How safe is it to update base?

On ubuntu I currently have haskell-platform 2011.2.0.1.2 installed, and I am currently working on some code where it would be very nice to have Control.Concurrent.Chan be an instance of Eq. Unfortunately, in base-4.3.1.0, which is the one I have installed, it is not, but in base-4.4.0.0 Chan is an instance of Eq. Would it be possible to update base, maybe by sandboxing it with cabal-dev or any