DIY advice (to the new DIY'ers)

[Blaze]

I'm going to re-post this here seeing as we have an ever increasing number of DIY'ers. Most of it goes with out saying (I would hope) for the more experienced DIY'er, so it's meant for those that are new or just starting

The first part is the quoted post, and the second obviously is my response. Anyone with any DIY experience should feel free to post your advice as well, and maybe we could possibly get a sticky?

Anyone new to DIY (or really anyone for that matter) having questions can feel free to PM me. I'll answer the best I can, or involve someone that is more knowledgeable in DIY than myself

Wow, ok, so i was so close to buying an entire DIY Master Kit tonight, until i read this thread. I have 2 young children, 14 mo old and 5 yrs old. And the fact that if i was to spill it on my skin, i could be dead? That's crazy. Someone said that this post is over-exaggerated? Is that true, or should i just stay away from DIY? I was going to get 60ml of 36mg nic juice with the kit i was going to buy. Someone said to have the right equipment, what would that be? Possible to get a fast response from anyone with the proper knowledge?

You have to realize that the only chemical in that kit that poses a real risk is the nicotine (PG, VG, and flavorings are regarded as safe, and from time to time I even use VG on my hands when they are severely cracked from drying out ).

That having been said, as long as proper precautions are taken (proper location (your kitchen counter prolly should not be thought of as counting for a proper place to DIY), proper PPE, proper disposal of used equipment, proper storage of chems not in use, and proper clean up afterwards), DIY is relatively safe.

However, you must always take into account that accidents can and will happen. I myself have had in upwards of 50-60mg strength nic spilled on bare skin, and even tho I was able to clean up very quickly, it still made me a bit sick to my stomach and gave me a bit of the "swimmy head". The original post was spot on: Nic is/should be treated as exactly what it is, which is a very potent toxin, and you should respect it as such.

The biggest piece of advice I could possibly give to any would-be DIY'ers is if you have ANY doubts at all about your ability to maintain safe practices whilst mixing beyond the "I've never done this before jitters", it would probably be best to stick with pre-made juices.

Discuss

 

[Bahnzo]

However, you must always take into account that accidents can and will happen. I myself have had in upwards of 50-60mg strength nic spilled on bare skin, and even tho I was able to clean up very quickly, it still made me a bit sick to my stomach and gave me a bit of the "swimmy head". The original post was spot on: Nic is/should be treated as exactly what it is, which is a very potent toxin, and you should respect it as such.

Timely...I just got my first DIY equipment today. I decided to go with lower strength nic (50mg) to start just to get the feel for how hard it might be to handle and mix. The answer is: not very. As long as you are careful and take your time, it's easy. But one important thing: buy and wear some protective gloves. You will inevitably get a little of the nic juice on your fingers.

That said, I mixed the 50mg down to three 36mg bottles with no problems. One piece of advice: make sure you get a graduated cylinder or small measuring cup with mL markings and a funnel. Makes it much easier to cut up nic.

 

[Infernal2]

Proper PPE cannot be stressed enough in my opinion. Another bit of advice is akin to the old "shake your bottle" routine. When you make your first liquid, sit it down, and let it sit for at least 12 hours. I know, you are probably REALLY excited to try your first concoction but don't be like me and end up vaping some insane amount of liquid and not understanding why there is little to no flavor.

Keep a bottle of alcohol handy, not only for equipment clean up but personal clean up as well. Getting sticky from your flavors is bad enough, when you couple in high concentrations of nicotine keeping yourself ready to deal with emergencies is key. Those Master Kits are great, but get yourself a cheap three drawer plastic cabinet its a GREAT way to keep organized.

 

[zbasspro]

While I wholeheartedly agree we need to stress caution, care, and safety when handling high concentrations of nic, I also feel the need to put a perspective with it as well. A 60MG dose of nic. is considered a lethal dose in an adult. That would be 1ML of 60MGs fully absorbed. I know little I admit, but I would take a guess that the only chance any fully absorbing would be ingesting orally or intravenously.

I guess in playing the devils advocate just a bit here in that while stressing safety I don't want to spread panic by doing so. I believe this is water we tread carefully. The last thing we want is someone spilling a little bit on them, and panicking, running to an emergency room over anxiety and the bad PR that could start as a result of that.


I think that we need to stress sterilization nearly as much as caution. IMO mixers should have an alcohol sanitized working surface, as well as designated syringes, etc. for each ingredient. boB


EDIT: I just read that Blaze, and wanted to ensure you that I was in no way insinuating you were doing anything of that nature

 

[Blaze]

And that's why I wanted input from others, cause I knew I would forget/leave out a view point

And +100 to the sterilization aspect. I'm OCD about clean anyway, but I'm a FREAK when it comes to juice cleanliness LOL

 

[Pope]

I will make one little addition.

Keep this stuff away from children and animals. Alot of it smells like juice or candy or food of somesort and the amount needed to kill a child or animal is going to be much smaller than that of an adult. I peronally keep my stuff sealed and far out of reach of my 3 year old son even though it is 18mg juice cause you never know.

 

[Blaze]

I will make one little addition.

Keep this stuff away from children and animals. Alot of it smells like juice or candy or food of somesort and the amount needed to kill a child or animal is going to be much smaller than that of an adult. I personally keep my stuff sealed and far out of reach of my 3 year old son even though it is 18mg juice cause you never know.

This is a VERY good point (and one I somehow missed ).

An adult could most likely split an entire 5ml bottle of 18mg juice on them, and barely get a buzz, maybe. The same quantity could most likely make a child or pet extremely ill, if not kill them. It could be a common oversight to some ("It's only 18mg"), but it's a point that MUST be kept in mind at all times by the DIY'er.

BTW, I want everyone to know I'm not taking shots at anyone at anytime with any comment I make, nor am I trying to "scare" anyone. I've been guilty of alot of DIY no-no's from time to time, and would really like for people to be able to learn from mistakes made. I just want a central location of all the useful "standard practices" so they can be read, especially to the new DIY'er

 

[zbasspro]

Blaze I think I speak for everyone when I say I know you only have people's best interest in mind. We're all adults here (at least I hope), and construction conversation amongst us is the goal we all seek. Here at PIF I think we can accomplish that. I don't think that's anyone's intentions are to take shots at another. It's just a touchy subject by nature, cause no one honestly has all the answers. The best we can do like you mention is share our experiences. Even at that, we are all different, I can vape 50MG PG, but I sure wouldn't suggest it to others. My experience, as well as that of my toilet,would suggest not to vape 75MG

 

[LowThudd]

If you have kids BTW, I think it is a good practice to wash your hands everytime you handle e-juice(at any strength). Why risk it. If you pick up a toy and have a drop on your finger, it is bound to end up in the childs mouth at some point. Better safe than sorry.

 

[ShannonS]

Some observations from nurse Shanni.

If you think you have overdosed on nicotine, don't take chances and don't worry about bad PR. Get to a hospital. I promise the PR from someone who died from home mixing will be far worse than the PR from someone who went to the hospital for treatment for it.

If you get concentrated nic juice on your skin and you having symptoms of OD such as a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, salivation, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting and ........, anxiety, rapid pulse and breathing, these are the things that might help for a serious exposure:


1. Remove any clothing that is wet with nic juice immediately. Head to the shower.

2. Call 911 and make sure they can find your location, tell them that the front door will be open and that they will find you in the shower. They will want you to stay on the phone until the ambulance gets there, (they will be adamant) but that will probably kill you so ignore that and go to step 3. Bring the phone with you but you have to get in the water now!

3. Go into the shower and wash the area that the nic made contact with cool water. (Do not use warm or hot water or you can make things worse)
Do NOT rub to wash. If you are alert enough, while you are standing under the shower you can mix liquid dawn with water and pour it over the site while you are irrigating the area. (I think if I mixed nic regularly, I would have a bottle of dawn/water solution prepared and easy to get to) Nic is oily and dawn will help disperse it. Stay in the shower washing until EMS arrives. If you feel faint, sit down so you don't fall and bust your head if you pass out, but don't sit in the rinse water if you can avoid it.

There is no antidote for nic poisoning. They will support your airway and treat the effects on the respiratory and cardiac systems and treat the seizures. The time spent washing off the liquid will likely be the difference between life and death if you are still conscious when you make it to the shower. You have about 5 minutes.

That being said, death due to accidental transdermal exposure to nicotine is extremely rare. So rare, I have not been able to find a case study in any medical database I've checked. I'm going to keep looking, however.

Getting exposed and feeling like you want to die is much more common. The faster you get the nic off, the less sick you will feel.

For more minor exposures, you can do all the steps above to feel better without calling EMS. While you are recovering and your body is processing out the nicotine, avoid antacids. An alkaline environment in the body speeds nicotine absorption.

BTW, alcohol is useless for "sterilization" and a sterile home environment is not possible. Would you guys like a post how to create a clean environment for mixing?

 

[DaMulta]

People are crazy when it comes to nic. I gotten the stuff all over my hands, and I have never felt ill efffects from it.


I swear DYi is so over thought up. Just pour in about what you think your mix will be. If you have 50Mg, half your bottle will be 25Mg. 1-5Mg difference is not going to hurt the user in anyway.

Just to say

The army back in the 40s sprayed a beach with a nic content around 400Mg, and it took 15 mins of them laying on it to see any ill effects. Did they die? No, but they did get a good dose of it.


Now if you opened your hand poured 60Mg, and let it sit there for a half hour. Yea your going to get a little ill.


You have worse chemicals around the house to get on your skin than this stuff. Like paint thiner of all things.

 

[zbasspro]

If you have kids BTW, I think it is a good practice to wash your hands everytime you handle e-juice(at any strength). Why risk it. If you pick up a toy and have a drop on your finger, it is bound to end up in the childs mouth at some point. Better safe than sorry.

Good add Low and a practice I use even though I don't have youngsters.

 

[ShannonS]

@DaMulta

You have some common misconceptions. Everyone reacts differently and people who have been heavy nicotine users for decades are going to have a different reaction to high levels of nicotine than someone whose liver isn't as experienced with dealing with it.

Because you don't get sick from getting nic juice on your hands doesn't mean that other people won't. Your body builds up a tolerance with regular exposure. (It creates more of the enzyme needed to process it out of the body over time)

I hate to be oppositional and I do agree that people can be a bit alarmist when they are discussing it, but it is better to practice reasonable safety measures when dealing with high level nic concentrates. Death is rare, but making yourself sick is common. Why would you want to deal with that if you didn't have to?

 

[Blaze]

All good points, and thus the reason why I posted this thread. I'd love to hear all sides, and having the opinions of medical personnel is awesome as well

And yes, Shanni, I would love a post on creating a sterile environ for mixing (I'm a clean freak like that ), especially with particular emphasis on cleanup to ensure to residual traces are left behind for unsuspecting household members to stumble upon

BTW, posts like these are one of the biggest reasons I love ECF. I just doubled my chem safety and OD procedures knowledge by reading 2 posts

 

[Blaze]

If you have kids BTW, I think it is a good practice to wash your hands everytime you handle e-juice(at any strength). Why risk it. If you pick up a toy and have a drop on your finger, it is bound to end up in the childs mouth at some point. Better safe than sorry.

+129784573487238947897589789345789 to this one

My hands now look like pieces of chewed up leather I wash my hands so much....but that's better than spending even one minute in the ER with a child OD'ing on nic

 

[Pope]

I would also like to add a little something. A story.

Monday my nephew got his e juice in the mail. He had it on the table as he was vaping it. It was 24mg speriment. His small dog got to it when he went for a drink. The dog bit the bottle and got an unknown amount in his mouth. The dog vomited and than fell asleep in his cage for a while. The dog is fine but it took a day to recover

Take what you will from the story but I thought I would share the story.

 

[Jules22871]

Blaze, thank you for posting this, especially since a lot of 100mg liquid just went out in the mail.

We will see differing opinions on this. While your input is valid and your opinions are wanted, this is not the Outside and it will not be treated as such. Please behave in the PIF nature that I know you all have.

Now, having said that, there is a thread on here somewhere about someone's dog who really did die from ingesting eliquid. I'm not going to do the search for it since I'm in an extremely lazy mood today. But it is there if you want to look for it.

I got 60mg on myself not too long ago and thought I was going to have to go to the ER. BP got up to 220/119 and heart rate was in the 150s. Face was red and flushed, felt very hot, sick to my stomach. I took my heart meds a couple of hours early and in about 30 minutes I was alright. It can/does/will affect different people different ways. Just use your head and be careful.

 

[DaMulta]

How long did you have 60mg on you? Did you just wipe it off, or did you go wash you hands?

 

[Blaze]

I can't speak for Jules, but my incident the exposure was MAYBE a minute.

This is why I say you can't be too careful when dealing with DIY, especially high concentration nic.

I however have to agree with the fact that nic exposure will affect different people in different ways, and I have to lean towards previous exposures as a contributing factor (how much did you smoke/do you vape now), and Jules' experience is a perfect example. For me, I felt like I had just smoked too many cigs in too short a time frame, Jules had a significantly more harsh reaction.

That having been said, I'm still a firm believer in DIY is only dangerous when your not paying close attention to what your doing

 

[Jules22871]

How long did you have 60mg on you? Did you just wipe it off, or did you go wash you hands?

TBH, I'm not sure how long it was on me or exactly how I got it on me. I was wearing nitrile gloves while working with it and I think, I possibly got it off the ecig I was using to sample what I was mixing. Sort of a cross contamination thing. Had it on my gloves, got it on the ecig, when I took my gloves off and used the ecig, then I got it on me. Also, in the defense of nicotine, I do have heart problems so that is a contributing factor in how severe the reaction was. Not everyone is going to react the same way. Just be careful when you do use it and you should be alright.