How is Hydrogen Peroxide so Cheap?

Okay, so I'm sure there is a logical reason. I'm sure that everything I need to know is located at a link that looks something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide. But still, I can't stop thinking that a thousand years ago, dudes were dying from splinters and shit. They'd just go around living their short awful filthy lives in fear, praying not to get scratched. One dramatically deep hangnail was all it took to delete you from history. By the end of the week, the festering hand would be amputated. By the end of the next week, the festering arm would be amputated. And then it was a chore for your eighteen or nineteen children to bury you beside the well-- a task that alone would consume six or seven of them.

We don't have to deal with that anymore. What would have killed some dopey inbred fool and half his family a millennium ago is now easily avoided by sitting on the edge of your bathtub and pouring bubbling wizard potion on where it hurts. That's it. Life goes on. Of course, that doesn't stop of us from complaining about how much the bubbles sting, but still. We need to be thankful to have hydrogen peroxide, aka medical 7up, aka burning magic water, aka HP (as in "yo, doc, sprinkle some HP on this shredded flesh of mine.")

And yet HP is priced like it's spilling out of some backwoods Kentucky spring, like it's slipped through a wormhole from a 1930 apothecary to the shelves of CVS, like you're doing the store a favor by taking it home. What I'm trying to say is that it's cheap. Really cheap. It follows the absolute reverse of pharmaceutical company logic. Here you are holding a nondescript brown bottle that can be used to treat any abrasion, and it costs as much as a Dr. Pepper in 1994. If this were discovered by Pfizer or AstraZeneca or something, you'd be handing over $700 for a bottle and the bottle would be hotel shampoo sized. It would be advertised day and night while millions die from scuffed elbows. I'm imagining the commercial right now: stock footage of white people smiling at one another on a grass field fades into a shot of a clear glass bottle with a logo worthy of an Apple product. Upbeat and forgettable music beneath the Micro Machine announcer reading off possible side effects.

In fact, there is only one reason why HP is so ridiculously cheap: Taste. Sure, we all know that HP can be used to help canker sores and whatnot, but if you read the bottle (a wonderful and enjoyable endeavor I highly suggest!), you'll see that many brands boast that they can be used as mouth wash. Of course, what they don't mention is that the same bubbles that sterilize your flesh wounds do not leave you with the same refreshing minty breath we've come to expect. So while it might get rid of any reminisce of your garlic filled lunch, it leaves you breathing a stale mucous stench on anyone around. [That's not accurate. I'm taking a sip of the stuff right now and it's much worse. It's the sort of awful taste that everyone interprets differently. If you tweet me a description of what hydrogen peroxide tastes like to you, I'll put it in here.]

@maltschlitzmann: it tastes like the sub basement of an abandoned tuberculosis ward

@antal_the_2nd: it tastes like if you stepped in Hamm's beer then dried your socks by a fire for a bit then wrung them out

@capntastic: it tastes like anti-dimensional seltzer which is why it reacts so adversely to living creatures

@hebrewmagic: it tastes like childhood trauma marinated in beef broth

@hello_meow: it tastes like someone liquefied a soapy ceramic floor tile

These are awesome.

So until they release a Baja Blast Hydrogen Peroxide, this wonderful liquid will continue being priced well below everything else. So the next time you're bleeding profusely onto your floor from walking on a broken bottle or fighting off a rabid dog mauling or crawling back into a fire to save your R.L. Stein fiction collection, pour a little HP on the pain and say thank you while it burns so good.

– Ian "Salmon Season" Golding (@iggolding)