Thread by @MatSciMatt

One of the newest conspiracy claims about #COVID19 #vaccines is that they contain graphene and/or graphene oxide.

I am weirdly qualified to debunk this rumor, despite not being a medical/health/vaccine scientist, because my PhD literally was about graphene in liquids. 1/n

If you want proof, here's my dissertation: libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/83…

The TL,DR is that I studied how you can break down graphite into graphene in what are basically laboratory blenders using different liquids. 2/n

So I've seen a bunch of liquids made with graphene in my life. Heck there's probably still vials in my old PhD lab from when I filled up most of a lab bench. 3/n

Graphene oxide is distinct from graphene but liquids containing it in any significant amount also tend to be dark brown or black. Those vials on the right are only 0.05% graphene oxide by weight and look how dark they are! (First image from ingentaconnect.com/content/asp/jo…) 4/n

Vials of the Pfizer vaccine are generally colorless or maybe a pale yellow, which might also just an artifact of how some pictures were taken.

If those were even 1% graphene or graphene oxide, they should look black.
5/n

What's even weirder is the claim about how concentrated the graphene/oxide supposedly is: 99%!

These mixtures going through tiny syringes are supposedly 99% solid particles? 7/n

First, it's weird that the % isn't specified. When discussing solutions or colloids, % is specified as mass % or volume %. (There is a trend of using % for mass per volume since water is 1 g/mL.) 8/n

What do I mean by that? Well, is the % saying 99% of the mass of the sample is graphene oxide, or is it saying 99% of the volume is. That seems minor, but it's really important to practically describe chemical and physical properties. 9/n

From what I've heard, the original "report" doesn't specify that, so it suggests this is made by someone who isn't really familiar with describing solutions. 10/n

But here's the other thing: no one has ever reported making such a concentrated graphene oxide mixture. Commercial sellers of graphene oxide solutions are often excited to have something on the scale of single digit GRAMS per liter. 11/n

Here's SigmaAldrich, a major chemical company. Their most concentrated graphene oxide dispersion in water is 4 mg/mL OR 4 milligrams of graphene per 1 gram of water. That's 0.4% by weight! 12/n sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/…

At anything close to 90%, the mixture would be so above any stable solubility or dispersion limit that you would see the solids precipitating out of the liquid and forming a sludge on the bottom of the vial. 13/n

Even if you could get a concentration that high, that mixture would not behave like a normal liquid.

What do I mean? With such a high concentration of particles, even if they're stable, they would interact with each other so much that they can't flow like a liquid. 14/n

This gets into the fun world of rheology, the study of how things flow. (Unfortunately not the study of the delightful Rhea Perlman.) 15/n

When you add something that can't dissolve to another material, you might still be able to make another kind of stable mixture - a colloid or dispersion.

That's why I've used "dispersion" throughout the thread - you don't dissolve graphene or graphene oxide in these cases. 16/n

But when you do that, you very quickly change the physical properties in a way you may not see with solutions. E.g. you have to add a lot of sugar to water before the syrup seems more viscous than just water. 17/n

And because graphene/oxide have such a high aspect ratio, or ratio of length to width, this behavior happens at very low concentrations.

Here's a paper on the behavior of "concentrated" dispersions of graphene oxide - and they only go to 8%! link.springer.com/article/10.100… 18/n

What's key is this graph: η is the symbol for viscosity, the resistance to flow. These values were obtained in water.

At 8 volume %, the viscosity of the graphene oxide dispersion is almost 100,000 times the viscosity of water at low stress. 19/n

Like many colloids, it shear thins (e.g. at more stress, it's less viscous - like ketchup). But when you start the plunger in a syringe, it would feel more like like pushing against honey or peanut butter, not water. 20/n

I can't speak much to what the design tolerances of normal syringes are, but this seems like it would be incredibly hard to inject compared to normal vaccines which are typically aqueous solutions using the same syringe. 21/n

Having found the direct claim, the 99% graphene oxide is compared to the mass of mRNA in a vial - e.g. for 1 nanogram of mRNA, the theory says there are 99 nanograms of GO. But that would be greater than even the 0.5 mg/mL here, so vials should be DARK BLACK if that were true!

And the "concentration" they claim is only determined by absorption spectroscopy. But you can't use that on its own to identify unknown compounds in a sample unless you can rule out other chemicals! GO isn't the only thing that could overlap with mRNA! 22/n

And I have no idea what this image is supposed to show. Heck, w/o knowing what TEM support grid he's using, this might even be a part of the grid he damaged if he doesn't do this kind of imaging often. (Having barely used TEM, how angry I was when I ruined my own grids.) 23/n

For instance, here's a commercially available TEM grid made of a graphene oxide film on lacey carbon. It's a very busy image, even though no sample is on it! 24/n
tedpella.com/Support_Films_…

The paper's a mess, but I feel no need to analyze it more for risk of "backfire effects" just by repeating its weird claims

Just know in this case that seeing is believing. The fact that the vaccines are clear water-like liquids disproves these claims. 25/25

I'm happy many found this helpful! I don't have a Soundcloud, so here's vaccines.gov/search/ to help people in the US find vaccines.

Vaccines save lives.

Science needs to be inclusive and just.

Many communities of color and LGBTQ+ people are skeptical b/c of histories of abuse, neglect, and exploitation by science that scientists and health officials need to address.