Bleach… The Miracle Cleaning Agent - Jasmeet Nijjer

When we think of bleach we think about the all powerful cleaning agent, that shines and strips away any dirt and all stains, but did you know any chemical that removes color, whiten or disinfect is referred to as bleach². Your all-powerful bleach could be any combination of chemicals or made up of several different chemicals like chlorine, sodium hypochlorite, calcium hypochlorite or hydrogen peroxide ^2. What they all have in common is the oxidation process, recall the oxidation process is where an election is lost and in bleach reactions the oxidation process will have gained an oxygen molecule ³.

Example

—  Laundry

—  A stain is a chemical compound, and the addition of bleach breaks down the molecules into smaller elements so that it separates from the fabric¹. Detergent and the washing machine speed up the cleaning process and the stain disappears¹!

—  Disinfecting⁴

—  Bleach rapidly dissociates ie. Breaks down into oxygen and chloride to form the highly reactive hypochlorous acid, which can attack the amino acids that make up proteins which chances a protein's structure and when a protein looses it’s structure, it looses it’s function, and when proteins looses their shape, cells can no longer survive⁴!

Bleach can be found in many different places other then household cleaning products and laundry bleach¹. Bleach is used manufacturing of paper and pulp, that’s why we have shiny white paper, disinfecting swimming pools and even disinfecting public water supplies to prevent waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid⁸. Bleach is even used in the food industry to whiten flour; most of our cakes and cookies contain some sort of bleach, but don’t worry there still perfectly ok to eat!

Bleach and specifically sodium hypochlorite is very easy to make that is one of the reasons it’s used in many different places¹.

—  Caustic soda, which is all as known as NaOH, is diluted with water to form a 25% solution¹. That solution creates all of heat when the water dilutes the caustic soda solution. The solution is then cooled and chlorine gas or liquid chlorine is reacted with the caustic soda solution¹.  It is important to note that the reaction between chlorine and caustic soda is essentially instantaneous¹. The bleach solution is then cooled to help prevent decomposition, and then it is filtered to remove impurities that can discolor or catalyze its decomposition¹.

The basic chemical properties of Sodium hypochlorite bleach include^5,6,7

·         Formula: NaClO

—  Molar mass: 74.44 g/mol

—  Melting point: 18 °C

—  Boiling point: 101 °C

—  Solid or Liquid

As great as bleach is for cleaning and disinfecting, a lot of health concerns occur when consumers don’t realize that mixing bleach with household cleaning products can form chlorine gas bleach which is associated respiratory tract irritation and inflammation and pain in the mouth, pharynx, esophagus and stomach and vomiting/ nausea^5,6. There are other long term and short-term health including circulatory collapse, confusion, coma, inflammation and decreased blood pressure^5,6.With all of these concerns bleach is also very corrosive and can burn your skin or cause skin irritation⁶. 

If those health concerns have scared you off from using bleach that’s ok there are alternative like white vinegar and tea tree oil, baking soda and vinegar, hydrogen peroxide⁸and then going old school by hanging your whites outside in sun, because the also “bleaches" out discoloration².

 References

1.       Bleach. (n.d.). How are Products made. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Bleach.html#b#ixzz2wWdZIbFu

2.       Bleach. (2014, March 19). Wikipedia. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from                                                       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach

3.       Bleach. (2014). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/69164/bleach

4.       Ledford, H. (2008). How does bleach bleach?. Nature, 1228. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.nature.com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary

5.       Lewis, R. J. (2004). Vol.3. Sax's dangerous properties of industrial materials (11^th ed., p. 3256). New York: J. Wiley & Sons.

6.       The Merck index (13th ed., p. 8700). (2001). 1. Whitehouse Station, N.J.: Merck & Co.

7.       Packaging Chemicals. (n.d.). - Aluminum Sulphate Non Ferric, Sodium Hypochlorite, Aluminum Sulphate Ferric and Chlorinated Paraffin Manufacturer & Supplier from Vapi, India. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.suvidhichemicals.com/packaging-chemicals.html

8.       Sodium hypochlorite General information. (n.d.). Health Protection Agency . Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.hpa.org.uk/webc/hpawebfile/hp