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Oh hey, it's the pigeon staring at you on your lunch break while you eat a salad. Ali ward back with another episode of Ologies, So if you listen to the last two episodes, you may now have quite a handle on the US Constitution. What did you do? Will you listened? Did you work on a macroma project? Did you drive through Kentucky? Did you water color a picture of a fish? Maybe you cleaned a toilet. I kind of hope you cleaned a toilet because it's apt for
upcoming elections. And also this episode will know joke get you pumped about glistening ceramic and crisp linen. So dust off your brain webs. Let's get fresh. Okay, but before I do, first off, thank you everyone who has told another living person about Ologies. Thanks to everyone wearing Ologies
merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thanks to all the folks on Patreon who submit questions, and to all the folks who have rated Ologies and subscribed and kept it up in the charts and who have left reviews for me to read. By flickering lamplight when I feel vulnerable, such as Pam runs happy, who said, if you've ever made loved ones, wait while you looked under one more rock, or walked around one more corner, or read one more placard, you have found a home adologies. It is the siblinghood
of enthusiastic learners. Pam, thank you much, Lee from old Pappy Dad word, I'm here to give you some weird facts and puns and make you pancakes on Saturdays and tell you about why I'm opping floors is a great science experiment. Let's get into it. So disinfectology. Once again, I did not make this up. It is not a commonly used word. It is a word that exists, but apparently only in Russia by one college, where there is
a disinfecteology program at some Moscow university. But it exists. Okay, so we're going with it because this chemist has spent over a decade figuring out how bleach works. Here's the deal. I got an email from Clorox up in the Bay Area, my old stomping grounds, and they were like, Hey, we're inviting some science communicators to tour research labs. You want to come learn what the funk bleach is? And I thought,
what the funk is bleach? And heck yeah, And suddenly there I was in a lab coat and goggles, smelling things and watching laundry under black lights, living every social media influencer's dream. Well it was my dream. And I had just agreed to post a few hashtag sponsored photos, but the facts were so great that I brought my equipment along in case I could record. But this scientist
was busy sciencing and touring us around. So we got on the horn when I got back to LA and I had him record into his phone memo app, and it sounds pretty dang decent, and we talked all about things that I didn't even learn in the facility, but
I really wanted you guys to know. So chemistry fans, clean freaks, history buffs, folks who are on a Mariecondo kick months later and still want sparkling surroundings, anyone interested in podable water in emergencies, or what's in the pool you're swimming it, Or anyone right now who may be staring out of a train window is wondering what is bleach?
What is it?
Snap on some rubber gloves and get ready to fill your buckets with the perfect ratio of everyday helpful hints and some bizarre science facts with a senior scientist and technically disinfectologist, doctor Evan Rumberger. Is it, doctor Evan Rumberg?
It is?
Yes, that's what I figured. And now you are Would you call yourself a chemist?
Yeah, I'm chemistry by trading. I have a PhD in chemistry.
And now where did you Where did you study? Can you give me a little bit of your scholastic background, like what did you study where?
So I began. I did my graduate work down at the University of California at San Diego. My work down there was about kind of a mix of physical and inorganic chemistry, which actually has some overlap with some of the work I'm doing right now in some very indirect ways,
but I think that are irrelevant. And after getting my PhD, I moved to back to the Bay Area and native California was born and born in Oakland and did a postdoc at UC Berkeley slash Lawrence Berkeley Labs on alternative energy work there.
So, Evan Bay Area born got his bachelor's and his PhD in chemistry from UC San Diego, and then headed back up to Berkeley for his post doc studying the sunlight gathering and oxidation of plants. Now there are probably a lot of people in Berkeley right now whispering into a houseplant.
You're eating, right? What up?
How do you know it?
But Evan was doing it in a lab.
My work at Berkeley was trying to make synthetic analogs of the chemical and something called photosystem too. This this this part of the leaf that can that does some of the chemistry dirty work of the energy gathered by sun. So what I was attempting to do as a postdoc, what I was making some progress on, was how to make these more natural kind of alternatives to what's used in industry to electrolyize water.
Well, electrolysis can mean two things. One is running direct electrical current through a liquid or a solution that has ions in it. What are ions? Ions are just names for atoms or molecules. Molecules made up of atoms, not a big deal, that have some electrical charge. So electrons have a negative charge, protons have a positive one. So when this number is ant equal, you have a charged ion and a cat ion is positively charged. If you have a positive reaction to cats. This is easy to remember.
And an anion is negatively charged, think an antagonist. So when you take two electrodes and run a current through the solution, the negative ions will be attracted to the cathode with the opposite charge. What else can electrolysis mean? How does it relate to mustache hairs? Well, it can mean running a tiny electrical current via a needle in a hair shaft to kill the root of the hair cell. Do I have a couple that could benefit from this? Probably that's none of your business. Does anyone want an
electrologist on the show, because I kind of do. Ps. If you're in Seattle and you're looking for an electrologist, you can look up a place called zipsapp. The owner's named Jake and is an ologite. So perhaps next time I'm up in Seattle, electrologist Jake will let me ask them questions. This mention will probably surprise them. Hi, Anyway, where were we?
Chemistry water is something that is looked at as a potential energy storage system to generate hydrogen, and I was used. I was generating making these catalysts that would help make that. The idea was to make that that that process a little bit more economically feasible and industrially. That work has done with things like platinum and other really precious metals.
And you know, if you want to make ground headway and you know and and and alternate energy, you need to be able to get scale as opposed to just getting you know, laboratory bench stuff, and that you need to move some cost out of it. So we turned to nature and try to get some you know, I'll see how nature does it and try to mimic that synthetically and work from there.
What does all this science have to do with your sexy crisp dovey cover.
As it turns out, that's actually kind of my connection to to clorox. It seems like kind of a round about it. How do you go from doing like alternate energy resource to to to working on bleach. It's a little bit kind of indirectly connected to how bleach is made. The work I was doing as a postdoc is actually what you don't want to do when you're when you're making bleach. You want to prevent the reaction of oxidizing water so that you can productively oxidize the salt. That's
in the water to make bleach. And so you know, it's like understanding something upside down is just as good as understanding upside up. And so that I got recruited off of the UC Berkeley campus and I've been at Clorox ever since that moment eleven years ago, working on bleach.
That salt is NaCl sodium chloride, which is table salt. Wait a second, lazy, do you know that I just realized right now that Clorox comes from chloride? Like, right now? How did I never know that before?
Yeah?
I think I told you this before in a post credit secret. But I also thought U Haul was a Hawaiian company called Yahula before I realized it just met you Haul. Also a lot of people think unicorns are real extinct creatures and narwhals are fantasy whales. So let's all just be gentle with each other, okay. And so how is bleach made? How is hydrolysis involved? And what is hydraulogics?
Yeah, so how it works is it starts with really just two ingredients, that is sodium chloride and electricity. And what happens is in passing electricity through a water solution of sodium chloride you oxidize the chloride to chlorine, and that's one of the first ingredients that's made. Secondly, that chlorine is reacted directly with sodium hydroxide LYE and the two come together to make sodium hyperchloride. So it starts
from salt water electricity to make chlorine. That chlorine reacts with that caustic live the same thing that's used to make soaps and other things, and like you know, soap boiling methods, and that combines to make the NAO c L the sodium, the sodium hypochlorite. Ooh.
Buckle up for a debunk because Evan has a myth to bust.
There is no chlorine in chlorine bleach. That's kind of a misnomer and really one of those terminology things. It's all sodium hyperchlorate that's in there. Although chlorine is used in its production as part of electrolyzing the salt water, there is no chlorine in it.
I had no idea. Now, is there chlorine in chlorine pools? Yeah? Is it same thing?
You know, it's it's one of those things because chlorine is one of those things. It brings in a bunch of bad stuff. The analogy I like to use is like, you know, water, most people think of you know, no waters H two O right, and then there's oxygen gas O two. You know, water has oxygen in it, but oxygen is a totally different thing that we breathe. You know, if you breathe water, you're in trouble. If you breathe too much oxygen, you get in trouble as well too.
But it's in a cird for life. But it's how those things connect together that really make the chemical special. So, like and chlorox, bleach has got sodium a chloride, So the chlorine is attached to oxygens in a similar way that like hydrogen is a text attached to oxygen and water, it changes everything.
So to recap, electrolysis turns saltwater H two O plus NaCl that becomes sodium hypochloride NaClO household bleach. There you go. Now, as long as we're talking basics, let's talk basics. So the pH scale ranges from zero to fourteen, with acids on the low end and bases on the high end. So bleach is around twelve point six, Your blood is about seven point six. What's lemon juice? Around two point
two battery acid. Oh nelly, that's a point three. So anyone identifying as a smelly person has heard probably the age old adds for an anti perseprint that is pH balanced for their swamp armpits, and been like, sure, whatever do you d rate? But how about this alkaline water trend that claims to fix cancer and even more importantly, make your zips disappear. Well, I looked into it, and most people in lab coats, I would wager ninety nine point nine percent have debunked this, pointing out that your
stomach is a slimy pillowcase containing an acid bath. So any alkaline water you drink from the shelves a is usually mislabeled and is much less alkaline than promised, and b it gets mixed pretty quick by your simmering gastric contents. Anyway, water, salt, electrolysis, bleach. Did you always love chemistry? Were you the type of person that was setting things up?
Fine? Yeah? You me? You cot me, I think, yeah, it's the little strapping firecrackers to g I Joe's, and you know, seeing what the Magni fire glass will dude in the sunlight too, to plastics and things like that. Yeah, that really an essay.
At what point were you like, how could I turn this into a PhD and a job with a lab code. Did you kind of always know like a chemist was going to be your Yeah.
I kind of I kind of already. I kind of always known that. It's it's just been my passion. I could probably trace it back to some high school teachers. I think I remember very very distinctly, like you know, having a class discussion. I think it might have been physics or chemistry. I'm not sure what they kind of blown together, but I remember being really really fascinated with why water is clear? Why can you look through it? Why can't you look through your desk the way the
same way you can look through water? And it was just completely blown away with the fact that with the feedback I got from the teacher says, I mean you can predict that. I was like, what, how can you predict that? That just seems so mysterious to me. It's like science to me is is like it's almost like it's almost like a you know, it's you know how things work. You can kind of put things together and create some really awesome things.
Let's back up a sick We have a smart people, and I have a stupid question. Why is water clear? Is that easy to explain?
Yeah, it's it's actually, you know, those are of those questions that is it's always those real fundamental questions are are are are the best ones because they really get at the root of things. Like I've got my two daughters, you know, they're they're asking like why is the sky blue? You know, those things are like really tough questions that took a lot of really science to kind of get the root of it. Water is clear because it absorbs light and part of the spectrum your eyeballs can't see.
Just like that your desk absorbs light and part of the spectrum your eyeballs can't see. But it's like, you know, like to me in high school, that was just like blew me away, and like I'm hooked. I want size.
Yeah, well, why is the ding dang ocean blue? You want to know? Well, I look this up for us. And because light can only penetrate so far through water, what gets kicked back are the blue wavelengths, so the reds get absorbed by the water. And I also, as long as I was noodling around on the Internet looked up what does the devil in the deep blue sea mean? And it's an idiom that means to be in a
real pickle. And the phrase was once between the devil and the not longer wavelengths such as red and orange sea. But that just didn't stick. That is not true information. I just gave you. It was very stupid. Okay. Anyway, when it comes to bleach, which you can also see through, correct, how is it made? Because I didn't know until obviously very recently when I came to tour the lab that it was like this is it? Like it was electrically made? I had no idea. So, and how was this discovered?
Like where does this come from?
So it actually came. It was discovered quice some time ago. It's a rather old old chemistry and it started even back the late seventeen hundreds. It was discovered by an individual I'm just going to butcher his name, but I'll try it anyway, a French gentleman in Paris. It was severed by individual NC Claude Lewis Bertholet and the last time was b r thho l L E t Bertule. He had isolated the compound and initially actually repositioned it
to work in textile bleaching. Immediately when this oxidated properties, it's bleaching properties were mainly recognized as as something that could be used in treating textiles. And this is all the way back in the late seventeen hundred seventeen eighty five.
Of course, I needed for myself a visual image of this frenchman, and in every old timey engraving of him, he looks kind of like Benjamin Franklin's less attractive half brother, but his eyes are always shifted out of frame, looking away, as though he just caught two people gossiping about him between bites of a fruit goalette. Anyway, he was a respected French scientist who left us with a legacy of
much better laundry practices. Now, if you listen to the Roman Archaeology episode, you will remember in what is now Italy, people used to pay professionals to dip their togas in urine for cleaning, so merci. Anyway, by the late eighteen hundreds, scientists, including a German guy named Robert Cock, who realized that bleach killed bacteria. Scientists all agreed that it was germs actually and not airborne ghosts that caused pandemic disease outbreaks,
and thus municipal water disinfection began. So I found one quote from Keith Christman, who was the director of Disinfection and Government Relations in the Chlorine Chemistry Council. I bet he doesn't even know he's a disinfecteologist, but he has said that the filtration and disinfection of drinking waters been responsible for a large part of the fifty percent increase in life expectancy of the last century. So if you're bummed out about having to save for retirement, just blame
it all on water disinfection for keeping us alive. That's very grim. Honestly, thank you water disinfection systems, because I just want you to know I got sidetracked reading about an eighteen fifty four London cholera outbreak and exactly where all of those cholera ghosties came from and what they do to your boudet, and I need not share it with you, but I will tell you that I was eating while also researching, and I continued because I love you. Now Where else has bleach.
Been one of my favorite to little tidbits with respect to how like it's long history and kind of what the funny places it ends up is. It was used by the Apollo the Apollo missions to disinfect the spaceship cabin after the astronaut's return from space, and I believe it was also used as part of its water system inside the spacecraft to ensure that the asturants had not contaminated water on board.
Oh my gosh. So it's been to space. From the steward to space.
It's pretty good journey space.
It's like started from the bottom, now are here?
Yeah, started front of the bottom, now, you know, all the way from like from some lab and in Paris, all the way to space.
So Clorox started in Oakland nineteen thirteen by a Scottish American couple and Annie Murray had the idea to give out diluted samples at the grocery store she worked in. People in nuts Warm. They're still based in Oakland, And when I was growing up in the Bay Area, the company sponsored the cheap seats in the coliseum and it's still perhaps my favorite corporate pun. Ever, this section in the A's games were called the Clorox Bleachers.
So good.
So it gradually made its way into space and then under your sink.
It was around the seventies and the eighties, nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties that it started becoming available as a ready to use cleaning product. And you know, it's been used in laundry, it's used widely as one of the most versatile and powerful disinfectants. It's a great cleaner and shows
up in a lot of really surprising places. I think one of the biggest misconceptions around bleach is is just a variety of places that it's used that are important to really our health, collective health in ways that many of us aren't even aware of. If it's doing really awesome stuff to help us. And I mean, like, do you have an example, like you brought it up earlier.
It's in our swimming pools. We bathe in the stuff when we go in, and that's you know, that was really critical to preventing you know, the spread disease in pools. But most famously, you've the you know, polio and bleach will take care of that quite quite easily.
Okay, quick aside, when did we start chlorinating pools? Well, in old timy days, you just go to the creek with Mam and Paul swan dive into a cold soup of algae and a live turtles. But around nineteen hundreds people wanted fancier things with fewer sunken logs in them. Now the Colgate White Pool, built in the name of a very wealthy donor of Brown University in nineteen oh three, had browned some so funky, and in nineteen eleven they got the idea to try chlorinating it because that had
been so effective at stopping disease outbreaks in municipal water. Now, bacteria accounts went from seven hundred parts per million to zero parts per million in fifteen minutes after chlorinating it. They were like, boy, hotty, hot damn, that's a lot less a live grows stuff in there. And in case you're planning on swimming this summer, yes, there is a bunch of human pea in pools. But one thing you can do about it is not pea in pools. Anyone, anyone,
do not pea in pools. If you can drive a car, I know, I know, you can train yourself not urinate into a commune water supply. We can do this, America. We can do this. Also, Shower before you get in a pool and then shower after again while eating. I did some research on why and just trust me on this weekidos. Now, if you've been to a pool party and not had cholera afterward, think bleach in some form one of the.
Things I think really reduce it to to practice, bring it home with BacT to your earlier question of like how is it made? Is you'll see really popular these days are these salt swimming pools. Have you seen those before? Yeah?
I have.
That's exactly how bleach has made. What they how those salt swimming pools work is they they literally, you know, add a bunch of sodium chloride table salt to the to the to the swimming pool, and then they have a device that is plummed into it that basically is apposite electoralizes the water right there, electoralizes the chloride in
there to make sodium applegloride. And on the spot. It's really it's convenient because normally, like a whole person would have to go and you know, adjust the levels and add, you know, add to the pool. Is an This is kind of on the spot bleach factory in the pool. That's how those things work.
Oh my god, I did not know that I thought it was just like a I thought it was like a mini c So they're like a different bacteria can't grow in this much salt. That's so fat. I didn't know that. Now, how is bleach disinfecting things? So some research that came out only about a decade ago zeroed in on the house and according to a study published and Cell magazine, the active ingredient and bleach causes proteins in bacteria and viruses to unfold in the same way
that a fever would fight in infection. Also, it's able to disintegrate the fats in bacterial cell walls. Now, when it comes to drinking water, we've been treating it for over a century and have cut down dramatically, obviously on infectious disease. Though there are other ways of treating municipal water, like UV radio that's being explored. But for folks with weak immune systems, it may not be powerful enough to zap all the batties like chlorination is. Now, what about superbugs?
Are we just cultivating one that is going to laugh in the face of bleach.
There's no chance of antibiotic resistance with with bleach, at least nobody's observed it ever in the history of it. Whereas you know, you hear of certain bacteria becoming resistant to certain bacteria out there. There's a lot of those hospital acquired diseases are are I can't stand no chance against bleach, And it's used there to treat treat we have outbreaks of like something called MRSA. This staff, this little bacteria that's quite resilient against particular types of event.
Antibiotics and bleach are just wonderful at eliminating.
That insane with ebola, Yeah.
It does the same thing there as well too. So like ebola is a virus and and bleach will go in there and rip it apart, and it's quite efficacious for that. In fact, Clarax bleach was the only commercially available product that's that has undergone that that testing has improved, approved for having forbid that it's ever used for controlling such a thing.
What is the difference between cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization, those are different words.
Right, Yeah, So cleaning again is about soil removal. You can actually clean something and have it have the appearance of being have a great appearance, but there can be a lot of bacteria left behind. These bacteria are things you can't see under normal conditions. A sanitizer and a disinfectant and a sterilizer that that those are kind of keywords with respect to how well the product works against
under certain test conditions. For example, all of our products that make these disinfectant or public health claims undergo rigorous testing. We produce data that's reviewed by the EPA Enviromental Protection Agency. They look at that, and when we pass and do
well in that, we're able to make those claims. The term disinfectant, sanitize, or sterilize are regulated terms by the EPA, and so far as how the breadth of microorganisms that the product has been tested on and how effective it is on those tests.
Okay, look this up and the EPA says yes. Cleaning is the process that physically removes debris from the surface area by scrubbing, washing, and then rinsing. It can be accomplished with soap, intergent, and water. A sanitizing product kills ninety nine point nine percent of the germs identified on the label. A disinfecting product kills nearly one hundred percent of germs identified on its label. This can take a few minutes of contact with the surface. But what is
happening with that point oh one percent? What's going on there? Why does it usually say ninety nine point nine? Is that just a legal thing that you have to put that is point?
Yeah, so ninety nine those terms come through. That's the level of which the product is able to kill the bacteria for which it was it was tested against, and what those levels are set against what is believed to be efficacious from a public health standard. So if you're if you sanitize, you remove ninety nine point nine percent of microorisms you've disinfected ninety nine point nine nine nine. At some point them some of those things become less and less meaningful from a consumer standpoint.
Just in case you're reading a label, how does bleach lighten things? If you throw it on some sheets or maybe if you have a black shirt that you splash it on intentionally? Listen. Reverse tie dyeing is a thing, and it's what gods do at summer camp. Okay, don't judge me anyway. How does it lift color like that?
Yeah? So the branding and clan So there's so there's two a bunch of different things that are happening when you are brightening a stain. So let's say you have like one of my favorite things to do is I don't know about you, but I drink I drink a lot of coffee and I've got this little coffee mug that has a bunch of coffee stains in it. And if you just take a little bit of a bleach in there, and it'll just takes care of that coffee
stain just like magic. It's it's ridiculously awesome how well it removes that stain and rintse it with water and you're good to go. How bleach works there is the molecules and stains have kind of like a connectivity, a molecular kind of connectivity among it that that are unique to the color that you see. And what bleach does is it is it goes in there and breaks that connectivity. It's almost like snipping the electrical wire on for a
you know, for a light bulb. The molecules break apart and or are just unable to make that color anymore. And then those broken molecules are lifted away because they're more soluble in water and they come out. So not only does it remove the stain from a fundamental color, standpoint, but the rest of it just gets rinsed away with the water that you have.
PS. I had a Latin teacher in high school, the amazing and Bco. And one day, to be helpful, we cleaned her ancient stained coffee mug. The inside looked like a rusty cave and it was a herculean effort. Let me tell you, but I wish I'd known this trick anyway, And Bco rest in peace. I hope you were sipping coffee with Jupiter. And I'll be honest, I not only typed Zeus first before I remember that Zeus is the Greek one, but I also misspelled Zeus every single time.
You've just heard me say it. Anyway, clean your crusty mugs ords thoroughly, and then raise a shimmering toast to and Bco a great Latin teacher. She was really good.
I saved Latin. What did you ever do? You gotta try. It's just like you know, you want to rinse it after done, But it's just a magic how well it gets that it'll get that stain out you have like a brand new cup. So that's for stains. For brightening is a little bit brightening that kind of like shock your eyeballs looking at that bright white. So there's two
parts to it. There's like getting the stain out effectively, and then there's also the part about working with the detergent to make sure that the detergent is working well. Also on your clothes. I'm talking about and I think of like, you know, the whitest whites, the brightest brightest whites. Detergents contain ingredients in there that work with the light, the sunlight, and it makes those clothes look a lot brighter.
This part is so weird and cool. And during the tour we all gocked at various white T shirt samples under different lighting conditions. It was like the Wonka factory, but for laundry.
They absorbed like the visible light kind of a little bit on the yellow side, and they spit back a blue light and that that gives the gives the appearance of it just looking much more on the bright end of things. Its kind of like similar to how like if you look at an incandescent light bulb and then compare that to like a fluorescent light bulb. Fluorescent light bulb, just like tack on white or really really bright white increases the color temperature where zangodescent light looks a little
bit yellow. The the Launder detergents, they have these ingredients in there that kind of shift it over into that fluorescent light looking thing. Right. In addition to just you know, eliminating those stains, you know, snipping the snipping the stains up into things that can be washed away by the water, it also works with the launder detergent to make sure that the that the detergent is doing this. It's magic as well too.
Is there any flim flam that you would like to debunk? Any myths about bleach that really annoy you.
I think that the big one was there's there's no chlorine in bleach. We call it chlorine bleach, but that's really just sort of a historical thing. There's no chlorine in it, and that goes back to what we talked about, like you know, oxygen water and oxygen gas. It's such a wonderful thing and it irks me that it gets burdened by it's it's upstream cousin that has nothing to do with it.
You know, we all have that upstream cousin that taints the family name wards you know who I'm talking about the one who occupied the family land with a shotgun and charges us to mow the lawn. But we love them anyway. Are there any myths about it being harmful to the environment that annoy you or being yeah, you know.
It's it's a very safe product to use, you know, like just which also back up, you know, like any any household products, you want to use it as directed. You can always abuse anything to the point of it being harmful, but use when used as directed. It's it's very safe. It's been used for you know, over one hundred years. It starts from salt with us some electricity, and then through its use it goes back to salt.
It's processed through the Universibal water system and otherwise. So it gets a bad wrap that on that level that doesn't deserve whatsoever.
So by the time bleach is done doing its dirty work, it's just broken back down to water and salt. What Also, when you spray it first on the counter, you can leave it there to kick some bacterial and viral ascess for like five to ten minutes, depending on your counter. I didn't know that. I always just wiped it right away. Just leave it there, let it do its thing, and
then you're in stuff. Anyway, when it goes down the drain, the sodium hypochlorite breaks down like ninety five to ninety eight percent they said, into salt and water, and then that remaining three to five percent is either removed by sewage treatment or it reacts with stuff in your pipes and is consumed before it even reaches sewage treatment. I didn't realize that it could shape shift like that depending on what it comes in contact with, and then it
just turns back into the thing it started as. What Also, this part totally blew my mind. I was like, nah, what about the smell of bleach? I learned on the lab trip that the more bleach you smell, the more it's kind of busting up cell walls.
Is that true? Yeah, that's true. So it's like the bleach. You know, that bleach smell is our consumerism. A lot of them love it because it's it's a good indication of coming into a clean bathroom. I can I can tell you nothing better than going into like at the ballgame and going into the bathroom and if you smell bleach in there, it's like okay, okay, we can go
in a restaurant. That's that's a really good side. I'm just knowing how well how well it works at disinfecting, and that that smell yours it is it is the smell of of the bleach kind of fragmenting up the things that comes in content that is a little bit of what you're smelling, and that's a that that's a nice queue that it's done. It's done its thing.
Is there anything that you know of in the natural world that kills germs and viruses like bleachers? There's just like no comparison when you've got.
Like, well, actually, you know this is this is something that I didn't know this until I got to Clorox, but I'm just totally blown away by it. Is that bleach is actually natural as well too. Your body produces it. Your body produces it as it's it's released by certain as part of your immune defense. It's in it's in mammals, it's in part of it's in seaweed. It's also in certain fungus as well too. It will admit a very small amount of of hypochloride hypochorus and as part of
its its immune response. So it's it's actually not that you know we're not that disconnected from it. We actually have it in our body, probably right now, fighting off in very very very small quantities, fighting off as part of part of the immune system.
This checks out. I read about it in that study published and sell now feel free to share all of this at the next dinner party in which there's a gap in the conversation and you're afraid it's going to fill up with politics or gossip about nearby French scientists. And now we're about to ask some of your questions patrons who submitted for this episode, But before I do, I want to tell you about some sponsors of the show.
And they make it possible for me to donate to a different charity each episode, and this week a donation went to Evidence Action. That's Evidenceaction dot org and they run the Dispensers for a Safe Water program and according to their site, globally about eight hundred and forty two thousand people die each year because of unsafe drinking water, sanitation,
and hand hygiene. Clorox is partnered with Evidence Action to supply disinfecting solutions similar to the bleach in our homes in support of their Dispensers for Safe Water program in Kenya and Uganda. I took the donation and tripled it this week, so triple the donation will be going to evidence Action for their dispensers for safe water. Words from other sponsors who are making that possible.
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Okay your questions? Can I ask you some some listener questions? Sure? Okay. Crystal Mendoza wants to know is all bleach one and the same and can it truly disinfect all things? Can it kill all bacteria viruses?
So it's not all the same. We take great pride in the product of those were patented technologies that we've incorporated in that product, and I'm really proud of that.
When I visited, I will say it was very cute how much people work. You there seemed to dig it.
I mean, one of the things that I springs me out of bed every day is you know, it's challenging working working on bleach. It's an old it's an old, old chemistry. But the changes you can make and it really affect a lot of folks, and you know, the daily lives and their Daily Health and really proud of that.
Jason Goodwin as could we expect to see bacterial resistant to bleach anytime soon like we're seeing with animatics.
It kills the bacteria and viruses. We have claims for onit. So if you're interested in a particular whether whether the products kills this bacteria or that bacteria, check check the label and you'll find out the specifics there. As part of that review process with the e PA, we have to provide data to prove any sort of claim like that, So it's kind of out of balance for us to say it as all, but it's highly efficacious. I'll just say that. Check check the label and you'll find it there.
In terms of antibiotic resistance, there's been no you know, there's been no indication of it that ever occurring so Far's yeah.
A lot of people including Danny cav Hans Dehemer, Chelsea Carl Ciera, Venus Bruce Gordon, Alison Hughes, Andrea Marsh, Kelly Brienthal, and Abigail asked why do I like the smell of bleach? It seems like a bad thing to.
Like, you know, bleach is part of its long history, you know, I think to me, that's like, uh, I can speak personally about it. You know, bleach has a long history. I associate it with getting that fresh batch of Cleve laundry all the way to my childhood. You know, it's it's I think it's just for me personally, It's been part of my life. But you know, maybe by association. I don't know. But I like the smell of it as well too.
So quick side note, I learned recently that your old factory bulb in your noggin can store memories. So not only is it a straight shot to your hippocampus and a magdala, the parts of the brain that process emotion and memory, but it has its own memory. You don't have to be a neuroscientist to know that. You just have to sometimes sniff shampoo and an x used and cry and a target about it. Anyway, moving on, This next one was asked by Megan Da, Katie cob and
Ruth Anthony Vernatico. A few people asked, including a zomb what is the deal with color safe bleach? Azam wants to know? Is it black magic?
Color safe bleach is actually a different technology. Color safe bleach is based on hydrogen peroxide. You can apply the product directly on on a like a coffee stain or grass stains and amongst others, in a particular stain that the persons after they can just just check the check the package of what it's good for, and it delivers some additional different benefits. The party has some some fragrances in there, that's small grate makes your laundry small and grade.
It also has brighten's your close as well too, working with the detergent. But it's it's a different technology.
Huh.
And Kelly, this kind of brings me to Kelly King's question. Is hair bleach the same as laundry bleach but in a different form?
No, it's different. So like this is where you know, like bleach is both a verb and a now, so bleaching your hair, it will lighten your hair, but they use different and they use different things for that. They usually use they use a hydrogen peroxide for that. One of the differences between hydrogen peroxide and the clorox bleach as you know, the laundry bleach as you know it is that they just they work differently on different things at different speeds and so like for your for your hair.
Maybe the you know that that product is tuned just right, you know, and it's designed for that, and they use hydrogen peroxide for that. Same thing is true for teeth whitening. Teeth whitening products, I'll se use hydrogen peroxide and as well.
This next question also asked by Alexander and Castro Navarro, Sierra Venus, Meghan McLean, and Carly Katz. A few people including Mike Komonokowski and Anatally asked about ammonia. Anatally says, because of the ammonia and can if I use bleach to clean near my cat's litter box, will I poison us at all? Or is that just flim flam?
Yeah, so like no, the you won't have any You won't there's no issues of of some sort of exposure like that. That's a you know, like with any cleaning product. You don't want to mix cleaning products with what other So you know, mixing bleach with ammonias is a big no no. In terms of the cats, there's nothing to worry there. There's nothing to worry there at all. Small quantities.
And Ron the Bloc asked, I remember hearing when I was young that you can use bleach to purify water? Is this true and safe?
Yeah? And in fact, the Center for Disease Control has recommendations and how bleach is used in an emergency situation. What makes bleach important for this is that it's it's widely distributed. It's really easy to you know, go to the store and get some. And it's also fairly cheap and can be used for many things in addition to to the to water disinfection. So it just takes a couple of drops. The Center for Disease Control has specific instructions on it.
According to the CDC, to each gallon of water, add half a teaspoon forty drops or two point five milliliters of bleach. If the water is cloudy, murky colored, or very cold, at double the amount of bleach, let's stand thirty minutes before drinking.
But yes, it can, and in fact kind of goes back to that, you know that the salt pools and the how bleach is made. You'll see there are some there are some camping water purification kits out there that you bring along a little salt and with some batteries and and you can electrialize electoralize the Brinde to get you a little bleach to add to your water to make it potable and to these situations.
Yeah, that's some serious DIY business right there. And you can find kits like these at camping stores, probably at Doomsday Prepper birthday parties. Guessing on at least one of those anyway. This next question was also asked by Natalie Krinklaw, Diane Stairs, Nick Dean, and Isabelle b Holper. Emily Fosi said, I had a contractor recently tell me that bleach does not kill mold. Is this true? And why doesn't it kill mold? And then the next person asking your question
was Isabelle b Holper. This says, what makes it the kryptonite for mold? Or is that flim flam? Can bleach kill mold?
M m Yeah, I can kill mold. And in fact, it's actually routinely used by the roofers too to remove mold off of off of off of roof, so it only helps with the removal, but it can kill it as well too. It can be when when used as as directed. There's we have a product called outdoor bleach which is used to grade for for doing that.
Oh okay, well, definitely.
It also kills that that the mold if we're gonna kind of uh said that that causes athletes foot as well too, So you know, if you've got people that are suffering from that, cleaning your bath to up and shower with that will help help control that.
Several patrons assets, including Kaitlin Carter, Amanda j Jesse, Krast and Ducks Float. Brian McIntosh says, as an alternative to bleaching a surface to disinfect it, what concentration of acetic acid would need to be as effective as bleach is that vinegar? So is this like a vinegar versus bleach thing?
What's the Yeah, vinegar is remarkably ineffective as a disinfectant sanitizer in comparison. Really it is. I think it can work under certain scenarios, but it is not even the same ballpark with respect to how well it works, not even close.
Wow. Yeah, that's funny because I think like there was a Pinterest trend a few years ago where it's just like something dirty, clean it with vinegar.
It'll do some but not not any work close.
This was a personal curiosity. How do you feel about the Nirvana album Bleach?
Oh? That's funny that comes up every now and then. I love Nirvana. I've always been a fan of them. I was, you know, I was born in the seventies, grew up in the eighties, and you know, Nirvana came out when I was in high school with its you know never Mind album. I always loved that. So it's like, yeah, that's cool.
But what's the hardest thing about your job? What sucks the most? Is it like the commute or not having the right size lab coat? Like, is there anything that just is the worst thing about your job or just the worst thing about chemistry or research in general?
I think like this goes back to kind of just my own personal inspiration. I think the hardest part is also the best part science or science, product development, R and D. It's all a process and it's hard stuff. You know, if it's easy, we'd be coming up with new stuff all the time. When you're particularly when you're working on something that has such a long legacy, how
do you continue to innovate in that area? Is so inspirational to me that we are continue to innovate in that in that area, doing the doing the right work, having the conviction to find find those little nuggets in the in the forest and getting there. So it's both very hard but also just incredibly incredibly rewarding. So it's it's it's I love it, but it's also, like, to your point, is also the hardest thing.
It is. What do you do? You have any advice for anyone who's either intimidated by chemistry or struggling with chemistry, or maybe has running to dead ends on experiments. Any any advice to future chemists.
I'd say, you know, embrace, embrace the curiosity. Science is not something that is like separate from the world. Is part of the world. You know, it's it's being out. You know, asking why is one of the most important questions and to me one of the most satisfying things. Why is that? Why is the sky blue? Why is water clear? You know? Why is why is this? Why is that that? And you know that that's an insatiable thing,
and you know, follow that passion. It can come through chemistry, physics, medicine, writing, a lot of different a lot of different places where it shows up. But you know, like science is to me, is is just one output of of just insacial curiosity. The one way to express it. Do it? Have fun? It's cool stuff.
What's your favorite thing about your job.
My favorite thing about my job is working with the folks here at Claroks. We've got a small team of folks that design products for millions of people, and it's a tight team. The stuff doesn't all come together on any any individuals back. It's all of us working together to make it happen and doing great science and you know, making great, great products that that can literally change the lives of people out there is It's one of the most inspirational fun things to do. Love it.
Oh, so you love your co workers? Well, thank you for making the world a less jermy place. Every time I go into a hospital, I'm very glad that there's not sea diff everywhere and epola and flu. Thank you so much. I literally look at Bleach so differently now, so ask some smart people some stupid questions, and if someone offers you a lab tour, take it. It's kind of like backstage access to a concert, only usually no
one's on drugs or taking selfies. And thank you again, Clarks. Now, if you want to regale your friends and family with more facts about Bleach, you can go to facts about Bleach dot com. It's just sitting there waiting for you. Now, this episode was a kind of a rare pitch from a company, but it truly interested me and charmed me,
and I was like, I want to share this. So I'm glad I could share some of this stuff with you next week when you hear all about coral and oddly coral bleaching, which has nothing at all to do with bleach. So we're going at dive into that next Tuesday now. To follow along socially, we're at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both. Ask questions for ologists at patreon dot com slash Ologies you can join for a dollar a month. You can
find us on Facebook at Ologies podcast. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for all the adminting you do there. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis of the comedy podcast You Are That for being merch Queen's And if you just like wonderful ladies with mouths like sailors and quips like your best friends from college, go listen to
you or that they're amazing. Thank you to Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast My Good, Bad Brain for the editing help, and of course to the electric current that runs through these salt waters. Stephen Ray Morris for stitching all these clips and bites together each week. The theme music was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands.
Listen to them? Okay, each week, you know I tell you a secret, and this week's secret, well, it's one bonus fact that you should wash your sheets weekly, even more often if you sleep nude, because let's just say, underpants mean cleaner sheets, So bonus factor there. Also, I downloaded this app called plant Nanny to help track water consumption, and it's a digital plant you have to water throughout
the day by drinking water yourself. And I realized, wow, I care more about this digital plants health than my own. This is a real eye opener. Also, it took me at least five minutes to choose a style of pot to put my plant in, even though the pot doesn't exist and I can change it anytime anyway. Clocks may have paid me to learn about bleach for a day, but I only agreed because it was some legit cool, fascinating science. But Plant Nanny did not pay me a dime. Also,
my plant is dying today. I have to go water. In speaking of water, please promise me don't peen any pools this summer.
I believe in you.
Okay, byebye, Pacaderman College, hommeiology, y doo, Zoology, lithology, Yeah, zology, meteorology, technology, seriosityogy.
Virgin Media broadband is smooth. How smooth you ask? Well, Imagine you're a big old Walruss and rather than lumbering around a glacier avoiding polar bears, you're on a lake, driving a speedboat three thousand kilos of mollusk, munching magnificence, feeling the wind in your whiskers and the sun on your.
Big blubbery face. That's the kind of smoothness you feel. With ninety nine point nine broadband reliability available nationwide Virgin Media, it's playtime, subject to.
National availability teams. You apply for broadbund reliability to see Virgin Media do I forward slashproof?
Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day with a smart all day plan from board Gosh Energy, save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five euro welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy dot I E Board Gosh Energy, Know your Power.
Estimating annual ability twenty six hundred and twenty nine your own new customers. Only thirty percent is kent of Smart all day electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas unates Sportcash Energy dot E for fourties and cis