The coronavirus crisis has people stocking up on many things, including bleach and cleaners. However, many don’t realize that bleach and cleaners must be used with extreme caution.
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According to The Kitchn, bleach should never be mixed with other chemicals or acids, including:
- Ammonia —This combination produces chloramine gas, which can burn your eyes and respiratory tract and cause internal organ damage — and, in some cases, explosions. Many cleaners contain ammonia (like mildew cleaner), so never mix bleach with cleaning agents.
- Vinegar — Mixing vinegar with ammonia creates chlorine gas, which irritates mucous membranes and causes coughing, and these types of chemical burns can be deadly. Any acid mixed with bleach does the same, including lemon juice and some toilet bowl cleaners, so never pour bleach into your toilet bowl.
- Rubbing alcohol — The combination of rubbing alcohol and bleach is deadly since it produces chloroform, which can knock you unconscious.
Many other substances cannot be combined with bleach. To be safe, never mix bleach with ANY substance.
Other commonly used household cleaners have been linked to dangerous health conditions.
You may think that because household cleaners fill entire aisles in many stores and are in close proximity to food, they must be safe to use, but you would be wrong.
Unregulated by the FDA, almost any ingredient manufacturers choose to use may end up in their cleaning products. In fact, they have over 100,000 chemicals from which to choose for their products and less than 10% have actually been tested for human safety.
Health care workers using chemical cleaners once weekly showed an increased risk of progressive chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis, while bleach has been linked to lung disease, nervous system disorders, burns and chemically induced pneumonia.
There are natural alternatives to commercial cleaners including borax, salt, baking soda and vinegar that may be used in varying amounts to whiten your clothes, scour off soap scum and clean your kitchen without fear of side effects from toxic chemicals.
Many personal care products also contain dangerous chemicals, harmful to both humans and the environment. These types of products, like household cleaners, are unregulated by the FDA — which is alarming when you consider that many of these products are applied directly to your skin and absorbed into your body.
Take something as seemingly innocuous as your shampoo and conditioner: Many shampoos contribute to the formation of mysterious cancer-causing substances called nitrosamines that end up in water supplies from — you guessed it, your shampoo.
There is an enormous amount of evidence that nitrosamines cause cancer in humans. In fact, nitrosamines are some of the most potent chemical carcinogens in tobacco products, and are generally regarded as the smoking gun linking the use of tobacco with cancer.
More than 1 in 5 Americans are drinking tap water that’s been treated with a derivative of chlorine known as chloramine, which is a disinfectant formed by mixing chlorine with ammonia and often used alongside chlorine as a “secondary” disinfectant. As it enters waterways, this disinfectant is toxic to frogs and other amphibians, reptiles, fish and other aquatic and marine life.
When chloramines replaces chlorine in drinking water, it increases the amount of lead that leaches into water from lead pipes. Is it harmful to humans coming in contact with it every day? We don’t know, because no scientific studies on chloramine’s effects on your skin or respiratory tract — as happens during a shower or bath — have been conducted.
A whole-house filtration system is your best choice to remove chlorine, chloramine, ammonia, DBPs and other contaminants from all of your water sources (bath, shower and tap).