What makes vaccine glass so special and hard to come by?

[MattiJ]

Pyrex is Corning 7913 fused silica...

Somewhat different than boro....

Nowadays there is about ten varieties under Pyrex brand.
But as far as I know it was originally borosilicate. Pyrex 7740 is the current name for it. And european pyrex vs US pyrex is different material in cookware as mentioned before.
The X-ray Absorption Coefficients for Pyrex Glass - Norman Todd, S. L. Whitcher - Google Books

 

[DDoug]

Armed forces were MAJOR user, 'nam war era. Jouk or flinch badly, not have proper angle and pressure as to contact? The buggers could slice yah pretty badly.

Some shots DID hurt like Hell. Different settings to drive different vaccines into where they had to get to in the tissue.

20 different vaccines, original and nine boosters for EACH on my GI shot record. already had a dozen as an Army brat and such, before all that started. Jonas Salk showing up at my 4th grade school in-person. Mind, he was U Pgh based for the whole Polio project, we were just part of his initial trial, so it wasn't unusual.
Got Sabin vaccine four times, later on, plus ten more, DoD.

Two hundred goes, GI alone, not ALL of them the gun. And then I added more-yet, "tropical diseases" especially, when I went a gallivanting 51 odd countries AFTER the war.

Per CDC, recent years?

Five of those vaccines a Combat Engineer needed to work in real, not named-as, sewers, still do not exist, yet today, and "officially" never had existed.

Among other things that oath to "defend and uphold.." - the proverbial "blank check for any amount, up to and including my life" carries with it.. for the rest of your life, not "just" active duty?

The US Gov had multiple millions of "test subjects" for trials of vaccines.

And some few among us DID die of them, every damn cycle. Bubonic plague vaccine a fair reliable killer.

You does yer best.. then rolls the dice and hopes for the best.

I haven't bothered to keep up, but if the DoD HAS "kept up" fifty-sixty years on and with all the advances in immunology as have been enjoyed?

Present-day members of the Armed forces should have somewhere between forty and a hundred vaccines on their shot-records?

Or someone has gone far too damned complacent about an ever-hostile world.

Upside to it, of course is that bugs as bite we millions of GI guinea pigs?

Mostly just die.

I'm good with that.

THIS ^^^ is the #1 reason I didn't enlist out of H.S. and I really wanted to be a chopper pilot.

 

[thermite]

THIS ^^^ is the #1 reason I didn't enlist out of H.S. and I really wanted to be a chopper pilot.

LOL! I went USAF ROTC, wanted to fly one-oh-wonders. Flight physical at Andrews AFB in '64, came in category "1N". 20/25 vision, one eye --> off to the the back seat, best hope my PAS old mount, B58 "Hustler" jock. Night shift layoff hit, refused to owe money, dropped daytime UNI. HE points me at the US Army.

Said they had more pilots than the USAF... or anybody else but the Soviets.

Ended up ground-controlling 101's and 106's, thence Corps of Engineers, instructor and command slots.

Three MIKE FOXTROT DAYS before my DEROS from 'nam? I get a Captain out of OPO, Pentagon, calling with word the vision standards had been relaxed and I could get a slot in either of fixed-wing or rotary school. IF... I went "vol indef"... putting on CPT's bars and... possibly the rest of my life in Army uniform? But only when they NEEDED a reservist on active duty?

Nah. Seen that, me own Dad and several other War Two & Korean officers of high regard with civilian career "interruptus" for need of their speciality.

Done enough. Went home and off to inactive reserves instead.

I didn't fly left front seat again until I could afford lessons for the Halibut past 40 years of age.

By focus and natural skills? I might have been a good STOL U6 or L-20 jock, maybe even a frieghter or tanker pilot. Surely nothing to do with either of fighters nor bombers atall!

And you? Not sure you would even FIT a helicopter - nor a tank, either, BTW.

So much for youth and dreams...

But WTH.. there are all MANNER of jobs, many of them highly trained and technical. It ain't a muskets and blackpowder war no longer.

A combat Infantryman has more high-tech on his web gear than an entire heavy bomber krew once had, can call-in Apaches, A10, and/or fast-movers or big boys, high up with more destruction than a fully-laden B-17 when need be.

More to the point, actually expect it to hit what it was MEANT to hit as well.

Our survival odds are good and improving .... as far as that inherently nasty bizness goes, anyway.

Other poor dumb bastard in opposition can take his f**king chances.
His dam' cawfee ain't on OUR rations draw!

 

[JST]

Pyrex is Corning 7913 fused silica...

Somewhat different than boro....

As I said, there are "cheap substitutes" now.

It was originally borosilicate glass.

Borosilicate glass was developed to replace the thin laboratory glass that was used previously, but was tricky because it would break under heating unless great care was taken.

The borosilicate was MUCH better. And it was sold in the consumer market back when people did not throw away everything in a year or so.

 

[WizardOfBoz]

Point of information.....

Pyrex (same as "fire King") glass IS borosilicate glass. Or at least it was, these days that stuff is expensive, and there are lots of "substitutes".

Pyrex branded stuff was originally borosilicate glass. Two problems. First is expense, and second is that borosilicate is weaker and scratches easier than "Regular" soda lime glass.

So what is now sold as pyrex is regular glass that has been tempered to remove high stress so that hot liquids won't crack it. There is some question as to whether the safety margin is adequate. Certatinly easier to shatter the tempered glass than the borosilicate, with hot liquids. Corelle licenses the pyrex name to other mfrs. PYREX (all uppercase) is borosilicate glass.

BTW, I suspect that "Vaccine glass" probably has been microoptimized to some extent, but is also pretty close to other glass compositions. The bottleneck may be ensuring that the ampoules were mfrd under "Current Good Manufacturing Processes". Tests, and process validation and all that stuff to ensure that the vaccine glass is indeed vaccine glass.

 

[thermite]

... sold in the consumer market back when people did not throw away everything in a year or so.

Phhht! Yah don't say?

AVERAGE age of our kitchenware, Old Skewl black Iron to present day near as dammit all stainless, is prolly 40 years.

One of my "Case" kitchen knives was once very thick in the blade. NOW it is a "boning knife". Given G'mum was gifted with it as a wedding present around 1903 and wasn't shy as to sharpening it.

That only so newish because I laid-by a high unit count both US and HKG - of Swiss "Spring" cookware and Belgian Demeyere with no-rivet handles about 10 or 15 years ago when Emily's Mum began burning the handles off or burning entire vessels to twisted metal outright off getting interested in TV.

Still cooking like a champ 90 odd years in, age 94? I'll buy her whatever she needs!

 

[Joe Gwinn]

Pyrex branded stuff was originally borosilicate glass. Two problems. First is expense, and second is that borosilicate is weaker and scratches easier than "Regular" soda lime glass.

So what is now sold as pyrex is regular glass that has been tempered to remove high stress so that hot liquids won't crack it. There is some question as to whether the safety margin is adequate. Certatinly easier to shatter the tempered glass than the borosilicate, with hot liquids. Corelle licenses the pyrex name to other mfrs. PYREX (all uppercase) is borosilicate glass.

That's my understanding as well. I didn't know that all caps was still reserved for borosilicate -- good to know.

It's easy to tell borosilicate glass from ordinary soda-lime glass by looking at the color of a sheet or wall as seen edge-on: Soda-lime will look green, while borosilicate will look clear white to perhaps slightly bluish.

 

[9100]

I don't know how it would apply here since the operation is at room temperature, but in the 60s and 70s when I was working with glass a bit, there was a definite difference in the melting point of soft glass and whatever Pyrex was then. You could work soft glass with a natural gas/air torch, blowing 4 CCs of cold nitrogen on it for every CC of oxygen generating heat. Working Pyrex required gas/oxygen, no way around it. Vycor was even more fun, but a real man wanted pure quartz. Oxy/acetylene and working it separated the sheep from the goats.

About the time of Gulf II, a company owned by a very large one you would all recognize asked me to make some crushable ampoules for some type of test like for poison gas, they were very secretive about it. These had square bottoms and a constriction in the neck. They gave me the usual snow job about how many thousands the market was. I cobbled up a miniature CNC glass lathe and made a few samples. They liked them and asked for a quote on 1,000. To make that many I would need to make what almost amounted to the final machine, so I replied that I didn't care that much about the 1K price, but the long term one. Silence, except for a little confused mumbling. It finally turned out that they never had any attention of giving me the job, but were submitting my pieces as their own and wanted the 1K to keep the job alive while they figured out how to make them themselves. What followed was what Henry Kissinger called "A frank and open discussion." As usual in these situations, I not only lost that job, but never got anything else from them.

Bill

 

[Ries]

Currently in the USA there is a huge industry that is tooled up and working with borosilicate glass- The Bong Industry.
All "for tobacco use only" smoking devices made of glass are made from borosilicates, and this industry is, while below the radar, pretty sizeable.

 

[EPAIII]

While I am firmly convinced that the media has a slant and that they may do some things deliberately with less than honorable motives, I have worked with some of them and can absolutely tell you that they are not experts on every subject. And even when they are told the correct facts, they often get it wrong by the time they get around to writing it up (an hour or two later).

And their motives are more sinister than just keeping the fear going.

you're thinking of ...<snip>...

again - I'm 99,99% convinced this is some misinterpretation of something that was told by media, just to keep the fear going

...<snip>...

 

[thermite]

That's my understanding as well. I didn't know that all caps was still reserved for borosilicate -- good to know.

It's easy to tell borosilicate glass from ordinary soda-lime glass by looking at the color of a sheet or wall as seen edge-on: Soda-lime will look green, while borosilicate will look clear white to perhaps slightly bluish.

Colours of a(ny) glass MEANT to NOT be"coloured".. tell the tale. Bluish in high-volume glass isn't Cobalt - it's usually traces of Iron, greenish of Copper, amber to brownish of selenium.

Glass we can readily AFFORD - beverage and foodstuff packaging, mostly - has seriously high need of recycling. Or we could NOT as easily afford it.

That has to do with fuel required for primary production vs much LESS fuel for re-melt easily as much as cost of the raw-raw-raw minerals. Too expensive to remove ALL the "wrong" traces when recycling glass as has already BEEN recycled, and many times over. They settle for "minimizing".

 

[DDoug]

Colours of a(ny) glass MEANT to NOT be"coloured".. tell the tale. Bluish in high-volume glass isn't Cobalt - it's usually traces of Iron, greenish of Copper, amber to brownish of selenium.

Glass we can readily AFFORD - beverage and foodstuff packaging, mostly - has seriously high need of recycling. Or we could NOT as easily afford it.

That has to do with fuel required for primary production vs much LESS fuel for re-melt easily as much as cost of the raw-raw-raw minerals. Too expensive to remove ALL the "wrong" traces when recycling glass as has already BEEN recycled, and many times over. They settle for "minimizing".

Unfortunately as of late (last 6 months or so) our curbside recycling program has "outlawed" glass,
and directs everyone to simply put glass in the normal trash to be landfilled.

Low resell price is the reason cited.

However, I see a surge in the use of crushed glass for abrasive blasting, and unlike glass bead,
is a once thru type usage (and the low price seems to back this up)

 

[Joe Gwinn]

Colours of a(ny) glass MEANT to NOT be"coloured".. tell the tale. Bluish in high-volume glass isn't Cobalt - it's usually traces of Iron, greenish of Copper, amber to brownish of selenium.

Glass we can readily AFFORD - beverage and foodstuff packaging, mostly - has seriously high need of recycling. Or we could NOT as easily afford it.

That has to do with fuel required for primary production vs much LESS fuel for re-melt easily as much as cost of the raw-raw-raw minerals. Too expensive to remove ALL the "wrong" traces when recycling glass as has already BEEN recycled, and many times over. They settle for "minimizing".

I'm talking of how to tell clear glass cookware apart by glass type.

My understanding that the distinct green hue of an ordinary soda-lime glass slab viewed edge-on is to a low level of iron, which is too costly to remove for most applications. Borosilicate glass usually lacks this iron trace, or somehow neutralizes it.

When I talk of bluish, it's very pale, hard to tell from colorless.