of the disease I suspect most countries will have something similar.
The short answer is if they have anything that needs handling at biosafety level 2 or above we wouldn`t take them.
and what Natasha said so I`ll stop typing :-)
Best wishes
Brian

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