History behind Pepper Spray and OC

The term OC is a horticultural term which refers to chili peppers. There are many different kinds of chili peppers, some of which are: jalapenos, chiletpin, and cayenne to habaneros. They all have one thing in common. They all contain a substance that is very powerful, an alkaloid called capsaicin (cap-say-a-sin). A single drop of tasteless and odorless capsaicin in 100,000 drops of water creates a noticeable heat. In fact, capsaicin can be detected by humans at one part per ten million.

Capsaicinoids are produced by a gland in the pepper’s placenta, which is the top partition just below the stem. This is where the seeds are attached. The placenta is about 16 times stronger than any other part of the plant; this is the part that is used in OC sprays.

In 1912, a pharmacologist named Wilbur Scoville came up with the standard for measuring the power of capsaicin. Named after him, the Scoville Organoleptic Test was created to calculate the temperature of peppers used in many pharmaceutical products of the time. Scoville measured the ground pepper into a mixture of water, sugar, and alcohol. Then, a panel of five tasters would sip the mixture and give it a grade; it took a majority of three to assign a value.

Today, the value is established through a computerized method called high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The pepper scale ranges from zero Scoville unit for a bell pepper to 5,000 or so for a jalapeno to 200,000-300,000 for a habanero! Pure capaicin is 15,000,000. The oleoresin capsicum used in a superior pepper spray formula is derived from the hottest peppers and further processed and refined until the heat rating is 5,300,000.

The HPLC method is used to measure the amount of capsaicin within pepper sprays. Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) testing is also used to measure the hotness of pepper spray, but is a subjective test which does not measure the actual chemical percentage within the product. Results change from person to person.