Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, is used to prevent contamination in multi-dose vials of vaccines. Since multi-dose vials are much cheaper than single-dose vials, the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines are almost always multi-dose (a few single-dose H1N1 flu vaccinations may be available in November but with up to eight-hour line-ups for vaccinations are administrators really going to deal with requests for single-dose vials?)

Are multi-dose vials really necessary? Would you pay $5 or even $20 a shot for single-dose to make sure the shot was thimerosal-free?

Tags: flu vaccines, h1n1, H1N1 vaccination, mercury, multi-dose vials, safety, single-dose vials, thimerosal

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 11:02 am and is filed under Nancy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.