Getting air out of needles

[Stan the man]

I know when shooting up, it is dangerous to have air in your needle. Shooting air bubbles into your veins can kill you (so I've been told). I'm having a rather hard time getting all the air bubbles out of my needle. Can someone give me some advice?

 

[Coraline]

Flick it with your fingers. A tiny air bubble will not hurt you. It's not all that great but it won't kill you.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

The easiest way is to hold the syringe upside down (with the needle pointing up) and gently flick the barrel (as Zoeylynn mentioned) to get the air to all go to the top, then carefully depress the plunger to eject the air, stopping before you squirt out any liquid.

It's best to get as much of the air out as possible, but you'd have to inject a lot of air for it to actually kill you. I've read that serious damage can result from injecting 20 CCs of air or more, and the usual insulin syringe holds just 1 CC. Having said that, there is a small chance that a smaller bubble could possibly get lodged somewhere and cause problems, so it's always a great idea to try to remove as much air from the syringe as you reasonably can before injecting.

 

[Stan the man]

I was under the impression that any air at all would kill me. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

Yeah, the whole "air bubble will kill you thing" is just a myth..hah, a sort of old wives tail. Like dancer said, you'd have to inject a hell of a lot of air. A little air bubble is not going to do shit. Flick the majority of them out anyway, but don't freak out about it.