I found this CO2 Incubator for tissue culture and I've never seen one that wasn't glass-like polished shiny steel on the inside.
See the attached pictures. The inside looks like an aged copper statue.
My intuition is that this is not suitable for maintaining sterile mammalian cells, but I would like to get other's opinions.
Do not risk something and loos your time by trying to grow the cells in this rusty incubator. You can try to clean it, but you will allway have to deal with the risk of contaminatin.
if you do not have any other choice, and HAVE to use this incubator, autoclaving everything in it (shelves, humidity pan), and for an added layer of protection using filtered flasks instead of plates, should be fine.
Copper incubator are always better than steel incubators. Copper has natural antibacterial and anti-fungal activity. Just clean it nicely and sterile it according to your incubator instructions, you will be fine. You'll hardly see any contamination in copper incubator if your handling is good.
You can change the water tray for a glass one of similar measures, some are designed for the oven so they can be sterilized.
Thanks for the re-assurance everyone. I decided that even if the bottoms (and tops) of my flasks are contaminated, it shouldn't get inside as long as I handle them with sterile technique after that.
I started growing some cells and they seem happy so far
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