Dumb question - what is bacteriostatic water exactly — March 2026

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine. Half the figures circulating in this community trace back to a secondary summary that dropped a qualifier.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

Following on from NurseLeah_Nash — and this may be the naive question:

What did you change at the same time, and can you separate the two now?

raj_cambridge said:

For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine.

Careful with the causal language. Two things moving together in a period when five things changed is not a mechanism, and stating it as one makes the thread less useful to somebody reading it later.

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

raj_cambridge said:

For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine.

True, with the qualification that this is a self-selected group. The people for whom it did not work post less, and that shapes everything we think we know.

raj_cambridge said:

For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine.

This answered a question I did not know how to ask. Sending this to two other people who asked me the same thing last week.