I searched and i searched but could not find my awnser (i'm new here)

My question is = Does the baster for pulls HAVE to be glass or can it be plastic?
Thank you for you'r input

solvents will leach the plastic. You're best off with glass or stainless steel.

What Purges said. In my first STB attempt, I purchased a turkey baster with stainless steel tip but plastic body, and hexane made the plastic crack in the first pull attempt, rendering it useless. Glass seems the way to go so you can see and measure the pulled solvent.

My friend bought plastic 20ml syringes with rubber plungers, they were very effective at getting the solvent out of the mix but after a while they became useless because the rubber had dissolved... I can only assume some of the rubber/plastic would have ended up in his final product (and mine, he gave me one for my extractions since all I had was a turkey baster). So yeah... I'd say glass is the way to go. When I used to use a turkey baster it was glass with a rubber bulb at the top, but the solvent never got near the rubber. Basters are a massive pain in the hole though. Glass syringe (fully glass, with a glass plunger) is the way to go IMHO.

Avoid plastic. At all steps of the extractulation process, all the time, just avoid it.

Matter of fact...throw away your disposable razor and get a straight razor. Stop buying bottled water in plastic containers and buy a glass bottle and fill it with charcoal filtered water. Stop using plastic wrap. This might blow your mind baby, but wax paper or butchers paper does the trick just fine. There is an island in the pacific of floating plastic bullshit, so yeah, eliminate plastic from your life, please and thank you. Also try BLAB, amor fati or q21q21 tek 1, or better yet go invent your own eco-tek and tell us the recipe--but at this point I'm almost ranting.

Be a good human, in general. And try and avoid tainting your spice as well.

Would a sodium carbonate wash / Re-X / IPA wash ... remove any leeched plastic? I was planning to use plastic syringes just to remove the solvent from the main mix. Should I be worried about 30 seconds contact? (I have glass droppers for the other bits).

thanks.

man you guy's are great, i really apreciate the info BTW i got the plastic baster at walmart where would I be able to find glass?

Ace Hardware has nice glass basters online and a few stores carry them in house. You can ask the Ace store to order them and they will ship to your nearest store for pickup if you do not want to do the online thing. Just be careful of the rubber bulb and not getting any solvents on it.

you can also try a beer making supply place.
They have loads of great stuff.
I found a wicked, like 16" tall stainless steal baster at a beer place and use that. Not as pure as glass but much better than plastic. Plus they have great funnels, glass containers, etc. a lot of the same supplies.

Glass eye droppers work best for me. Takes 5 minutes but you can get every last bit when pulling at the edge of the glas where the surface tension is.
Very effective and can get them at any farmacy / grocery store

I'm not sure that the 30 second contact with the plastic sides of the syringe is that big a deal, but I can say for sure that if the plunger is made of rubber then that will noticeably (visibly) end up in your final product... or at least that is the case when using xylene, I'm guessing other solvents have pretty much the same effect on rubber... they eat right through it.

30 seconds of contact is certainly a problem. I've seen d-limonene visibly dissolve the tip of a plastic baster with about 2 seconds contact. Phthalates can leach out invisibly as well...since you do not wish to smoke plastic, even in small bits the I'd suggest that one possible plan of action would be to never use plastic anywhere in any extraction.


Of course you only have to be careful with the solvents....right?

I've read that you should not keep plastic jugs of water stored on a concrete floor. The mere contact with concrete hastens the leeching out of toxins from the plastic bottle and into the water....I wonder, lime is a major ingredient in concrete. Is it the alkalinity that causes (or possibly contributes to) this effect? Perhaps even an innocuous product like lime, calcium carbonate or whatever could maybe be a problem, for all we know. Also, I would be concerned about accidentally using the plastic with the solvent, if it was anywhere within reach it could eventually cause this little goof up.

Spend the money and do it right. For the earth, out of respect for the spice and for your own health -- do the right thing.

While I do admire people who are so conscious about health concerns, personally I am not
too bothered. As someone who smokes tobacco and spent years smoking crappy hash (which at times had plastic in it... wouldn't touch that nowadays) the possibility of micro amounts of toxins ending up in an otherwise relatively clean product is not too big of an issue for me. The ease of using the plastic syringe when I had it (versus my crappy baster) was worth the small amount of crap that was probably in the product. Would never buy a plastic syringe again obviously but I still use an HDPE container for extracting. That's just me though, I think health conscious people should indeed avoid things which could be negative to their health. I try to be relatively healthy, but in the grand scheme of things (smoking, pollution of the city, food additives etc) the tiny amounts of toxins in spice, which I take very rarely and in very small amounts, is not much of a concern for me.

I do agree with you about plastics being horribly negative for the environment and should be avoided for that reason (you didn't directly say that but I know that's what you were getting at). I have seen the "plastic island" that you mentioned and it is horrible. I don't contribute much plastic waste to the environment, way less than average... but still too much.