-by Robbie Wigley
Most of us remember from our chemistry days in high school, that there are some rather nasty concoctions you can create by mixing certain common ingredients like bleach and ammonia. This is a sure fire way to hit the floor gasping for air because your little chemistry experiment just made chlorine gas which can do some serious damage and can even be lethal. What most of us don’t know and never learned is that when bleach is combined with acids like vinegar and lemon juice a similar issue presents itself in the form of chloramine vapors.
So now we know that there are problems with combining chemicals but do you know what is in the product you are using to clean. What if you combine drain cleaner with a chlorine based, all purpose cleaner. I am not saying that you would pour the two products together, most of us would realize, that is a bad idea but what if you had drain cleaner in your sink from a previous day and you poured the bucket of water with cleaner down that drain. Or you cleaned your toilet bowl and then dumped the bucket of product you were using on the floor, into the toilet bowl. Or what if you wiped the counter with an ammonia based cleaner, probably didn’t rinse it and later followed it up with a swipe of the dishrag full of “what??” do any of us know? The cat box is another ammonia problem and many people routinely use a chlorine based cleaner to disinfect the box.
The problem is that most likely none of the situations would result in what we would consider a poisoning. But we are exposing ourselves repeatedly to low level toxins, breathing them and getting the liquid on our hands. No one knows what the results of this long term exposure brings.
Chlorine bleach is found in automatic dish washing detergents, disinfectants, scouring powder, mildew removers, toilet bowl cleaners and the list goes on.
The bottom line is don’t mix different cleaners together. The results can be violent, producing toxins and becoming a splash hazard, burning whatever it touches, including you.
Keep yourself and your family safe, there are companies that make effective environmentally sensitive, safe products for you to use. Do your homework and get behind the effort to make companies reveal what is and isn’t in the products they market.
