Who actually does your tests?

Well to start, HPLC won't see heavy metals. So you are not looking for the HPLC results. You are looking for the ICP-MS results. That uses superheated plasma to atomize a sample, then uses a detector to measure their mass fragmentation patterns. This is the most accurate way to measure heavy metals. HPLC can only see things with a chromophore, or a ring system in them. Many people don't realize that, but HPLC-UV is blind to things without ring systems. So HPLC cannot see heavy metals, much less measure them. I'll cut myself off there, because I will end up with a 3 paragraph long rant if I don't. Moral of the story is that if you are worried about heavy metals, you want to see ICP-MS results.

Now regarding our testing specifically, we test every single batch of every single product via ICP-MS. So anything that comes through our facility gets analyzed for heavy metals before they are released from quarantine, and we have VERY strict specs they have to meet. We even hold patented products to our stricter heavy metals specs. So for some patented products, we have agreements with them to have special batches just for us with more stringent limits. We don't just slap a random number on there because everyone else is doing it. We analyze every single ingredient we use, and go through the research on them. We look at daily recommended limits, and any stacks that raw material might be used in, then set our specs for the maximum amount of exposure you might get in a day. A product that is taken three times a day needs to have three times tighter heavy metals specs than one that is taken once a day. A product that is taken in five gram doses needs to have ten times tighter specs than one taken at 500mg doses. Almost nobody thinks of these things. They just randomly set a 2ppm spec and call it a day. We do not. We set our specs and acceptable limits based on intelligent analysis of how that ingredient is used and dosed.

Sometimes you need to even get more detailed, like with krill oil. So krill is naturally higher in arsenic levels. That just comes from the ocean where they live. However, the forms they are in are not dangerous to humans. Those are the organic forms of arsenic like arsenobetaine and arsenocholine, which are totally safe. What you want to avoid are the inorganic forms of arsenic, like arsenite and arsenate. Most heavy metals analyses that labs do cannot tell the difference. They only tell you total arsenic levels. We do a much more expensive speciation analysis to tell us exactly how much of each form is in there. It is a much more complex HPLC/GC separation to ICP-MS methods. You have to use some chromatographic separation to really know the difference between the forms. That way we can ensure that the levels of the dangerous forms of arsenic are at safe levels. So you can't just use a one-size-fits-all approach to products. Each and every ingredient needs to be analyzed and have specs that make sense for that specific thing.

Regarding actually who tests our products, that's a combination of our in-house lab and about half a dozen other ISO certified 3rd party labs that we work with. We have our own state-of-the-art analytical testing lab, and extremely qualified scientists with PhDs and masters degrees running the equipment. There are 13 scientists just in our lab now. We also have some seriously cool equipment, too. I made a post recently about the second UPLC that we added to the lab, which also now has a mass spec detector on it. We also recently got a GC-FID with headspace auto-sampler. That's for residual solvent analyses. We also have a ton of new equipment sitting waiting to be installed right now from Buchi that I have not really told anyone about. I will be making a post about that soon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/esfye6/lab_update_waters_uplcms_and_thermo_gas/

For anything we don't currently have the equipment for in our lab, we use a handful of other ISO labs that we trust. We don't blindly trust them, either. We visit and inspect them. We get validation packets on anything we send them, and do our own analyses of the results. We hold them to our standards, not the other way around. One of the main ones people know we use is Alkemist Labs in California. They do great work on botanicals. However, everyone here knows I only trust things that I can personally verify. So as time goes on, we bring more and more things in-house. In a few years time, we will likely have almost all testing in our own lab. This is so that I can personally oversee that things are done right, and so that the scientists running things are accountable to me and my standards. There are a few things we will always send out for, like NMR. Those are $500,000 to $1,000,000 machines that take up a whole room. So it is not economically feasible to have that in our lab. We already work with two fantastic labs with NMRs, though. They do all our NMR work. One does basic 1D H-NMR for us, and we analyze the results. The other has a much more complex system that can do 2D and 3D NMR tests, along with other more complex detections that are not based on hydrogen. So we use them for super complex projects.

Anyway... it looks like I ended up rambling for many paragraphs anyway. LOL. Just know that anything you buy from us has been tested to an extremely high level. I set out to advance the analytical standards of the entire industry, and we are doing that every day! We are doing analytical chemistry that our competitors don't even know exists. Our analytical lab is the entire reason I started this company. Everything we do is to advance our lab. I personally take many of our products, as do most of the people that work for me. They really are the only products I personally trust 100%. I've seen way too many things now to trust other companies. Unless I can verify it, I doubt it. However, I feel safe taking our products every day, and giving them to my family and friends. So you should too!