Buyer guide

Storage and shelf life

Shelf life belongs to the lot, not the product name. Here is how to store vials, read the dating, and decide when an opened vial leaves service.

The rule: the lot COA is the record

Shelf life is a property of a specific production lot, established by the manufacturer's stability data and stated on that lot's documentation — not a number to generalize from a web page. Your lot's Certificate of Analysis and the vial labeling are the authoritative record for the product you actually received.

Unopened vials

Store sealed vials at controlled room temperature, away from direct light, in their original packaging until use. Do not freeze. Lot documentation defines the dating; if a vial's lot documentation is missing from your receiving records, treat that vial as unusable.

Opened vials

A bacteriostatic vial is designed for repeated puncture: the 0.9% benzyl alcohol preservative suppresses microbial growth after opening. That protection is a defined window, not an indefinite one — standard laboratory practice is to assign an in-use period per your institution's SOP and USP preservative-effectiveness expectations, and to discard a vial that has been stored in a way your SOP does not cover (introduced contamination, wrong temperature, compromised closure).

Signs a vial is out of service

• —Cloudiness or discoloration
• —A closure that is no longer intact
• —Loss of lot traceability — no way to tie the vial to its COA
• —Storage outside the conditions your SOP defines