We have an old bottle, rather small, the interior of which is lined with a milky substance and there are flakes of this milky substance in the bottle. What methods are available to determine what the substance is. The bottle has no markings. Would a reputable pharmicist be able and/or willing to look at it?
From your description it sounds as if you’re dealing with a solid residue left behind by the evaporation of a liquid, and it sounds as if you suspect that the stuff is (or was originally) of a pharmaceutical nature. Is the bottle sealed? Can it be opened to extract a sample of the white stuff? If some can be extracted you might persuade someone at a nearly university to run an x-ray spectrographic anaysis.
Because the chemical/pharmaceutical universe includes a great many white substances ranging in nature from inert to harmless to illegal and even to deadly, I doubt that you’d find any pharmacist, chemist or other potential authority willing to offer more than a very informal opinion (e.g., “could be residue from milk of magnesia — or not”). But they would be going out on a limb if their guess turned out to be seriously or even tragically wrong.
Yes the bottle can be opened. In fact the screw on lid is so rusted that tiny flakes of the residue have escaped so I am eager to isolate it and determine what it might be. Milk of magnesia, since you mention it, was a thought I had as well.
Be careful! I few years ago we found a jar of picric acid. Which can be very unstable. We used a local chemical disposal firm to neutralize and remove it when the museum was closed to the public. I was told that the mere act of unscrewing the lid could have caused a small explosion. This was confirmed by a chemist from a local university whose colleague leaned this the hard way.
Be careful! I few years ago we found a jar of picric acid. Which can be very unstable. We used a local chemical disposal firm to neutralize and remove it when the museum was closed to the public. I was told that the mere act of unscrewing the lid could have caused a small explosion. This was confirmed by a chemist from a local university whose colleague leaned this the hard way.
Be careful! I few years ago we found a jar of picric acid. Which can be very unstable. We used a local chemical disposal firm to neutralize and remove it when the museum was closed to the public. I was told that the mere act of unscrewing the lid could have caused a small explosion. This was confirmed by a chemist from a local university whose colleague leaned this the hard way.
I’ll vouch for the instability and potentially explosive quality of picric acid — and I have my own hospital records to prove it. Picric, however, is a light lemon yellow color and granular, so it doesn’t correspond to the description of a flaky white residue. Nevertheless, your comment underscores the kinds of danger that can be posed by unknown chemical/pharmaceutical substances. Most are benign; some are anything but. Satisfying one’s intellectual curiosity about such stuff may not be worth the cost.
I chair the collections comittee of an historic house museum, and happen to be a volunteer with a masters in microbiology. When we had a similar problem with a bottle, I contacted a chemistry professor at the local college. He identified the material and arranged for disposal and cleaning of the bottle, even preserving the label remnants.
Sharon Bell 5 months, 1 week ago.
