8:00 The National Geographic Green Guide has a great section called “Products We Can Live Without”. In their Spring 2008 issue the product focus is on Chlorine Bleach, a laundry room staple in Americans homes for years. Chlorine bleach is a mix of water and sodium hypochlorite and is used to whiten our whites, disinfect surfaces and purify drinking water.
Chlorine bleach causes damage to your eyes, skin and lungs. Ever try to clean a closed room with bleach and have the scent in your nose for the rest of the day? Yuck! If it’s consumed it poses an even greater risk. Whether swallowed or inhaled, bleach leads to more deaths than any other household cleaner. And don’t even think about mixing it with ammonia based cleaners which can lead to lethal vapors called chloramines.
When chlorine is produced dioxins, which are known carcinogens, are released into the environment eventually entering our food chain and concentrate in cow’s milk. Some chlorine factories emit brain-damaging mercury into the environment as well.
Bleach also forms harmful byproducts when mixed with organic compounds such as waste water, wood and soil. These carcinogens called trihalomethanes have been found to cause miscarriages, birth defects, and bladder and rectal cancers.
Here are a few alternatives to use instead:
- Sunlight: It’s free and removes touch stains
- Hydrogen peroxide: add half a cup to your laundry and it will brighten those whites just a well
- Oxygen-based bleach: these are chlorine free and available at retail stores an online. Some brands are OxiClean, Seventh Generation, Ecover, Bio-Kleen and Clorox has one also. These bleaches work well on delicate fabrics but not on wool or silk.
If you would like to learn more about chlorine bleach and it’s effect on our environment visit this article.