I used to buy the BD alcohol swabs. BD spun off some of their diabetes products, and the swabs got turned over to Embecta.
The Embecta swabs seemed just as good as the BD swabs, but now Embecta seems to have stopped making them. I can’t find them anywhere.
You can get swabs all over the place. Crappy ones are easy to get. But most of them are flimsy, thin, and not saturated very well with alcohol.
Does anyone have a recommendation on a good alcohol swab? Thick, and fully saturated with alcohol?
The Embecta ones are really well saturated. The easy touch are also but not as wet in my opinion as the Embecta.
I can send you some boxes of the Embecta if you need? I have 13 boxes saved up. 
I can’t ever guarantee which I’ll get but it’s usually one of these 2 below.
Hi @ClaudnDaye,
Thanks, I appreciate it! Based on your recommendation, I just bought some of the Easy Touch ones. I will give those a try!
I am perhaps more particular about it than most people because I use them for IV injections! 
I bought some of the Curad ones. They are thick, but not very damp.
And I also bought some McKesson’s, still waiting for them to arrive.
70% alcohol is readily available OTC in the US, as are “cotton wool” balls. I know that is not so convenient to carry around and I do also carry the expensive tinfoil wrapper bits of material in the car and on aeroplanes and so on. (In the US TSA does not like a big bottle of cheap alcohol…)
I’ve also used, and (as you can see) still have these:
They’re convenient for travel. They don’t meet the “carry on” limit (as you can see) but they do meet the hold limit (500mL currently, according to the AI).
I find that the dinky swabs are not adequate for cleaning an injection site, maybe they provide some “antiseptic” function, which is all the labels say, but they still leave a whole load of dirt behind. 70% alcohol (ethanol was tested but propanol probably too) does work for antiseptic purposes in quantity but in the small amounts in a saturated swab it seems unlikely. Small amounts don’t work for cleaning and in a typical emergency I need to clean a site well enough for a 'pod to stick.
Here’s what I used earlier today, after I had been scrabbling in the crawlspace under the house trying to run a wire for the new electric heater in my office (my 'pod detached):
That’s not the actual swab. I’ll happily show a picture of that, it’s in the bathroom trash can, but that might be too gross. I’d have to give a child advisory, “Not suitable viewing material for adults.”
EDIT: (Addition, adit? Maybe not.) Outside the US propanol is not so readily available. For most of my life in the UK I used, “Surgical Spirit”. It works, it stinks and it causes pain if applied to sensitive areas. This is also called “rubbing alcohol” because masseurs use it, I believe. It is good for cleaning but because of the added oil it is it not good for cleaning 'pod sites; just stick to hard soap and water.
I currently use the Top Care brand pads, I think available at Walmart or Target in the US. They’re relatively inexpensive, individually wrapped, relatively thin making them easy to tuck in a few with my insulin/baqsimi/BG test, needle kit. Plus they have enough alcohol (70% ?) in/on them to last longer than my standard time to change out a pod or CGM, plus they’re relatively inexpensive. I’ve tried some others, but they ended up being less than paper thick, folded over on themselves to appear thicker, and dried out quickly.
Alcohol is actually not great for your skin. It kills tissue. Use hydrogen peroxide to clean wounds and such. Does anyone make hydrogen peroxide wipes?
Well, yes… But hydrogen peroxide is an incredibly powerful oxidising agent; more powerful than chlorine, for example, and it tends to oxidise everything as a result, even chlorine.
I suspect you know the answer; buy a bottle from Walmart and squirt it on your skin. Our skin is dead and already heavily oxidised so it is pretty much immune, even to H2O2. Everything on our skin, not so much.
Our skin is dead. A wound is not but it is better to kill everything in sight than let it fester.
That said what you say is absolutely correct with regard for subcutaneous injections; kill everything on the skin, the skin is dead, long live the skin. Now Mr Bezos is selling this:
It certainly doesn’t say it is sterile but who cares. So long as it has 3% hydrogen peroxide soaked into a bit of paper it probably works. I won’t post the photo’.
JBowler
I’ve had several IV cannulas over the past few months. The skin is scrubbed with 2% Chlorhexidine gluconate in a 70% alcohol solution. The isopropyl kills microorganisms but doesn’t have any residual action. That’s what the CHG does.
I’d used every Walmart/ grocery store/ Amazon brand under the sun. I didn’t care or notice a difference in quality to the point I’d cared, other than some had dried out duds more than others. Recently my wife had a rx for some of her own from a legit hospital pharmacy…that were Embecta brand…. They are extremely outstanding compared to everything I’ve used for the past 15 years
Just read the op.. it’s possible embecta has several different grades, the one I got from Ohsu pharmacy were tremendously superior to bd swabs I’d bought otc…..
outside of that observation I’d just continue buying whatever is cheapest on Amazon or your local grocery store
