Potable Aqua Drug Test

Ever since President Regan got the drug testing bandwagon rolling back in 1986 by mandating drug testing for federal employees, drug users have been looking for ways to cheat the tests. One method that people come across from time to time uses Potable Aqua tablets. If you’re thinking about trying the Portable Aqua drug test detox yourself, there are some things you should know.

We’ll cover them in this article.

What Is the Portable Aqua Drug Test Detox?

The Portable Aqua drug test detox method uses Potable Aqua tablets dissolved in water. The idea behind the detox is that the ingredients in the tablets somehow destroy drug metabolites and allow you to pass a drug test.

Here’s how proponents of the method say you should use Potable Aqua tablets before your drug test.

Method 1

1. Take 2 Potable Aqua tablets and add them to a 1-liter bottle of water. Shake well.
2. Wait for 30 minutes. The water should be discolored, and it will have an unpleasant odor and taste at this stage.
3. Drink the water.
4. Urinate once before giving your sample at the testing facility.

Method 2

1. Pop 2 Potable Aqua tablets into the sample cup
2. Pee into the sample cup
3. Wait a few minutes for the tablets to dissolve

What Are Potable Aqua Tablets?

Portable Aqua tablets are water treatment tablets. “Potable aqua” simply means drinking water, and water treatment tablets are commonly used by survivalists, campers, hikers, preppers, and emergency organizations, for water disinfection and purification when tap water isn’t available.

The Potable Aqua brand offers 3 types of water purification tablets, and each has different ingredients.

1) Potable Aqua Drinking Water Germicidal Tablets

These contain tetraglycine hydroperiodide as their active ingredient. When the tablets are mixed with water, the tetraglycine hydroperiodide releases iodine which is able to kill bacteria in questionable water sources. According to the FAQ at potableaqua.com each tablet releases 8 mg of iodine.

2) Potable Aqua With PA Plus Germicidal Tablets

Once again the active ingredient in these disinfecting tablets is tetraglycine hydroperiodide. When you purchase this product, you get 2 bottles of tablets. The first bottle contains the disinfection tablets, and the second bottle – PA Plus – contains plain old ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) an iodine-neutralizing substance that removes the rust color and distinctive iodine odor and after-taste.

Don’t use this version of Potable Aqua for the drug detox because the neutralizing tablets will render the iodine ineffective, and it’s the iodine that may have an effect on drug metabolites.

3) Potable Aqua Chlorine Dioxide Water Purification Tablets

The active ingredients in this version of Potable Aqua are sodium chlorite and sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate. These tablets achieve effective purification of water because they kill all harmful bacteria, viruses, and parasites.

Can you use chlorine dioxide water purification tablets to pass a drug test? No, chlorine dioxide won’t have any effect on the drug metabolites in your system.

The Portable Aqua drug test detox uses the iodine releasing tablets, not the chlorine dioxide type.

Are Potable Aqua Tablets Safe?

When used as directed on the package instructions, Potable Aqua tablets are completely safe to use. Never use more than the recommended number of tablets for a quantity of water and never eat the tablets.

However, if you’re using Potable Aqua tablets in water that’s already safe to drink you aren’t using them as directed on the package, so are there any safety issues?

The Potable Aqua package states that 2 tablets should be added to 1 liter of water. That means that a total of 16 mg (milligrams) of iodine will be released into the water.

Iodine is a halogen and when you add iodine to contaminated water, the iodine will oxidize the bacteria and kill them. If there are no bacteria in the water, then the iodine has nothing to oxidize and it will remain in the water as free iodine.

16 mg of iodine is far in excess of the upper tolerable limit of 1,100 mcg specified by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But the upper tolerable limit appears to be concerned with a regular intake which isn’t the case when you use the Potable Aqua drug test detox, and iodine poising only occurs with the ingestion of multiple grams of iodine.

When you use iodine-based Potable Aqua tablets, your water will turn an orange/brown color, but that’s normal and nothing to worry about. If you’ve ever used iodine on your skin, you know that it’s a very dark, reddish-brown liquid.

If you add a few drops of iodine to a bottle of water, the water in the bottle will turn a light orange/brown. The same thing happens when the tetraglycine hydroperiodide tablets release their iodine into water.

Water treated with iodine doesn’t taste very nice either, which is why Potable Aqua sells a version of their product with added neutralizing tablets.

All things considered, using Potable Aqua tablets in clean water shouldn’t pose a safety risk.

Does The Portable Aqua Drug Test Detox Work?

Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?

Iodine has been used to cheat on drug tests for morphine and THC, but those cheats added iodine directly to their urine sample. Adding iodine to a urine sample is very different from drinking water with added iodine.

When you consume iodine, it’s transformed in your gut to iodide and then absorbed by your body. The organ with the greatest need for iodine is the thyroid gland, and it’s this organ that takes up most of the iodine you consume.

As your body processes the iodide it gets transformed back into circulating iodine, and ultimately the iodine passes through the liver and kidneys. In the liver, iodine is excreted in bile which finds its way to the feces. In the kidneys, iodine is excreted via urine production.

So producing iodine-rich urine isn’t as simple as drinking iodine-rich water.

According to the Public Health Statement on Iodine – section 1.4, released by the Agency For Toxic Substances And Disease Registry, iodine not taken up by the thyroid gland leaves the body in a few weeks to months.

It’s impossible to say how much iodine will be present in your urine, and if that would be enough to have the necessary effect on drug metabolites because iodine doesn’t make its way through your system quickly.

What about method 2, adding Potable Aqua tablets directly to your sample?

When iodine is added directly to a urine sample, it has some effect on morphine and THC levels. Two tablets will release 16 mg of iodine into approximately 45 ml of urine.

Problem number 1 – It’s doubtful that 45ml of liquid is enough to effectively dissolve the tablets.

Problem number 2 – Your urine will be very, very dark which will raise suspicions.

Problem number 3 – Your urine will smell of iodine, which will once again raise suspicions.

Problem number 4 – Some laboratories offer an adulteration test which can detect the presence of iodine.

This way of using Potable Aqua tablets seems doomed to fail.

What’s The Bottom Line?

To determine if the Potable Aqua drug test detox works you’ll need to use yourself as a test subject.

There is very little discussion about this method in drug test forums online to draw conclusions from, and a quick glance at Google Trends shows that interest in the term “Potable Aqua drug test” peaked back in 2004.

For some reason there was a short-lived buzz about using Potable Aqua to beat a drug test in March and April of 2004, then interest dropped off.

Logic would suggest that if the method was effective, we would see lively discussions about Potable Aqua to this day.

Before you use yourself as a test subject you should figure out if you even need a drug detox.

What type of drug test will you be taking? If it’s a saliva test, this method will be of no use at all because Potable Aqua is supposed to alter urine. And if it’s a saliva test, most drugs can only be picked up for around 48 hours, so a saliva test is pretty easy to pass as long as you abstain for a few days.

If you need to take a urine test, these are the drug detection windows for common drugs:

• Opiates – up to 4 days
• Cocaine – up to 4 days
• Amphetamines and methamphetamines – up to 4 days
• Marijuana – moderate use – up to 30 days (longer with heavy use)
• Phencyclidine – up to 14 days
• Benzodiazepines – up to 7 days
• Barbiturates – up to 7 days
• Methadone – up to 72 hours
• Methaqualone – up to 4 days
• Propoxyphene – up to 72 hours
• Ecstasy – up to 5 days
• Oxycodone – up to 4 days

In effect, abstaining for 4 to 7 days will clear your system of most drug metabolites. But you’ll run into a problem if you use phencyclidine or marijuana. And heavy users of marijuana can still test positive after abstaining for 3 months, which can really hinder job-seeking activities.

If you want to try out this method, you’ll need to drink the Potable Aqua-treated water, then test yourself with a DIY urine test. You can pick up a DIY test at your local pharmacy, at Walmart or Target, or you can order a test from Amazon.

If you get a pass on the DIY test, then you have a chance of passing your actual drug test without detoxing first. But if your urine contains enough iodine to destroy drug metabolites, and the lab checks your sample for the presence of iodine, you’ll fail the test.

How to use potable aqua to pass a drug test – Quick Recap

Potable Aqua is a brand of water treatment tablets. For the Potable Aqua drug test detox, people use Potable Aqua Germicidal Tablets.

Each tablet, when dissolved in water releases 8 mg of iodine. The drug detox uses 2 tablets in 1 liter of water which produces a total of 16 mg of iodine.

Iodine has been used to destroy traces of morphine and THC in urine samples, but that method involves adding iodine directly to a urine sample.

There’s no way to know how much iodine will be present in your urine when you consume iodine.

Some drug testing labs test for adulteration with iodine, so even if you test negative, and that’s a big if, you could still fail the sample security checks.

If you need to pass a drug test in the near future and you don’t have time to detox by abstaining, then the Potable Aqua drug test detox method offers no guarantees, and you would be better off purchasing some fake urine.

See Also: How To Use Palo Azul As A Drug Detox