On 11/3/2004 3:24 AM Stephan Goldstein spake thus:

These are a popular item at the local outdoors store in 1-qt. size.
Polycarbonate has the advantage of being unbreakable. Since I
keep my chems in a closet I don't need amber coloration. Does
anyone have a feel for the effectiveness of this material at keeping
out the O2? How about the lids, they're probably something else
like HDPE or LDPE?

I know about soda bottles (PET) but am reluctant to use them
because my 4-year-old nephew is at that stage where he believes
anything in a soda bottle must be soda...

There was a discussion of this (storage qualities of various materials) here
in the not too distant past, and the data showed that the best materials in
descending order are glass[1], PET and then polyethylene (HDPE/LDPE). I think
polycarbonate was there somewhere with PET--that is, better than PE, which is
not very good as it's not very impervious to O2.

Someone should post this stuff again. (Can't find it myself just at the moment.)


[1] Of course, just as important as the bottle material is the stopper.
Chemicals stored in glass with a lousy stopper fare no better than those
stored in PE.


--
.... voting for John Kerry now is like voting for LBJ in 1964 with full
precognition of what he was going to do in Vietnam for the next four years.

- Alexander Cockburn in _Counterpunch_
(http://counterpunch.org/cockburn10282004.html)