Hi everyone! First, thanks to all of you who gave me input on this issue, I've found it to be incredibly informative! We've figured out what we believe to have happened: the pour spout had degraded while it was sitting in the stock room, allowing air to enter the container. This, combined with metals from the drum itself, led to the formation of all the impurities that we found over time. FYI: From the responses that I've gotten, it seems that many people have seen this, and in some industries that use toluene on a regular basis, they have to test their drums using ASTM method D3703 (Thanks Sarah!). And Edward Rau has cited Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2006, 8, 4559-4562, which is an article entitled "On the atmospheric oxidation of toluene". I do not have institutional access to RSC journals, so I'm waiting on an inter-library loan copy. All of this information leads me to believe that this is something commonly seen in older bottles of toluene. I'm thinking that it's not on a peroxide-former list because the chance of having an explosion from this is pretty non-existent. Thanks again for all of your information, it's much appreciated! Elizabeth Gregory Laboratory Manager Department of Chemistry SUNY College at Brockport Room 230 Smith Hall Brockport, NY 14420 (585) 395-2210 Fax: (585) 395-5805 Email: egregory**At_Symbol_Here**brockport.edu
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