Star San

jbvaat said:

This is an old thread but .. looking through it, seems people are talking about the KNOWN substances in StarSan but in the product MSDS you can see that 35% of the product includes something that is classified as 'trade secret'..
How can one trust this not to include anything bad? How can we judge its safety?

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How many unidentified components are in a cup of coffee? Many people drink that undiluted. How many unidentified things are in the air we breathe? The point is that nothing is completely safe, there is risk involved in anything. If you don't want to risk using an approved food safe sanitizer then don't. It would be bad for their business if their product hurt the very people who are buying it, so it is in their best interest to make a safe product.


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dlaramie08 said:

How many unidentified components are in a cup of coffee? Many people drink that undiluted. How many unidentified things are in the air we breathe?

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I think coffee has been used since ages and every human ever existed has been breathing air. I'd say it's not fair to compare these with a chemical product that has existed a few decades and used much less.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting there must be something bad in Starsan, I'm just asking, why are people discussing only part of the story? 35% of the product is quite a lot and it's unknown. And even if it were less I'd still want to know because even 0,01% of some chemical can make a drastic difference in what the substance is or does. Just look at sulphur compounds or diacetyl or whatnot in your beer -- doesn't have to be a lot to make a difference.

jbvaat said:

This is an old thread but .. looking through it, seems people are talking about the KNOWN substances in StarSan but in the product MSDS you can see that 35% of the product includes something that is classified as 'trade secret'..
How can one trust this not to include anything bad? How can we judge its safety?

Click to expand...

You can't. You'll have to assume that the products you use in this life are safe, based solely on faith. And, of course, any research available to you, like you're doing right now

We choose to live a life with a lot of conveniences. Airplanes, automobiles, packaged foods, medicine, electronics, etc. There's no way to assess the safety of each of them every time you use them. What you can do is ask yourself if it's probable that the item has been designed under the auspices of a regulatory agency.

The alternative is to move to the Pennsylvania woods, farm, eschew all the modernity of the last several centuries. If you do this, consider that the life expectancy back then was only about 40.

Yeah I agree. If you are in this frame of mind, I feel like you should be much more concerned with just about every other aspect of your daily life. I'd bet you are thousands of times more likely to be harmed from your drinking water, or plugging in an electronic device, or crossing the street, or constantly breathing the dirty air inside your home...statistics are a scary thing. I say drink as much beer while you can