Eliquid Suppliers that can actually prove they have a chemist supervising, a video of Lab, and Independant testing

[UncleChuck]

A lab, really? The ratio calculators are well known and accurate. Vendors don't need chemists, because all of the flavorings and nicotine are not produced in house. They buy those elsewhere. The only vendors that might actually need a chemist would be Ahlusion and Aroma ejuice, and that would be stictly for the WTA side of things, and even then, not absolutely necessary.

But your missing a very important aspect. How do juice makers know that their ingredients are actually what they are supposed to be? A chemist would test all their ingredients when shipments arrive. They would test their nicotine base when they get a new shipment to make sure that the strength is what it's supposed to be. If a supply company sends a juice maker nic base that is 100x stronger than its supposed to be, and they didn't test it, they would be selling juice with dangerously high nicotine.

If they were supposed to receive PG, but their supplier messed up and sent them a barrel full of ethylene glycol and they didn't test it, they could be poisoning their customers. A professional setup checks the quality of their product from each base ingredient all the way to the finished product. Mixing a juice, and then vaping it to see if it's OK is not an appropriate method of quality control for a company who is supposed to be a professional juice maker.

Obviously these are some extreme examples, but they demonstrate a very valid point. Although I do agree with you 100%, I see no need whatsoever for juice to be manufactured in a clean room. That's something that is totally ridiculous, unimportant, and prohibitively expensive. It's a feel-good measure only.

One more thing I wanted to mention, is the whole fear people have of China juice. I prefer to buy US made juice for two reasons, and safety is not one of those reasons. The first reason is that if something IS wrong with the juice, its quite easy to "go after"" the manufacturer that's selling the dangerous product if they are here in the US. Try going after a Chinese juice manufacturer if they poison you.

The second reason is purely economic, that I prefer to support a US based business over a foreign, simply to keep the money in the (somewhat) local economy. If I could find a juice maker in my city or state I'd prefer to buy from them for this same reason, to keep wealth within my local economy instead of sending it to a far off location.

But I truly believe that Chinese juice such as Dekang and Hangsen is likely overall safer than your average US juice is.

 

[PLANofMAN]

But your missing a very important aspect. How do juice makers know that their ingredients are actually what they are supposed to be? A chemist would test all their ingredients when shipments arrive. They would test their nicotine base when they get a new shipment to make sure that the strength is what it's supposed to be. If a supply company sends a juice maker nic base that is 100x stronger than its supposed to be, and they didn't test it, they would be selling juice with dangerously high nicotine...

I didn't miss it. I stated that they don't need chemists because the materials are purchased elsewhere, and the suppliers do have chemists.

From Wizard Labs' homepage:

"Wizard Labs is an FDA registered facility located in South Florida, USA, specializing in organic extracts, carrier fluids, labware, concentrated liquid flavorings and flavor enhancers for alternative nicotine product research and development. Purity of ingredients, quality control, and safety are our highest priorities.

All Wizard Labs liquid nicotine solutions and concentrated flavorings are produced using only the highest quality USP grade, and/or FDA approved ingedients for your safety and peace of mind. Our organic nicotine extraction is performed through partnership with one of the providing labs to Johnson & Johnson's global line of nicotine based products for your assurance of chemical purity, quality control, and reliable results."

I seriously doubt that Wizard Labs is alone in this, and there are not all that many suppliers out there.

 

[PLANofMAN]

You took that as him holding them up as a shining example of good quality? I don't think he said anything of the sort. The OP asked if any juice vendors have any video/pics/info about their juice making facilities, and that person posted one which does. He didn't give any opinion, positive or negative, about the quality of their juice or products. It looks like you read waaay too much into that post, or just the mere mention of V2 sends you flying off the handle.

Anyway,

I totally support what the OP is saying here. But I can also see both sides here.

For me personally, I'm not worried about it. Would I prefer to have all my juice made in a certified clean room, with guys wearing while lab coats who are in the middle of paying off their Chemistry degree? Absolutely. Do I loose sleep over that not being the case? No. I rarely think about it. We all eat and drink tons of things every day that are prepared by others, and which we really don't have any idea who was making it in what conditions.

People seem to have a false sense of security when it comes to "regulations" as if being approved by the FDA means anything. To many people it does, to me it doesn't. I've worked at a place with an actual certified clean room. It wasn't food products being made, but it was still a certified clean room which specific policies that were supposed to be followed, and many times those policies were not followed, and in actuality the clean room was a "clean room" in name only.

I didn't personally work in the clean room as that wasn't my job, so I didn't participate in any rule bending, but I was well aware of it, as was everybody there. In general I just have VERY little faith in regulatory agencies and measures. I have far more faith in the people making the juice. If it's something they care about, and love doing, and they care about vaping and the community in general, I feel much safer vaping their juice compared to a professional chemical company's product who likely don't care or even know about vaping, and don't really care about their job.

It's likely more difficult to get a reputation as a good juice vendor, than it would be to simply submit samples for testing and get a stamp of "approved juice" Building a reputation is something that takes time and effort, and means more to me than a couple tests being done a few times a year on some juice samples.

But, even though it's not a huge deal for me, I still totally agree with the OP. Lot# are something that SHOULD be on every single bottle of juice anybody makes. If they found out that a few bottles of flavoring they were using was contaminated with something dangerous, and they don't have records of which batch of ingredients were used in which batch of juice, how are they going to know which is the dangerous juice and which is the safe juice?

There should be accurate ingredient lists on EVERY juice. Sorry for the guys with their fancy special blends, you have a responsibility to list everything you put in your juice. You can still keep quantities and ratios secret, but people should know exactly what a juice maker is putting in their juice. If you have an allergy to something, and a juice maker is putting all sorts of flavors and extracts in their juice, how will you know which one is safe for you to vape if they refuse to tell you the ingredients of the juice?

If they really cared about the vaping community they would have no issue releasing a full ingredient list. If some other company really wanted to copy your juice, they could simply have it analyzed and figure it out themselves. Hell, you can even throw in some stuff on the list that isn't actually in the juice just to throw people off. Bottom line, the juice makers can be respectful to their customer's health while still maintaining their proprietary juice blend/flavor. And no, simple saying "Contains PG, VG, and nicotine" is not being respectful to your customer's health.

Nic strength is another area where current trends are totally lacking. How accurate are your nic levels? What's your margin of error? Have you ever once considered or tried to figure out your margin of error? Is your 18mg bottle of juice 18mg, +/- .2mg? Or is it 18mg, +/- 10mg? Why aren't our juice vendors telling us this? Do they even know/care?

Juice base is naturally anti-bacterial and all that, so I'm not very concerned about getting infected juice, and I trust my vendors enough to think they at least put forth an effort to keep the juice clean. But I still get upset about the lack of professionalism by the vast, vast majority of juice makers. It seems most juice vendors only care about making tasty flavors, and having a following. Why do they totally ignore any safety aspects of it?

They don't need much money to simply be upfront with customers about their juice. As I mentioned, a real accurate list of all ingredients, organizing their juices into batches, which they keep records of which batch of ingredients went into which batch of juice, and telling us their margin of error for nicotine content would go a long way in showing people that you take your juice making seriously, and that you aren't just out to make a quick buck with nicotine moonshine.

I agree with you about lot numbers, and that's about it. Look at a can of Dr. Pepper sometime. 21 flavors! Are they listed. No. What you are asking for would put every vendor in the U.S. out of business. Pluid? Boba's Bounty? If people knew the ingredients, Murdock and AVE out be out of business tomorrow. Every Tom, D..., and Harry would be making their own.

But hey, if you start up a juice company and list all of your ingredients on every bottle you sell. I'll buy from you.

...one time.

 

[Thompson]

I would actually think double checking your ingredients being a good idea. Odd things can and do happen. Even if its a minimal risk.

That said, I think it would bring in overhead that could possibly kill some vendors. Hiring a lab specialist is adding a new paycheck, acquiring the appropriate equipment for in house testing, etc.

Worst case I see it going that way at some point.

My recent concern is more about the artificial flavorings being used. They have some interesting makeups out there and I don't think they even know the long term effects of digesting them, none the less any information on actually vaporizing & inhaling them rather continuously. Looking at my TFA flavorings from wizard labs, the ingredient list still has "artificial flavor" as a major ingredient and that is a bit ambiguous for my liking.

 

[zapped]

I had to laugh a little at the op as well. The only place that needs to have chemists on the payroll are places like Wizard who are handling dangerously high amounts of nicotine.

Perhaps people are looking at this the wrong way? Mixing up ejuice is more akin to cooking or better yet, being a bartender .

 

[Off Topic]

So, let's force juice vendors to spend a stupid amount of money on chemists and such.... for a process where they just mix nic concentrate, flavor and PG/VG.....

Then pay a brain dead kid minimum wage to make food we stick in our mouths.

 

[D4rk50ul]

I think clean room might be extreme but a clean dedicated area would be nice. Some people are slobs I would hate to get joose from a cockroach infested bathroom counter.

As far as nicotine levels I had some delivered once that was way higher than I ordered and the vendor denied it unless I sent it back. I wouldn't mind them at least testing there nicotine concentrate content before mixing and not just assuming no mistakes were made.

Sent from my Nexus 4

 

[zapped]

I think clean room might be extreme but a clean dedicated area would be nice. Some people are slobs I would hate to get joose from a cockroach infested bathroom counter.

As far as nicotine levels I had some delivered once that was way higher than I ordered and the vendor denied it unless I sent it back. I wouldn't mind them at least testing there nicotine concentrate content before mixing and not just assuming no mistakes were made.

Sent from my Nexus 4

That why I think trying a variety of liquids when first starting is a good thing. People can tell a quality juice from a bad one just in the way it vapes and in its consistency from order to order.

I only use one vendor for all my ejuice needs now and to be honest Ive never been worried about the cleanliness of his house or lab.

 

[UncleChuck]

I didn't miss it. I stated that they don't need chemists because the materials are purchased elsewhere, and the suppliers do have chemists.

I think your still missing my point.

Yes, the people who supply juice makers with their raw chemicals (nic, pg, vg, flavoring, etc) surely have plenty of skilled chemists working there. But mistake still happen. Who packaged those chemicals and sent them to you? Not a chemist. Probably a guy earning slightly over minimum wage slapping labels on barrels and moving them around with a forlift. And when/if a mistake happens, and a juice maker sells a bunch of juice with a dangerous chemical in it they will just say "It wasn't my fault, it was my chemical supplier's fault"

That's not how a responsible business should act. When you receive those chemicals, mix them and re-sell them, you take on the responsibility about the safety of that product. What I'm saying is that a juice maker should not just take their supplier's at their word, they should confirm that their base materials actually are exactly what they are supposed to be.

For example, I've worked in manufacturing my whole adult life. When a load of steel plate gets delivered, we are expecting that steel plate to be of a certain size, certain density, certain makeup. Generally they are correct. But sometimes you'll find some steel that comes in that doesn't meet our standard for that particular component. We caught the problem ahead of time, and the supplier replaced our out-of-spec material. That was possible because we have people working there who are capable of discerning whether or not the raw materials used are up to snuff.

If we never checked that steel, we would have built a product with sub-standard steel in it. That could cause all sorts of issues, cost people their lives, cause a lot of monetary damage, etc. These sort of mistakes happen, and from my experience on both ends of the supply chain, they happen a lot more than anyone would like. And that's precisely the reason that INCOMING quality control is so important.

Now to bring this comparison back to juice makers, say they receive a shipment of PG. They can assume (and hope) that their supplier will never, ever make a mistake. Or they can do what a professional manufacturer does, test their incoming raw materials, and make sure they are correct and up to spec before they turn those raw materials into their product.

Do you need to be a genius chemist to do that? No. Would a real chemist be the ideal person responsible for ensuring incoming chemicals are appropriate? You bet. I'll use the same example I did before, what if the chemical supplier sent a juice manufacturer a barrel of ethylene glycol, by accident, instead of sending them PG. The juice guy makes gallons and gallons of juice, full of delicious and deadly ethylene glycol. A hundred people die.

The juice maker says "sorry, not my fault, my supplier said he was sending me PG, it's not my fault he sent me the wrong stuff"

When that should have gone totally differently. The juice maker gets their delivery of PG, they test it to make sure it's actually PG. Possibly also test it to ensure no contaminates. They figure out it's actually ethylene glycol, and not PG, they contact the supplier and get the stuff replaced with PG, and probably a few free barrels on top of that for the mixup. No deadly juice was made. Nobody died, because they simply did what they should, ensure that they are using appropriate raw materials in their product.

Think of Coca-Cola as another example. It's flavored syrup and water. You can bet that the bottlers test the water prior to using it to make coke. That's true quality control. It starts from the second raw materials hit your dock, to the time your finished product gets on the back of a truck.

I do not want vaping to become some heavily regulated thing full of ridiculous laws and rules and bureaucratic BS. All I ask is that juice makers act like responsible professional manufacturers. If you can do that without a chemist on property, more power to you. How many juice makers do you think have all their raw materials chemically tested by themselves prior to mixing up a batch of juice? I wouldn't even know where to start guessing.

And I think responsible manufacturers can do a lot to prevent vaping from becoming heavily regulated. By taking the responsibility themselves, they can prevent potential issues that would give ammunition to those that seek to heavily regulate vaping.

 

[UncleChuck]

I agree with you about lot numbers, and that's about it. Look at a can of Dr. Pepper sometime. 21 flavors! Are they listed. No. What you are asking for would put every vendor in the U.S. out of business. Pluid? Boba's Bounty? If people knew the ingredients, Murdock and AVE out be out of business tomorrow. Every Tom, D..., and Harry would be making their own.

But hey, if you start up a juice company and list all of your ingredients on every bottle you sell. I'll buy from you.

...one time.

I get what you are saying, and I'll address the issue specifically. Murdock didn't bust out into the vaping scene claiming to be a big professional juice manufacturer. He made pluid, other people liked it, and because he's such a nice guy he agreed to make Pluid for other people. You could watch the progress in his thread, from designing of the bottle to talk of new juices he is working on. I'm not really sure what he considers himself, a hobbyist who's able to share his wonderful juice with the world, or the owner of a juice making company.

But either way, he could release a list of everything that is in Pluid, and also throw some additional ingredients that are NOT in pluid in the list to throw copycats off track, which is a known tactic. I doubt anybody would still be able to copy Pluid. The ratio and quantities of the various ingredients are what would be hard to nail down. To only way to do that would be years and years of organized trial and error, or having a sample of Pluid chemically analyzed for it's component chemicals, and concentrations. And if you did the latter, you wouldn't need a list from Murdock because you just paid to figure it out yourself.

The same thing goes for other juice mixers. You can alert someone to a potential allergen in your product without actually telling them how to copy the product. Just like I could tell you all the flavors in Dr Pepper, but without knowing the ratios and methods you couldn't make Dr Pepper.

And you are totally correct in saying that all flavors aren't listed, like with Dr pepper for example, but consumable products still give specific warnings for nut allergies, shellfish allergies, people with PKU, etc.

 

[Koman]

Good input UncleChuck!

 

[UncleChuck]

One more thing....

I don't want this to come across as me attacking juice makers. What I'm saying applies to the minority of them. I'm well aware that many are small mom & pop style enterprises and some of the things I discussed would stop them from being able to produce their juice. I wouldn't expect them to be able to do it.

But there are juice manufacturers that are big, do have a lot of money, and the simple quality control measures wouldn't be that painful to initiate. And as larger, more widespread manufactures their impact would be much greater. If a few little tiny juice companies have crazy good QC it won't have much of an effect overall, but if a few of the biggest manufacturers did it, it would have a big impact. And they are the ones capable of doing so.

I would never penalize a small company for not being able to do it, but for those with the means, that initiative would really be appreciated, and I think the community as a whole deserves that kind of dedication in return for the support that community gives to those companies.

Just my two cents, or maybe a couple bucks, I really started rambling there, sorry

 

[Boiler]

I'll give credit to Sweet-Vapes. They list their credentials and their practices.

Only place I've run across that does as much.

 

[blackHelix]

I think your still missing my point.

Yes, the people who supply juice makers with their raw chemicals (nic, pg, vg, flavoring, etc) surely have plenty of skilled chemists working there. But mistake still happen. Who packaged those chemicals and sent them to you? Not a chemist. Probably a guy earning slightly over minimum wage slapping labels on barrels and moving them around with a forlift. And when/if a mistake happens, and a juice maker sells a bunch of juice with a dangerous chemical in it they will just say "It wasn't my fault, it was my chemical supplier's fault"

That's not how a responsible business should act. When you receive those chemicals, mix them and re-sell them, you take on the responsibility about the safety of that product. What I'm saying is that a juice maker should not just take their supplier's at their word, they should confirm that their base materials actually are exactly what they are supposed to be.

For example, I've worked in manufacturing my whole adult life. When a load of steel plate gets delivered, we are expecting that steel plate to be of a certain size, certain density, certain makeup. Generally they are correct. But sometimes you'll find some steel that comes in that doesn't meet our standard for that particular component. We caught the problem ahead of time, and the supplier replaced our out-of-spec material. That was possible because we have people working there who are capable of discerning whether or not the raw materials used are up to snuff.

If we never checked that steel, we would have built a product with sub-standard steel in it. That could cause all sorts of issues, cost people their lives, cause a lot of monetary damage, etc. These sort of mistakes happen, and from my experience on both ends of the supply chain, they happen a lot more than anyone would like. And that's precisely the reason that INCOMING quality control is so important.

Now to bring this comparison back to juice makers, say they receive a shipment of PG. They can assume (and hope) that their supplier will never, ever make a mistake. Or they can do what a professional manufacturer does, test their incoming raw materials, and make sure they are correct and up to spec before they turn those raw materials into their product.

Do you need to be a genius chemist to do that? No. Would a real chemist be the ideal person responsible for ensuring incoming chemicals are appropriate? You bet. I'll use the same example I did before, what if the chemical supplier sent a juice manufacturer a barrel of ethylene glycol, by accident, instead of sending them PG. The juice guy makes gallons and gallons of juice, full of delicious and deadly ethylene glycol. A hundred people die.

The juice maker says "sorry, not my fault, my supplier said he was sending me PG, it's not my fault he sent me the wrong stuff"

When that should have gone totally differently. The juice maker gets their delivery of PG, they test it to make sure it's actually PG. Possibly also test it to ensure no contaminates. They figure out it's actually ethylene glycol, and not PG, they contact the supplier and get the stuff replaced with PG, and probably a few free barrels on top of that for the mixup. No deadly juice was made. Nobody died, because they simply did what they should, ensure that they are using appropriate raw materials in their product.

Think of Coca-Cola as another example. It's flavored syrup and water. You can bet that the bottlers test the water prior to using it to make coke. That's true quality control. It starts from the second raw materials hit your dock, to the time your finished product gets on the back of a truck.

I do not want vaping to become some heavily regulated thing full of ridiculous laws and rules and bureaucratic BS. All I ask is that juice makers act like responsible professional manufacturers. If you can do that without a chemist on property, more power to you. How many juice makers do you think have all their raw materials chemically tested by themselves prior to mixing up a batch of juice? I wouldn't even know where to start guessing.

And I think responsible manufacturers can do a lot to prevent vaping from becoming heavily regulated. By taking the responsibility themselves, they can prevent potential issues that would give ammunition to those that seek to heavily regulate vaping.

I think your still missing our point. I completely understand the need for proper testing, but how much traversing do you need until it becomes redundant.

Example:

I am a small business. I want to start selling mixing my own eliquid. I order my supplies from reputable manufacturers that have proper testing protocols in place. I KNOW that what i'm getting is exactly what it should be. That's like (in your example above) the convenience store owner opening all the coke bottles up, testing them, re-sealing them and then putting them back on the shelf. That doesn't happen because the store owner trusts that Coca-cola's testing procedures are in place. I think there's an argument about having chemists in place where they distill the nicotine and manufacture the PG/VG. I buy all of my PG as a pharmacy. I don't feel the need to have it tested. The same could be said about any other business.

Does the restaurant owner have a chemist come in and test all of the food for ecoli before cooking? No, he relies on the supplier to do that.

A while ago, there was a scare on the sticky sealing stuff made in envelopes. When people licked the envelope to seal it, they found out that there was some dangerous chemical on it and it was making people sick. I would expect my local stationary store to test this before selling it to me. I trust the manufacturer of the envelopes to make sure it's safe. It's a risk I guess we all take all the time.

While I see your point and understand that safety is definitely of the up-most important, I think your putting eliquid "mixers" at higher standard than you would any other small business.

 

[bigbells]

Very interesting discussion. I'd certainly want to pay the price passed on to me by an e-juice mixer who took on the expense of testing each and every shipment of each and every component. Wait.. testing each shipment isn't good enough.. I need them to test each individual container of each shipment, and test the testing equipment, and re-certify semi-annually the credentials of each employee, and...

Shoot, I'm mixing my own juice now because I don't want to pay 40 cents per ml to have someone else mix it and ship it to me. I can see it now... I'm making a clandestine nighttime raid of a tobacco field to get enough stash to make my own nic juice.

Some 35 years ago I applied for a job working in a clean room... some kind of precision parts manufacturer if I recall correctly, using dangerous chemical reactions and tremendously small tolerances for impurities... full body disposable plastic clothing and the whole 9 yards. But when they told this unkempt long-haired and (at the time) young man he wouldn't be allowed to smoke at work he set a 50-yard sprint record getting out the door.

Smoke-free 16 days.

 

[BostonVape]

so I'm having the same 'fears' myself.. about to order a bunch of new juices from some small sites (indigovapor, fuzionvapor, mtbakervapor)

and this is exactly what scares me, because its only a few people making these juices and who really knows what they are using for ingredients.. and i certainly don't have the equipment to test it lol..

but at the same time.. i was smoking analogs with 10,000 + toxins so I guess in hindsight... it can't be that much worse right?!

 

[Caridwen]

Too bad we didn't worry this much about cigarettes.

 

[Caridwen]

Young and dumb I guess Vapoor.

Wish I could go back in time and have someone bop me over the head when I had my first cig.

 

[blackHelix]

I think everyone's fears are somewhat warranted, but just in the wrong place. It doesn't take a chemist to mix eliquid. It does however take a really good understanding to extract nicotine from tobacco leaves, manufacturer PG/VG, distill flavor extracts, etc. To the extent that a chemist and a proper lab is almost mandatory. There are companies that already have a reputable process for doing all of this. If you're concerned with a vendor's premixed liquid, I would just ask them where they get their supplies from. Chances are they will provide this to you. Then you can do the research on these suppliers to verify proper quality control. Asking the small vendors to do proper chemical "testing" is kind of overkill IMHO.

 

[bigbells]

Young and dumb I guess Vapoor.

Wish I could go back in time and have someone bop me over the head when I had my first cig.

I don't know about you, but a bop on the head would only have made me more determined to have the first one. I see no reason for regrets. Apparently smoking made you smarter... smart enough to stop.