Comment · Thu, June 18, 2020 · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
How to test my own nootropics for accuracy?
What they were answering
fertilesoil0 · 3 points
Thanks, that was very thorough! It seems way more complicated than I thought at first.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
It's always more complex than it looks on the outside. I think that's an interesting phenomenon in the modern world. We live in the most advanced time in human history, but our access to things has never been easier. So we underestimate the work it actually takes to make things so easy for us. It's all about convenience in the modern world. Companies' primary goal is to make things convenient for its customers. However, in doing so it makes things seem more simple than they actually are in the background. However, the deeper you dig into something, the more you realize that there is a whole other world underneath that is infinitely more complex than you ever thought existed.
Our method instructions for our residual solvent testing are 30 pages long. That's 30 pages of instructions on how to run our GC-FID to test for residual solvents. That's one test method on a single machine. Our IQ, OQ, and validation packets on that machine are hundreds of pages long. We have hundreds of products. Each product gets at least 5 different analytical tests. Each one of those tests has a a method packet for that specific method for that specific product. Some are 10 pages long. Some are 30 pages. Every machine in our lab has a validation packet that is hundreds of pages long. Every single machine needs to have the operation quality test redone every year. We fly technicians out from the manufacturers to do those test every year to keep the machines in compliance. We have to run calibration curves with reference standards for each test. Take residual solvents for example. We have to open new solvent standards every time we need to quantify those residual solvents in a sample. It has to be a fresh calibration curve done on the same day as the test. So we have to open new reference standards every day that we want to quantify residual solvents in a sample. These reference standards are a couple hundred bucks. We cannot use the calibration curves from Monday to run quantification tests Tuesday. So we have to buy new reference standards at a couple hundred bucks a piece each time. Our machines also cannot use "dirty" normal power. The fluctuations in a normal building's power can screw up the machine or screw up the results of the tests. So we have to have $20,000 power conditioners between the building power and the machines themselves. We have to do operational quality tests and validations on the power coming out of those conditioners, to ensure they are in spec as well. We have ultra-purified water systems that make the water we use in our lab, and we have to run operational quality and validations on those as well. So we have to regularly test and prove the water we are using for our tests meets our specs. The gas that goes into our systems has to meet stringent specs as well, including the compressed air. So we have tests that we regularly run on the air that is going to the machines, and validation packets for the purity and particles specs of that air. It gets crazy running a lab under ISO guidelines. I think many people vastly underestimate how detailed and difficult it is to run an analytical testing lab properly. Until you see it in real life, you can't appreciate the depth and scale of it all.