Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)

Question: I heard there is a connection between dioxins and PCBs. What is that?
Answer: If PCB oils are burned or incinerated at low temperatures under insufficient oxygen conditions, most likely dioxins will be a by-product of PCB destruction.

Question: There is this power source or transformer in my laboratory. Does it contain PCBs?
Answer: First, manufacturing label information is extremely important. Many times PCB items can be identified by a company trade name for the original charge of oil. Second, some care must be taken as historically some non-PCB items were topped off with PCB oil as a maintenance activity. In this case, a PCB item has now been generated.

Finally, if all other efforts fail to produce necessary information, an oil sample can be removed from the equipment and analytical testing will be carried out. This analysis costs less than $100 and reporting takes about two weeks.