I am curious about the contents of a product called “Jungle Ammonia Clear fuzz tabs”, an aquarium aid sold for removal of ammonia and some other thing.
This knowledge is not really important except I don’t want to pay four bucks for 39 grams of baking soda or something equally as commonplace.
I thought that somewhere the Government had thousand of pages of PDF on what was in stuff that is retailed to the public. Am I mistaken?
I know, I know. Good aquarium hygiene renders the stuff unnecessary. That really isn’t the problem or the question. I am just curious. Do you know how to find what is in the stuff?
The easiest way to find out what a product like that contains is to search for a MSDS for the product in question. A company called 3E maintains an online database of the sheets for over 3 million products. Companies that sell or work with products containing potentially hazardous components usually have an account with 3E per OSHA regulations. If we have a chemical spill at my workplace, part of the standard cleanup procedure is a call to 3E for hazardous material handling instructions including safe disposal and treatment for exposure. Emergency services personnel also typically have access to MSDS databases. You can ask the retailer where you buy the product for a copy of the MSDS for the product and see if they’ll provide it, or you can go to 3E’s online database.
There are a bunch of entries for Jungle Laboratories Corporation, but to actually view the sheets, you need to have an account. There’s an option to sign up for a free trial account, though I haven’t tried to do so to see what the limitations on it are.
Generally, the requirements for ingredients to be listed only apply to food and drugs, or in other words, things that will be consumed by humans. The FDA isn’t concerned as much about fish.
Not to hijack this, but does that mean I can demand the unlisted ingredients to secret-recipe food and drinks sold for human consumption? I’ve got, uh, allergies, or something.
So far all the MSDS pages I have found require that first I must know the ingredients before I can get product information. I have found no way to enter the name of the product and find the ingredients.
As far as I know, MSDS pages are for raw ingredients not finished products. I work in the food industry, and every ingredient that goes into our mayonnaise has an MSDS. The finished mayo does not have an MSDS. If a product is a potential danger, then there should be a warning label on it that states what the potential dangers are.
The FDA has an exhaustive set of rules about what needs to be listed on a label and what doesn’t. I don’t believe there’s any mechanism that forces the manufacturers to get any more specific than that.