Where Does Magnascent's Iodine Come From?
When you take a dietary supplement, you should be able to ask a simple question:
Where did the ingredients come from?
For Magnascent, the answer begins in Oklahoma.
We source our iodine through an established American iodine manufacturer in Woodward, Oklahoma, in the heart of the only state currently producing commercial iodine in the United States.
But why Oklahoma?
The answer goes much deeper than a manufacturing facility or a point on a map. Literally thousands of feet deeper.
The story of iodine in Oklahoma began hundreds of millions of years ago, long before there was an Oklahoma, a United States, or even the landscape we recognize today.
Iodine Is Part of Earth's Natural History
Iodine is a naturally occurring element. It is number 53 on the periodic table, but unlike minerals that occur in large visible deposits, iodine tends to be widely dispersed through the environment.
The oceans have played an especially important role in iodine's natural cycle.
Marine organisms can take up and concentrate iodine from seawater. When generations of marine life die, some of that organic material settles into sediments. Over immense spans of geological time, layers of sediment can be buried beneath newer deposits.
Pressure, temperature, chemical reactions, and the movement of underground fluids gradually transform those sediments.
And some of the iodine moves with them.
Scientists studying sedimentary basins have found a particularly strong relationship between iodine and ancient organic material. Research on Oklahoma's Anadarko Basin indicates that much of its iodine was originally associated with organic matter buried in ancient sediments.
In other words, the iodine beneath Oklahoma is part of a geological story that began with ancient life and ancient water.
Before Oklahoma Was Oklahoma
Travel back more than 300 million years and North America looked very different.
The region that would eventually become Oklahoma experienced changing environments of shallow seas, coastlines, river systems, and sediment-filled basins.
Organic-rich sediments accumulated during parts of this history. One famous example is the Woodford Shale, an organic-rich rock formation dating from the late Devonian into the early Mississippian periods.
As organic matter was buried and transformed over geological time, iodine associated with that material could be released into underground fluids.
Those fluids did not simply remain where they started.
Over millions of years, formation waters moved through layers of porous rock, carrying dissolved minerals with them. In portions of what is now northwestern Oklahoma, unusually high concentrations of iodine accumulated in deep underground brines.
An Extraordinary Resource Beneath Oklahoma
Today, northwestern Oklahoma contains some remarkably iodine-rich formation waters.
The Oklahoma Geological Survey reports that iodine-production wells in the region reach approximately 7,000 to 13,000 feet underground. These wells bring iodine-rich formation waters to the surface, with average iodine concentrations exceeding 300 parts per million in the producing region.
That may not sound like much, but for a naturally occurring trace element such as iodine, it represents an exceptional geological concentration.
These waters are found in ancient sandstone deposits, including deposits associated with the Woodward trench of northwestern Oklahoma.
There's an important distinction here.
The iodine underground isn't sitting there as chunks of the dark, lustrous elemental iodine you might picture from a chemistry textbook. It is primarily present dissolved in the brine in ionic form.
Commercial iodine production involves bringing the iodine-rich formation water to the surface and using controlled chemical processes to separate and recover the iodine.
The result is iodine that can then be purified and used for numerous applications, including pharmaceutical, nutritional, industrial, and scientific products.
Oklahoma: America's Iodine Country
Oklahoma occupies an unusual place in the modern iodine industry.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. iodine production comes from brines produced by companies operating in Oklahoma.
That makes northwestern Oklahoma far more than simply the location of our ingredient manufacturer. It is the center of the American iodine industry and one of the significant iodine-producing regions of the world.
Magnascent sources its iodine through a manufacturer located right in this region in Woodward, Oklahoma.
For us, knowing where our ingredients come from matters.
From Oklahoma to Texas
The next part of the journey happens at Magnascent.
Our iodine ingredient comes to us from Oklahoma, and our products are produced and bottled at our facility in Azle, Texas.
This is where we take responsibility for what goes into the bottle.
Our manufacturing facility operates under Good Manufacturing Practices, and our finished products undergo independent testing for identity, potency, purity, and safety according to our quality procedures.
For our original Magnascent Iodine, the iodine then undergoes our patented electromagnetic production process before bottling.
For Magnascent Lugoldine, iodine and potassium iodide are prepared in our alcohol-free formulation and bottled in our Texas facility.
From incoming ingredients through finished-product testing, we believe customers deserve to know not only what is in the bottle, but also how it got there.
Why We're Sharing More About Our Ingredients
For years, we've talked extensively about what makes Magnascent different: our patented process, our manufacturing standards, our formulations, and our approach to quality.
But there's another part of transparency that matters just as much:
Where do the raw materials come from?
It's a fair question.
Our iodine supply brings together a remarkable natural resource and an American manufacturing tradition centered in northwestern Oklahoma. Behind that ingredient is a natural history measured not in years or decades, but in hundreds of millions of years.
Ancient organic matter.
Deep sedimentary basins.
Mineral-rich formation waters.
Thousands of feet of rock.
And, eventually, iodine brought to the surface and prepared for modern use.
Today, that iodine travels from Oklahoma to our facility in Texas, where it becomes part of the Magnascent products our customers use around the world.
The bottle may be small.
The story behind what's inside it is anything but.
Sources & Further Reading
Information for this article was researched using publications and information from the Oklahoma Geological Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, and published geological research concerning the origin of iodine in the Anadarko Basin.