Fellsway Plaza in Medford looks like any other suburban strip mall, with a nail salon, gym and restaurants. But as some people walk back to their cars with freshly painted nails or carrying bags of takeout, others have gauze tape around their arms and some extra money in their pockets.
They just finished selling their blood plasma.
“I’m just trying to pay my bills,” Kenneth Younger from Allston said on his way out of BioLife Plasma Services. “Things are just a little too pricey for a little too long. They’ve been getting worse.”
Throughout the last month, GBH News has reported on how the war in Iran has affected people financially in Massachusetts. As soaring gas prices force some families to sell clothes and jewelry and pull back on spending, selling blood plasma is one more way people say they’re dealing with increasing costs.
Plasma is a yellow gooey substance in our blood that’s used to create treatments for problems like immune deficiencies, severe burns and liver disease. Selling, or donating plasma — as the pharmaceutical industry prefers to call it — involves drawing blood, separating the plasma from it with a special machine, and then pumping the blood back into the donor’s arm.
The practice has been a way of making some money quickly for decades. The Food and Drug Administration considers it safe, though bruises on arms can develop where the needle is inserted, and there’s little research about long-term effects. According to the Blood Plasma Center at Georgetown University, each day, an estimated 200,000 people nationwide sell their plasma.
Outside blood plasma facilities around Greater Boston and Worcester, several donors who have full-time jobs said they earned about $500 a month selling their plasma twice a week, the maximum allowed under federal regulations.
Younger, an addiction counselor, said he started doing it in February when he was struggling to cover student loans, rent and utilities. With average gas prices now over $4 a gallon, he has one more reason to keep selling.
“I go here. Boom. One donation is a full tank,” he said, noting he drives a lot to meet with clients.
Randi Thayer from Rutland also recently started selling her plasma. She called the experience of seeing beds of people hooked up to plasma machines an “odd sight” reminiscent of the dystopian TV show “Black Mirror.”
Thayer is an assistant manager at a Tractor Supply Company store, but is looking for a new job she’ll enjoy more. In the meantime, she hopes selling her plasma will help her save some cash.
“I’ve got a car repair right now that I’m trying to pull together money for. So if the car doesn’t go, the gas doesn’t do me any good,” she said.
Several new for-profit plasma donation centers have opened around Massachusetts in recent years, including five owned by BioLife Plasma Services. BioLife is a subsidiary of the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, which has a U.S. headquarters in Cambridge.
BioLife declined an interview for this story. But in a statement, the company said it’s “grateful for anyone who donates plasma” because the substance produces life-saving “medicines for millions of people with rare and serious health conditions and in critical-care settings.”
The company added that it hasn’t seen a noticeable increase recently in the number of people donating plasma. Still, the two locations GBH News visited both had a steady stream of people coming to donate.
Boston College labor economist Geoffrey Sanzenbacher said he wouldn’t be surprised if these facilities become even busier. That’s because although inflation isn’t as high as a couple years ago, he said the job market is more stagnant now, making it harder for people to land second or third jobs to cover rising costs.
“People are good at making ends meet, and I think to the extent they can’t do it in a more traditional way, they’re gonna do it in an untraditional way, which this is,” Sanzenbacher said. He compared selling plasma to his friends participating in paid clinical trials while in grad school during the Great Recession.
Some donors said there is a stigma around selling plasma, so even though they were comfortable with their decision, they didn’t want other people to know how they were making some extra money.
One man said he and his wife were selling plasma to pay for the costly process of securing green cards.
Another man, who went by the pseudonym Andy, uses the money to pay for gas. He is a student at Northeastern and lives in East Boston, but he drives to Worcester regularly for a work placement this semester. He said his weekly expenses on gas have soared by over $50 in the past month, so he stops by the BioLife Plasma Services center twice each week.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m proud to donate my plasma. It is a little bit humiliating, having to do this to be able to work,” he said. “But you got to do what you got to do.”
