Dangers from impurities in todays popular research chemicals?

[mr.grey]

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine about the dangers of research chemicals.

Basically beside the obvious yet still partially unknown side effects of research chemicals, there were two points that I could not really argue on.

1.) The danger of the impurities in the product.
2.) The danger of messy production by the lab

With the now very popular beta ketones like Mephedrone, Methylone, Butylone but also with stuff like 4-FMP and some Tryptamines, is there actually a realistical danger in regard to harmfull impurities that are part of the synth.
Of course I don't have the chemical knowledge which byproducts can come up during the synth of these compounds, but maybe someone here has.

I understand that there will always be a small amount of impurities in every synth, but is there actually a realistic danger if we are talkig about Mephedrone, Methylone, Butylone or 4-FMP, that these impurities are harmfull to us?

As an example I read a post recently where someon was talking about different routs to synth 2C-B and was also giving out a warning to watch out for orange/yellowish 2C-B
He said, that this would be a sign for 2,5-Dimethoxynitrostyren impurities which will be metabolized to Nitrosamin which is very carcinogenic.
So I think this is quite a valuable information and I was wondering if there are more things to watch out for or if most of the current research chemicals can be considered to be "safe" in regard to harmfull impurities.


The second argument was: What if the lab did produce some toxic herbizid in the previous production and then produces for example Mephedrone after that, without properly cleaning all the equipment and everything else.
Would this be a realistical danger?
After all these products require multi step synthesis, with washing and other things in between. I don't have any lab experience, but to me it seems rather far fetched that even if equipment and machines are not properly cleaned, that toxic impurities will still show up in the end product, but of course I may be wrong though.
So if someone could shed some light, that would be great.

 

[PharmTech09]

I would imagine that there would be impurities in some RC's, but every lab is different. The ones who wash all their equipment thoroughly should not have the danger of impurities unless their synthesis was incorrect. I would imagine it just depends on the supplier of the chemical. It is definitely something to be aware of if one was heavily using a drug of an unknown purity, regardless of what the manufacturer claims, unless they are well known or can absolutely be trusted.

 

[mr.grey]

You are basically right and I have no lab experience, but as the synthesis requires multiple steps with washing and cleaning processes, I was basically wondering if even in the rather unlikely case that traces of toxic material are left on equipment because it was not cleaned properly, if these small amounts of toxic material would really make it into the end product or if they will be washed/filtered out or removed in the differen stages of the production of the new compound.

Maybe someone who is actually working in a lab could shine some light on this.
Of course one can never completely rule out such things, but I'm simply wondering if this could be a real life problem or if it is just a theoretical danger that is extremely unlikely to happen.

 

[egor]

^I wouldnt neccessarily worry about accidental impurities as much as the purposeful ones (the batch of methylone that was as much 5-meo-mipt as methylone is a good example).

 

[any major dude]

I would guess that labeling would be the bigger issue here, but I don't have any "real" lab experience. It may be possible for a synth to be botched, and possibly end up with a somewhat toxic product, but if you've got a supplier that provides you with batch info and you test a small amount of the product first, and it appears to be legitimate you're probably going to be alright. There are always going to be some impurities (most products are between 97%-99.5% pure) but they would likely be in such small amounts as to be insignificant.

 

[Black]

i think it's less of a problem than with street chemicals. there's no reason to synthesize in a clandestine lab when you can legally (in some places in the world) do so in a well equipped lab.

 

[nuke]

^I wouldnt neccessarily worry about accidental impurities as much as the purposeful ones (the batch of methylone that was as much 5-meo-mipt as methylone is a good example).

Yes. Another good example is the mix up between DOI and 2c-i from one reseller, which resulted in the hospitalization of a few people in 2005.

 

[DopaMan]

Yikes can anyone speak about specific impurities such as the MPTP fiasco of the 1980s which led to "frozen addict" syndrome. Basically a handful of junkies were scoring what they thought was a meperidine analogue (Demerol aka Demonol aka ewwww bad drug) from a grad student in chemistry and had their dopamine cell bodies in the substantia nigra chemically ablated, which means insta-Parkinsonism

 

[leungkachong]

At least they were able to transplant embryonic-ish midbrain progenitor cellls (neuroblasts) into some of the MPTP 'victims'. And using a fluoro-dopamine tag (I think that was the tag), they found that there was significant neurite outgrowth from the transplanted cells. This also came with a reduction of symptoms (err... and irreversible side-effects of excessive nigro-striatal dopamine). One woman got hit by a car a year or two after surgery, and the neuroblasts really did their job, sending connections all over (and apparently even to the right cortical layers, though there was no substantiation of that claim in the studies).

 

[LabRatNW]

Yes. Another good example is the mix up between DOI and 2c-i from one reseller, which resulted in the hospitalization of a few people in 2005.

This could definitely constitute a major problem. Dosing is at least an order of magnitude different!

 

[Black]

i'd recommend using a test kit. a lot of mix-ups can be detected with marquis (don't know about 2C-I and DOI, but i've heard of some other cases).

 

[hamhurricane]

if anyone here subscribes to the erowid newsletter there was just an GC/MS analysis preformed on some 2C-B-FLY which was demonstrated to be of "very high" purity, they have a scan of the results maybe its available online...

 

[Quanta]

Potential harm from impurities and mis-labelling in the research chem industry is a valid concern. Put it this way, mistakes should not happen however the labs which produce these chemicals do not neccesarily follow proper quality control protocols. These are the types of regulations that would be enforced by the health authorities during the manufacture of ligitamate pharmaceuticals. Anytime someone purchases a research chemical for consumption they expose themselves to a multitude of risks and therefore it is up to the individual to ensure their own safety. Anytime you try a new batch of an RC start small and work your way up to a full dose once you feel comfortable. Also test the compound to the best of your ability.

The MPTP incident was tragic but in many ways it was one in a million that it displayed such acute toxicity.

For compounds as simple as most RC's, any true chemist with a conscience would not sell anything less than 99.7% pure but unfortunately I doubt that is the case.

 

[vikingkong]

Found this thread and thought I'd post this article about a byproduct in tryptophan supplements causing poisoning. Now, I doubt synth labs making RC's are using bacteria to manufacture product so this particular thing seems unlikely or we'd have heard of people getting it. But it IS related to tryptamine, and there are a lot of different variations of tryptamine and lots of them are psychoactive or pharmaceutically active...some must even be toxic. What I wonder is, are some synthesis routes likely to produce other (possibly bad) tryptamines which could be harmful. Like say a batch of 4-aco-xxx having some other trypt which raises BP way too high or has some other dangerous effect? Not a contaminant but an incompletely converted substance or byproduct? Do different synth routes present higher or lower probabilities of such byproducts? Like say a lab had to choose between 2 methods and one required a more expensive ingredient and an alternative cheaper method had a slightly higher incidence of some other bad-tryptamine byproduct? Obviously almost every time I see a new batch of the same stuff it varies in color or cakiness or consistency...it's obviously the same chemical, so what is different?

 

[sekio]

That article was from 1990, now almost 25 years ago(!).

What I wonder is, are some synthesis routes likely to produce other (possibly bad) tryptamines which could be harmful. Like say a batch of 4-aco-xxx having some other trypt which raises BP way too high or has some other dangerous effect? Not a contaminant but an incompletely converted substance or byproduct?

It doesn't seem likely. The intermediates during synthesis are essentially inactive compared to the final product, and more importantly there isn't too much possibility for some novel, toxic tryptamine to show its head. A well equipped lab will have the analytical tools to tell whether they're making the desired product or not; most of the syntheses of tryptamines are simple and well-documented in the literature.

Barring a lab using wildly different precursors (let's use ethylamine instead of dipropylamine!) or doing cowboy chemistry ("Fuck the literature, i know what I'm doing"), there's not much possibility you'd end up with some other, incredibly toxic, tryptamine. Synthesis is meant to be like baking, if you follow the recipe with the same ingredients and equipment, you get the same cupcakes, more or less every time.

In simpler terms: The comic-book style "Hey boss, let's cut corners to make really cheap drugs that poison the people of Gotham!" is unlikely to happen inadvertently. (It's also bad for continued business - look at the Br-DFLY/2CBFLY fiasco, the guy who sold that stuff got killed by his own goods! He's not making very much money any more.)

Obviously almost every time I see a new batch of the same stuff it varies in color or cakiness or consistency...it's obviously the same chemical, so what is different?

There's a lot of variables, even in the last step (salt formation from freebase) you have a choice of solvent, whether or not it's recrystallised after you precipitate it, how quickly you add the acid to the freebase, whether or not the acid is diluted, whether or not you make the salt in solution and precipitate it, or precipitate it as it forms, whether or not you mill the final product to a powder, whether or not you decolorise it with charcoal, final moisture level of the product, how it's been stored, etc...