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Then what is saline made up of??
Salt is fine, it is bacteria that will fuck you up.
Like OP said, copying from me, it's too salty to be fresh, but not nearly as salty as sea water. Brackish, in marine terms.
Isn’t it just the concentration that’s off? 3.5% vs 0.9%?
It sounds like there's special compositions sometimes, which are supposed to be more healing - I was given Ringer's lactate a bit ago - but that the default is literally just salt and pure water at that magic 0.9%.
The bacteria in seawater are generally going to be the kind that like seawater, not people. Unless someone dumped sewage nearby...
The living nasties to be aware of are more parasitic worms like swimmer's itch and toxic algaes, and unless you're very unlucky with the algae concentration, neither are a pressing problem in the context that you have concentrated salt water spreading up a damn limb.
I do wonder if the average amount of microplastics by volume in your body would increase or decrease