Hi, I’m currently a 3rd year chemistry student and I’m writing my dissertation on e-cigarette’s. I’m almost finished, but I have been testing the nicotine refill solutions to check if they contain the concentrations the manufactures have labelled. Is there a law or guideline to say they have to be within a certain amount? For example 18mg/ml (+/- 10%)? Etc I’ve looked around but cant find anything for certain. Any help at all appreciated!
try looking for laws related to other alternative nic delivery systems like the patch and gum. there's no guarantee that ENDS will follow those laws that specifically aren't worded for them.
thats great, thank you
Multiple teats have been done ...years ago iic. Try looking at D. farsilonoius work... Ecig research dot com with a byphen in there i thi k.
Since most eliquid companies don't test every batch of nicotine they recieve from a vendor and most nicotine vendors don't test every batch to confirm 100% that they are the mg stated on the bottle, it's fairly common for the final product to not actually be the mg stated. It's one of the many reasons why I make my own eliquid and get my nic from nude nicotine who do test every batch. It's also why I test the nic myself to verify. I'd say a majority of the eliquid on the market is not accurate on the mg only cause the nic they are using is not precise.
The variance might be due to mixing by volume, or yeah not testing nic. Once I switched the lab over to measuring nic and flavors out by weight I feel we've become much more accurate (esp with the vg nic). We don't test the nic currently, which is something I think is important to do and that I've been wanting to implement for some time. Seems to be pretty on point though, I will try batches to qa and haven't noticed any that were particularly harsh or mild
Are your results within 10%? Just curious.
I'd wager that nicotine concentration labels fall more under a false advertising rather than an FDA guideline.
I'm starting to think that too now, initially I just presumed it was a law/FDA requirement.
My results are: A - 10.5% over, B - 26.1% over, C - 22.0% over, D - 11.7% over, E - 38% under.
I'm finding a fair few articles now that suggest that the majority of liquids contain from -15 to +21%. But they have to be within 10% for pharmaceutical limits
Can you share more of your testing procedures? Are you distilling the liquid, are you shaking or steeping? Does the flavor concentrates added to the eliquid skew the results?
I bought 6 strawberry flavour liquids from different vendors. These are generic liquids and dont need to steeped to the best of my knowledge, they were all opened on the same day regardless.
I diluted 0.1ml e-liquid (after shaking) into 10ml 90:10 ammonium acetate : acetonitrile. I then analysed these via HPLC using a Phenomenex C18 5micron column
I buy my nicotine base from nude nicotine and they give you a gastro spectrometer readout from their lab on the exact concentrations and impurities found in samples from your batch.
Im looking more at the concentrations of the finished e-liquids, not so much the bulk nicotine solution for vendors.
That does sound like a good reliable company though, providing customers with such certainty
They've had issues. Last year they sent out batches of 100mg labeled, but was closer to 300....
Folks weren't happy. The owner, to his credit, did replace those orders from said batch.
Short answer is no there is no law or regulation in the US specifically dealing with this. Also, you just found a community of people whose DIY e-liquid is probably ridiculously close to what they are going for, I know mine was within 2% the one time I tried to test for it after mixing. Companies who make the stuff in bulk, particularly any "generic" e-liquid, are probably using cheap nicotine with a questionable source and no lab report. They may or may not check the concentration themselves before adding to a mix.
There are about a zillion ejuice companies out there right now and most of them are guys who care about their product quality and would be appalled if you told them they were 20% away from their label wrt nic concentration. Others, not so much.
Honestly, too few companies do rigorous testing even now.
Back about 5 years ago we actually had a huge scandal when most ejuice makers were buying from box elder and there were tested results as bad as someone ordering 100mg/ml and receiving a bottle of 272mg/ml (another sample same time was 48mg/ml).
I ended up contacting more than 20 manufacturers during the scandal, and only one even mentioned testing their nice content before mixing. And call me cynical but I doubt the ratio has changed ,uch (people are too trusting )
Enev back then as far as I know, the only repercussion was the whole community telling them to fix it, and very few boycotts (I still refuse to buy anything from gourmet vapor since they're owned by the same company, but every time I look be and gv seem to grow even more).
How are you testing them? From what I've found you can only test via the titration method. This method can be affected by the flavourings, as it depends on the PH level of the sollution, so you can only really test unflavoured nicotine sollutions
I mentioned it earlier, but here it is again
'I bought 6 strawberry flavour liquids from different vendors. These are generic liquids and dont need to steeped to the best of my knowledge, they were all opened on the same day regardless.
I diluted 0.1ml e-liquid (after shaking) into 10ml 90:10 ammonium acetate : acetonitrile. I then analysed these via HPLC using a Phenomenex C18 5micron column'
There are plenty of ways of finding nicotine concentrations, not just titrations.
Titration can also be imprecise if done by a lay person, especially using the kits sold by e liquid nicotine companies for the purpose, and testing low concentrations. Looking for a color change gets tricky when what you see is kinda of in between the colors shown on the reference card.
I don't remember where I saw it, but it was recent. A group did testing as well and to round it out, the margin of error was +/- 20% with a few larger outliers. They reported some as much as 40-50% on what they reported.
It's been stated already, but to my knowledge, no, there isn't anything regulating this. I have my personal opinion on the pmta, but a byproduct of the government testing, if done correctly, will be able to filter this out and hopefully help this situation.
I believe the rule of thumb for pharmaceutical drugs is +/- 2%. For now, there is no regulation like that for vape products, but one would assume that's coming pretty soon. As it stands, I do not think there is a law in place. At least not in the US or Canada. Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.
Thanks for all the help guys, pointed me in the right direction and found what I was after!
For anyone interested, there are no laws (yet) in the UK (and from what others have said US and Canada too) so you can imagine the manufacturer testing is quite relaxed.
My study found samples were within -38% to 27%, But the majority are over there label amounts (one study found 46 out of 50 were over).
The most common range is -15% to 21%, but there are frequently deviations as great as -50% - 42%.
Again, thanks to everyone for the input and help :)
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