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One of the things that worries parents more than anything else about vaccines is what exactly is in the vaccine. Generally speaking a vaccine contains the antigen, the part of the virus or bacteria that is meant to induce the immune response, a solution in which it is suspended, generally a saline solution, and “other stuff”. The antigen could be a dead germ, part of a germ, a protein from the germ etc. The other stuff is generally what the “green our vaccines” crowd worry about.
Fortunately you can know with certainty what this other stuff is. The CDC has a book called The Pink Book which is available for free PDF download on the CDC website. The CDC also provides appendices to the book, which are also available for free. Appendix B has a list of all vaccines currently approved for use in the United States (starting on page B-14) and all the excipients, a.k.a. “other stuff”, that are present in each vaccine.
So if you want to know exactly what it is in that vaccine your child is getting, feel free to consult Appendix B of the Pink Book. If you want even more information on a specific vaccine and its components, you’ll have to find the vaccine insert that comes in the package and that should spell out in more details, concentrations and amounts of each substance.
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Nearly every common vaccine package insert can easily be found here:
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/package_inserts.htm
Great resource, I’m gonna add this to my Additional Info links. Thanks.
Wait a second–I thought the “green our vaccines” crowd said there was antifreeze in vaccines. I don’t see any glycerol or ethylene glycol or any of the other common antifreeze materials listed. Were they lying to us, or just confused? Or is there another type of antifreeze out there that they’re claiming is in vaccines that I missed?
Knowing the anti-vaccination movement it’s probably both lying and confusion.
Though there is polyethylene glycol used in some flu vaccines to weaken the virus but that’s a very different substance from antifreeze.
There’s a ‘pet friendly’ antifreeze on the market which utilizes propylene glycol, which is a substance used in some aluminum adjuvant containing vaccines such as hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus toxoid, and pertussis.
The reason said antifreeze is billed as ‘pet friendly’ – because propylene glycol has a lower oral toxicity for both pets (LD50 between 9.0 and 20.0 mL/kg) and humans (lethal dose for a 150 pound person estimated at ~ 1 quart or 15 g/kg).
This is compared to ethylene glycol, which is lethal to humans at 1g/kg (100 mL), and is teratogenic (has been shown to cause both skeletal and external malformations in laboratory animals).