Vanillin (CAS 121-33-5): storage and disposal

The hazard that decides where it goes is eye irritation from fine powder, so keep the jar closed and handle it where dust will not drift into faces. Keep it in a dry, labelled, well organised store and date it on arrival. Separate it from food grade supplies, because a school with a home economics department may hold a food-grade jar of the same flavouring nearby, and mixing them up causes problems in either direction. Label laboratory vanillin clearly as a reagent not for consumption. A tight cap matters, since damp air makes the crystals cake and the scent will spread through a shared cupboard.

Fresh vanillin is a pale crystalline solid. In an old jar the crystals often darken from cream to a yellowish or brown tint, and they cake into a hard lump that will not pour. Light and damp speed this up, so a jar left on an open shelf or a windowsill tends to show it first. A strong vanilla smell around a cupboard points to a poor seal. Other checks are a faded label, a cap that has seized, a damp or sticky-looking surface, a lower level than the record and a missing date of receipt. Colour change on its own is a reason to stop using the jar for teaching.

By specialist collection only. It never goes down the drain or into general waste. It is normally packed in a non-regulated or low hazard laboratory pack with compatible chemicals.

Though it smells like a kitchen ingredient, laboratory vanillin leaves the site as chemical waste by specialist collection, packed in a lab pack with compatible organic solids and described under waste code 16 05 06*, or 16 05 08* for a discarded organic chemical outside a pack. Record the jar size, how full it is, its colour and whether it has caked. It never goes into the food waste caddy, a sink, a drain or the bin. Nobody should try to dissolve or wash out a caked jar before the collection happens. A registered carrier takes it away.

Usually held as: solid.

Part-used bottles and full containers are both fine. Tell us the size and how many, and an estimate is enough for a first price.