Table 3.

Comparison of Phenoxyethanol‐Based Fixation with Other Contemporary Embalming Techniques

Characteristics	Formaldehyde	Ethanol	Phenoxyethanol	Thiel
Visual characteristics
Overall appearance	wrinkled	wrinkled	welled	lifelike
Skin, subcutaneous fat	yellow‐brown	pallid	yellow	pale, oily
Bones	unaltered	slightly bleached	unaltered, yellow coloration	unaltered, white coloration
Cartilage	unaltered, bleached	in vivo‐like	unaltered, green coloration	unaltered, yellow coloration
Ligaments	bleached	dehydrated, bleached	welled	unaltered
Muscles	gray‐yellow color	bleached	welled, bleached	intense red to brown
Vessels	colorfast	bleached	bleached	unaltered
Central nervous system	blue‐gray, bleached	shrinked, browned	blue‐gray, bleached*	shrinked, liquified
Peripheral nerves	bleached, gray	bleached	welled	lifelike
Intestine, glands	bleached	colorfast	pink‐gray appearance	colorfast
Haptic characteristics
Overall appearance	stiffened	stiffened	pliable, soft	in vivo‐like
Skin, subcutaneous fat	strongly indurated	slightly indurated	pliable	softened
Bones	brittle	in vivo‐like	in vivo‐like	brittle
Cartilage	in vivo‐like	in vivo‐like	in vivo‐like	in vivo‐like
Ligaments	severely stiffened	stiffened	pliable, dissolved appearance	slightly softened
Joint mobility	strongly decreased	strongly decreased	moderately decreased	moderately increased
Muscles	strongly indurated	slightly indurated	pliable, elastic	severely softened and liquified
Vessels	stiffened	stiffened, blood clots	elastic, blood clots	in vivo‐like, easily collapsible
Central nervous system	rigid	softened	soft	unsuitable
Peripheral nerves	rigid	flexible, slightly stiffened	elastic	in vivo‐like
Intestine, glands	stiffened	flexible	rubber‐like	softened
Odor	intrusive	none (ethanol)	minimal nutty odor	intrusive
Potential health effects	toxic, carcinogenic	none described	toxic and carcinogenic effects minimized due to formaldehyde reduction	toxic, carcinogenic, teratogenic
Usability for histology/immunohistochemistry	well suited	suitable for histology, limited use for immunohistochemistry	suitable for histology, vastly limited use for immunohistochemistry	unsuitable
Usability for biomechanical experiments	unsuitable	limited use (musculoskeletal soft tissues, bone)	limited use (musculoskeletal soft tissues, bone)	partly usable (extracellular‐rich tissues)
Bone	unusable (Hammer et al., 2014)	usable after rinsing (Hammer et al., 2014)	usable after rinsing (Tomlinson et al., 2016)	usable (Tomlinson et al., 2016)
Joints	strongly reduced mobility (Balta et al., 2019a)	strongly reduced mobility	moderately reduced mobility	moderately increased mobility (Wilke et al., 2011; Balta et al., 2019a)
Ligaments, tendons	unusable (Steinke et al., 2012)	usable after rinsing (Steinke et al., 2012)	usable after rinsing (Stewart et al., 2018)	partly usable (Fessel et al., 2011; Hohmann et al., 2019; Zwirner et al., 2019; Balta et al., 2019a)
Skin	unusable	dried	dried	usable (Zwirner et al., 2019)
Costs per body in US$	$10.53	$66.78	$62.49	$491.90
Costs per body in €	9.55 €	60.70 €	55.81 €	437.24 €
	(excludes transportation of chemicals and cadavers)