can you test purity of gear?

[adicelmare]

the guy i get my stuff from says he can test whether a mystery vial contains testosterone or not, although he cant tell me the purity. im pretty sure he doesnt have a lab in his basement so my question is this: is there a simple way to check whether a given sample contains testosterone and if so how is this done?

[Geeezer]

It needs to be sent to a lab to tell what it s.
You could asume what it is by its color,But thats just like saying it looks like it.

[adicelmare]

i actually called a couple of labs in edmonton to see whether they could test this "supplement" for me but they need to know whats supposed to be in the sample. thing is if i have knowledge of the nature of the sample then im breaking the "law" so thats out of the question.

[kfrost06]

An ID test and a purity test are 2 different test. For an ID(identification) usually an FT-IR is used, it's an Infra Red Spectrophotometer and a very small amount of the gear is analyzed by sending photons through the sample, because of the superposition principle of waves the gear will re-admit the photons at specific wave numbers that will allow a identification. It is basicly the finger print of the compound. Most software nowadays have a library of IR spectra and it will search the library to find the perfect fit and ID it for you otherwise I reference stanard is used.

Here's a spectra of Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone



The peak wavenumbers should match with the standard and you will know what you have.


Now for purity an assay is performed. This is much more difficult for exact measurements must be made. A known volume of sample is taken and diluted to a fixed volume and run through a HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatographer) usually (almost always a reverse phase system). This works by separating all the different compounds via a column, the column separates the compounds by size, pH, ionic strength, etc of the molecules by flowing the compounds through this column at a certain flow rate using a specific mobile phase. At the end of the column is a detector, nowadays it's usually a MS (mass spectrometer) or a UV (Ultra Violet spectrophotometer). So what you get is a spectra based on time vs. mAU (for UV). Having done the ID test you will know what compound your looking for, knowing that you will know exactly how much time the compound will take to make it through the column. At that time a peak on the spectra will appear. Since you know what volume you started with you can measure the area under the peak to determine the purity of the gear. This test also allows you to look for impurities, any other peak that is shown on the spectra that is not accounted for.

Here's a sample of a HPLC spectra...



The spectra is for Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone
Standard (13.377 Minutes). The Inset Shows the Chromatogram for a mixture of Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (13.334 minutes) and Stanozolol (13.543 minutes) Standards.

[kfrost06]

If you have the powder form you could preform other easier test for ID purposes like a refactive index or melting point temperature.