Is there any antidotal infection or adverse reactions when using non-Hospira BAC ? I've searched and found a few isolated issues, but not sure why everyone's making this into such a big deal, what am I missing?
There are a few issues of concern with non-pharma BAC:
1. Starting with the simplest, the risk of contamination is obviously higher since we rarely see any independent testing done of BAC waters that includes any of the tests that we often expect be done with most of our peptides like microbial, endotoxin, or heavy metal testing.
2. When we do see occasional independent tests, they usually focus on two things: pH and benzyl alcohol (BA) concentration. Improper pH poses two (kind of three if you take cagri into account) potential (and not uncommon) problems. If the pH is too far outside of the neutral zone and the Romulans haven't detected it yet, it frequently causes ISR's. The other issue is that many peptides are extremely pH-sensitive so people could be unwittingly rendering expensive peptides inert or causing enough damage that they basically lost any possible benefit from the peptide or the money that was spent to purchase them. I can only speak for myself, but ruining hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of peptides in an effort to save ~$5/vial by buying untested off-brand BAC seems like a terrible financial strategy.
3. Like pH, BA content in the few independent tests I've seen and been part of have also demonstrated wildly varying concentrations (including zero in some cases). A concentration of .9% BA seems to be what is accepted for human use. Frequently you'll see higher concentrations in the 2-3% range for veterinary products since nobody cares much if trigger the horsey experiences a little stinging from injection and the products tend to be used long after that magic 28-day window. This happens a lot with things like the Durvet B12 bovine injectables, which is why when certain vendors started releasing various "lipo", "shread", and similar concoctions that were causing countless people to experience stinging, burning, and other ISR's that it became widely suspected they were mixing in the bovine stuff from Amazon while producing those products in their "sterile" bathrooms.
4. Most people (and you really can't blame them) don't have any idea that bacteriostatic and bactericidal are not the same thing. This results in the common misconception that as long as there is "some" BA in the water that it will kill any bad things and is therefore perfectly safe. I've even seen people on Reddit and elsewhere explain how they bought some BA and added it to tap water to make their own BAC, and are proud of their mistaken belief that the BA kills any dangerous contaminates in their delicious municipal tap water (unless they live in Flint). While I'm pretty certain BA does become bactericidal at some higher concentration, I doubt it would be anything you could possibly use for injection without a trip to the ER and possibly the undertaker.
5. There was a brand of very popular "reconstitution solution" that used to be sold on Amazon and direct via their website called "QualityPure". They even matched the appearance of the name-brand product very closely including the labeling. They used distilled water and BA to manufacture their potion (apparently nobody bothered to find out that distilling water doesn't make it sterile). No matter how many people complained about stinging, burning, and other ISR's you could never convince the true believers that the stuff they were buying (at very little savings compared to the name-brand product) from Amazon wasn't identical and just as safe as the name-brand water. Well, that was until a bunch of people became sick due to botulinum toxin traced directly to their "QualityPure" water. While Botox has become famous and many DIY'ers self-administer it at home, it's still done under controlled circumstances and with a health respect of the things that could go horribly wrong.
Ultimately, if the current supply and availability situation continues to worsen, we are going to have little choice but to resign ourselves to relying on our Chinese friends to supply us with reasonably-decent BAC water. Personally I'm OK with that since overall many of them have been getting consistently better at producing it with acceptable pH and BA concentration in large volumes, along with passing various other tests like TAMC/TYMC , etc. As long as we remain vigilant about testing it and use a little common sense to avoid "saving" a buck or two by trusting random untested products from Amazon I'm confident it will eventually turn into "no big deal".
