Puritan 4.5" Sterile Infant Wood Tongue Depressor

During Fungus processing, I used a sterile infant tongue depressor on a tissue specimen and another on skin scrapings. Both worked very well. During tissue processing the tongue depressor worked better than the wooden applicator when cutting the tissue into pieces. Usually too much pressure causes the applicator stick to snap in half, making tissue hard to cut. The tongue depressor is much more durable and can handle more pressure, helping to make cleaner cuts of tissue to put into the flasks of fungal media. During processing of the skin scrapings the tongue depressor worked even better than the applicator stick. When trying to pick up the scrapings with a stick, it can be difficult to tell how much you have grabbed. With the tongue depressor, the skin scrapings can easily be distinguished from the light brown color of the wood. This allowed me to see exactly how many scrapings I had. It also allowed me to position the scrapings on the agar within in the flasks of fungal media even better than with the applicator stick. The skin scrapings easily clung to the tongue depressor so transferring the specimen from the container to the flask of fungal media was not a problem due to the small size of the infant tongue depressor.