Eugenol (CAS 97-53-0): storage and disposal

Skin allergy and serious eye irritation decide where eugenol goes. Keep neat bottles upright in a dry, labelled store on a low shelf, so a dropped bottle never falls from head height. In a dental surgery the liquid usually sits beside the powder part of the cement, and small unlabelled bottles are easily mixed up, so keep the original label facing outwards. Prep rooms and university stores hold it as neat liquid in larger glass. Date it on arrival. Keep it away from food grade clove products, which smell almost identical and are a real source of confusion in shared school stores.

Few dramatic warnings appear on the shelf. The usual change is colour: a pale liquid slowly turns yellow and then brown where air and light reach it, and it may become thicker and slightly sticky. The clove smell stays strong, so smell alone tells you nothing about age. Look at the cap and thread, because dried residue there is how a small dental bottle ends up stuck shut. Check for a faded or missing label, since tiny dental bottles lose their markings first. Darkened stock is still eugenol for disposal purposes, so keep bottles separate and labelled. A weeping or cracked bottle needs a tray under it and a line on the stock record.

We arrange this by specialist collection. We do not publish a drain or general waste route for any chemical. It is normally packed in a general laboratory pack with compatible chemicals.

Tipping it into a surgery or lab sink is not acceptable, nor is clinical waste, nor covering it with anything to hide the smell. Because it is a skin sensitiser, a leaking bottle should be left undisturbed and reported when arranging collection. Tell the collector about the leak so that suitable containment can be arranged. Specialist collection is the only route. List each bottle by size and whether it is neat liquid or dental cement liquid. School, college and university holders usually use 16 05 06* for laboratory stock, whereas a dental or other human healthcare practice can use 18 01 06*. Keep it away from sharps and amalgam waste in the same room.

Usually held as: neat, dental cement liquid.

Tell us the container size and how many you hold. An estimate is enough to start with, and some items cannot be priced until someone has looked at them.