Heavy Metal Tester

The simplest possible way to make a heavy metal tester for most people is to buy a bottle of dithizone, reagent grade, 131791.1604 C12H12N4S. Mine is 5 grams. Details of the chemical are here:

http://www.dithizone.com/

The biggest costs is actually just getting that. Then after that, you can perform nearly infinite numbers of test. The most sober appears to be the drinking water, and the rice cooker, and the food that uses frying pan that may have cadmium, mercury or copper as a metal impurities. Mercury leakage might be possible, on a tooth filling if the dentist got careless. A composite tooth fillings won't have any metals, by the way.

Then I find a suitable oils, such as diesel fuel oil (stinks), other appropriate light oils, perhaps mineral oil or even vegetable oil. The amount you add to the oils is very tiny. If I were to get a glass rod and stick it in the oils, then the solution will dissolve itself into a medium green color. Oil is used a medium BECAUSE oil ATTRACTS heavy metal and the dithizone will change color when a metal is attached to the dithizone.

The solution is then added to the test solution to determine the presence of heavy metals. Many commercial products keep a secret this dithizone and they sometimes bind to certain heavy metals to test for a specific metals based on the color codes. When testing, the solution is shaked vigorously for one minute. The color will change. You will be surprise to find the presence of heavy metals in your saliva, which happens quite often with me, and hence the use of oil pulling. Oil attacts metal that's why dithizone tests uses oil as a medium and it is this reason why oil pulling is used to remove it.

As a side note, dithizone can be added to any vegetable oils of your choice, but the vegetable oils are also subjected to spoilage and cannot be stored for a long period of time. Also the dithizone tends to degrade if the room temperature exceeds 90 degrees, which my own room sometimes can go up to 101 degree fahrenheit (but usually 92 degrees fahrenheit, but in air conditioned, my average room temperature is 87 degrees fahrenheit -which is not a good temperature to keep dithizone solution). Storing at 85+ degreeFahrenheitwill cause the dithizone to degrade to a colorless and useless solution. A room temperature region of above 85 fahrenheit, makes it more feasible to store the testing solution in a refrigerator.

If the tests is negative, the solution should be green. Here are the other colors where dithizone will change colors in presence of other metals:Zinc MagentaLead RedCopper PurpleCadmium PeachMercury Yellow

Aluminum cannot be tested here.I have a theory about the effectiveness of the test. The lighter the oils, in terms of reduced thickness, the better it absorbs heavy metals. Hence most vegetable oils are like that, but the linalool, a major component of chinese parsley may be the best one, as it passes through the body usually unprocessed, and hence its popularity as a chelating agent for removal of heavy metals.

Of course, I haven't as yet tried to use linalool as a medium to mix dithizone, but it should technically be more sensitive in picking up heavy metals. Diesel fuel oil can work too and I think other marketers are using that, because of its low cost. Some brilliant marketers make sure you are limited to a number of test by putting a tiny paste of dithizone to each test tubes to limit the number of tests youcan perform, so you can keep buying from them.

If you mix a bottle 30 cc using a glass rod (which is about below 1 mg of dithizone, you can actually perform hundreds of test instead of limiting yourself to just 5 or 10 tests.

Hi Ted, but don't we often have more than one type of heavy metal? How then to tell by color? Thanks.