Iced Tea, Chlorine, & Vomit

Earlier this week, after walking around downtown Chattanooga a bit, we ate supper at Panera Bread, a regional sandwiches and salads shop that we enjoy.

As Southerners should, we had iced tea with our sandwiches. As a born and raised Southerner, I had sweet tea with lemon with mine (there was no mint). The sandwiches were good. The tea was not.

Why?

The long and complicated answer, which I'll partly explain below is: politics, ignorant reporters and  (ignorant | irresponsible | dishonest -- you pick, I don't know) environmentalists.

But, the short and immediate answer is bacteria.

The tea tank in had developed a bacterial film growth that makes tea taste skanky. I've occasionally had that happen to my tea here. Scrubbing tea containers with dish soap and water doesn't work: enough bacteria remain in the cracks and crannies to regrow quickly when you again add tea. Fortunately, the solution is very simple: rinse the containers with a water and bleach solution.

I was able to get some tea on this occasion by carefully taking sips from all the other tea tanks, till I found one that wasn't skanked. It wasn't sweetened, either, but I fixed that easily enough.

Then I put on my "I'm a helpful busybody" hat, marched up to the counter, and explained to the head cashier what the problem was, why scrubbing and even boiling water wouldn't fix it, and how they could straighten things out. Being a well trained and polite cashier, she thanked me, but then explained that they were no longer allowed to use chlorine bleach. Apparently, the company safety dweebs had decided it was too likely that someone would poison themselves with highly toxic bleach. .

Never mind that bleach is quite non-toxic, compared to numerous other cleaners. Never mind that most alternative cleaners manage to be both more expensive and less effective. Never mind that there's little or no scientific or technical basis for such bans on bleach.

After all, Green Peas -- or something like that -- has decreed that chlorine is "a dangerous addition to everyday life" and supplied pictures with simulated dead people near a simulated rail car carrying chlorine. Never mind that chlorine was such a poor poison gas that in WWI the Germans gave it up all on their own. Facts don't matter to gullible mass media types who, being the scientific and historical illiterates they are, gobble up the Green Peas press releases without a thought of checking them for credibility.

And so scientifically half-literate corporate and organizational safety dweebs, with more knowledge of public relations and political exposure than of industrial hygiene and safety, ban bleach. Dumb. But typical.

This past winter, it happened at the school where my wife teaches.

You may recall that swine flu was a major concern for schools during fall 2009. Like many schools, hers issued official cautions about nose blowing, coughing and sneezing. And they instituted extra cleaning protocols. Fortunately, they had few problems with the flu.

But, they did have an episode with diarrhea and vomiting. [TMI warning!] Such diseases are usually transmitted by the "fecal-oral route". For those not familiar with medical jargon, this means you get infected when you get someone else's poop in your mouth. Elementary school kids are not great at "hygiene". So over a 3 day period, about 25% of the school got sick. They didn't close, but they did do a LOT of extra cleaning, and had a bunch of health inspections. Eventually, the inspectors delivered an official guess: it was probably a norovirus or Norwalk virus, a common fecal oral pathogens.


The staff cleaned and wiped, cleaned and wiped. But, they didn't clean with bleach because it's too "toxic".
I looked at what they were using, instead. It was primarily a quaternary ammonia -- just like the cheap algaecides sold in the pool stores.


That's really intriguing, for two reasons.

First, if ingested, quats seem to generally be a lot more toxic to people than bleach. You may want to compare hazard statements below. But second, quats are a lot less toxic to bacteria and viruses. In fact, some bacteria actually can live in quaternary ammonia solutions. In particular, quats don't kill noroviruses or rotoviruses -- common causes of diarrhea & vomiting -- well.

Guess what does kill noroviruses well? Plain old bleach solutions. Add a bit of laundry detergent and it will do even better. Oh, yeah. There are no known bacteria or viruses that can remain in bleach solutions.

So let's review.

My wife's school replaced bleach based cleaners with quaternary ammonia based cleaners that were more toxic, more expensive, and less effective against the noroviruses that were likely causes of the diarrhea outbreak. Our local restaurant stopped cleaning its tea tanks with bleach solutions, so they wouldn't be storing 'dangerous' chemicals. This resulted in their customers drinking bacteria saturated tea. And, all this was done because Green Peas and its chemically ignorant allies and media flunkies think you, or they, or somebody will be safer that way.


So, let's celebrate by singing the Green Peas "Live and Let Live" song together, while we save the whales by sharing our yummy all natural infested tea and unbleached poop!

Ben
"PoolDoc"



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From NOAA's Cameo Database:

SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE SOLUTION (Bleach)

Health Hazard

INHALATION: Will produce severe bronchial irritation and pulmonary edema. INGESTION: burning of mouth, nausea and vomiting, delirium, coma. EYES & SKIN: can be irritating if contact is maintained. (USCG, 1999) 

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BENZETHONIUM CHLORIDE

Health Hazard

SYMPTOMS: Symptoms of exposure to this compound may include vomiting, collapse, convulsions and coma. Other symptoms may include corrosion or injury to the mucous membranes. It may cause nausea, esophageal damage and necrosis, hypotension and death. It may also cause dyspnea, cyanosis, paralysis of respiratory muscles possibly leading to asphyxia, and central nervous system depression (possibly with convulsions or preceded by excitement). It has depolarizing muscle relaxant properties. It can cause irritation to the skin, eyes, mucous membranes and upper respiratory tract. Intravenous or intrauterine administration may cause hemolysis.

ACUTE/CHRONIC HAZARDS: This compound is highly toxic by ingestion. It is also harmful by inhalation or skin absorption. It is an irritant of the skin, eyes, mucous membranes, and upper respiratory tract. When heated to decomposition this chemical emits very toxic fumes of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen chloride gas. (NTP, 1992) 

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Other links:

http://www.klormansystems.com/qac.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinfectant

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Hoping for a more predictable week!

Last week was weird. I got a lot done, but hardly any of it was what I had planned to do!

There were a lot of little things that interfered.

Things like the swimming pool tile contractor whose workers had cleaned out their cement buckets over the deck drain at one of my customer's pools. The cement pooled, set up, and blocked the drain. We'd always wondered where the backwash line went, and how it was connected. The plans didn't show it clearly. Well, we know now. It is just upstream of the deck drain line.

So, I learned what happens when you try to backwash a 600 gallons per minute system into a drain line that's full of pool plaster. Actually, I could have guessed pretty accurately. But, anticipation and imagination don't fully prepare you for the physical experience of a 8,000 square foot pool deck covered with backwash water filled with year old algae and sludge. The aroma alone will be a lifetime memory. Everyone who goes into the pump room now asks, "What that's smell?". And from the expression on their faces, it's pretty clear that they aren't asking so they can find other opportunities to smell it some more.

Anyhow, what should have been an quick and easy pool start up has instead been time consuming and difficult. The club manager, who dreads the pool opening anyhow, went around all week looking like he needed large econo-sized doses of blood pressure meds.

And, then there were the epoxy and wasp wing knife blades in the pool finish, the new tiles with no grout, the customer who I'd been trying contact for months who finally called and said, "Sayonara!" . . . and the demise of my own personal water line at my home.

All in all, it was a week to remember, though I'd rather forget it.

Ben