Synthetic urine is a product marketed by Dyna-Tek Industries with the brand name of Surine.
I am not making this up.
You see, diagnostic machines must be periodically calibrated against a gold standard, but consistent
samples are hard to come by.
Urine composition varies greatly from donor to donor, and can be influenced by
several factors including diet, health, drug use and the time of the day when the sample
is collected.
Real human urine must also be kept refrigerated or frozen, to prevent it from decaying
into something... well, equally disgusting, but somewhat different.
Dyna-Tek, a firm based in Lenexa, Kansas, has a solution to this problem: they take ultrapure chemicals usually
found in urine, mix them with finely calibrated instruments in precise percentages,
put the resulting liquid into bottles and possibly label them "I can't believe it's not urine!"
The Center for Disease Control, one of the best clients of Dyna-Tek, has bought 33 liters
of the stuff and will probably increase its orders by a factor of ten. Taxpayers' dollars at work.
Other companies make similar products, but they aren't fully synthetic - they usually start with
human urine, refine it and add preservatives. These products have fared poorly in lab tests, but
there is a big market even for these inferior imitations: drug users who want to pass urine tests
can buy a bottle of artificial urine and pass it as their own.
Just to show that there is no end to human ingenuity, one of these companies
also sells the Urinator (TM), a pouch with an electric heater that will keep
your artificial urine close to the optimal body temperature.
"I think in the next few years, synthetic urine will replace human urine"
Fred Klaus, manager of Redwood Toxicology, Santa Rosa, CA
(Thanks Mr. Klaus, but I think I'll keep pissing the real stuff.)