COSTA MESA : Funds Donated for OCC Science Lab

The George Hoag Family Foundation has donated $56,800 to help pay for a new laboratory at Orange Coast College, campus officials announced Monday.

The money will go toward a “plastination laboratory,” to be supervised by Ann Harmer, an associate professor of biology at Orange Coast.

Plastination is essentially a process for preserving tissue and organ samples indefinitely, without the aid of formaldehyde. The method, developed nearly a decade ago by a German physician, works by substituting the water and fat in a tissue sample with a plaster polymer.

This method of preserving biological specimens such as lungs, hearts and other body tissues will be of great benefit to students in human anatomy, marine science, zoology, physiology, human diseases and sports medicine, Harmer said.

“Our students in anatomy and other areas in the biology department have been dealing with specimens that are preserved in formaldehyde or phenol,” Harmer said. “These chemicals are known to be carcinogenic and can be absorbed through the skin. The specimens produced with plastination are not wet, not smelly and not toxic. And they are practically indestructible and so much easier to study.”

Harmer said the Hoag Family Foundation was particularly interested in supporting the project so that there would be a local laboratory capable of producing samples that could be used for patient training by physicians and others at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

“They are very interested in obtaining plastinated specimens for use in hospital teaching situations, to illustrate the dangers of smoking, alcohol and drug use, that sort of thing,” she said.

The lab is scheduled to open in time for the fall semester, which will begin Aug. 17. However, Harmer said she learned Monday that they will need another $20,000 to $25,000 to pay all the costs associated with renovating a building formerly used by the campus animal science program.