Background: Safety transport boxes are increasingly used to ship laboratory specimens but there is little information on their capacity to maintain suitable transportation temperatures.
Materials and methods: Inner temperature was assessed using a commercially available transport box during an 8-h transportation period in the heat.
Results: Temperature stability was unsatisfactory during approximately 64% of the transportation time (i.e., from 125 to 450 min).
Conclusions: Transport boxes might be unsuitable for shipping specimens over long periods.
Copyright © 2011 The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.