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"
==========================================
From NOAA's Cameo Database:
SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE SOLUTION (Bleach)
Health HazardINHALATION: 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)
==========================================
BENZETHONIUM CHLORIDE
Health HazardSYMPTOMS: 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)
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)
==========================================
Other links:
http://www.klormansystems.com/qac.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinfectant
==========================================
==========================================
What is interesting is even if we look at the potential problems with using bleach, which is specifically that the chlorine combines with some organics to produce disinfection by-products including trihalomethanes (THM) and haloacetic acids (HAA5), what is missing from such analysis is that after sanitizing with bleach one can then rinse with clean water to remove any small traces of such compounds.
ReplyDeleteAlso, unless the tea is made with distilled or filtered water, it will have either chlorine or monochloramine in it from tap water, albeit at much lower levels than the temporarily high levels that would be used to clean the containers.
Richard
What Richard (chem_geek) just said, is that the stuff knowledgeable chemists worry about, when they bother to worry about chlorine, are some byproducts that are sometimes problems in indoor pools and drinking water -- but NOT in rinsed tea tanks, or on mopped school floors.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather drink bleach which is in my tap water than inadvertently swallowing a mouthful of green mosquito pool cover muck that I happened to do this weekend.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, the Greenpeace article is a bit more nuanced than you infer in your post. A March 24 comment by someone claiming to represent the American Chemistry Council, prominently displayed beneath the article lends further balance.
ReplyDeleteThough I share your disappointment with the pool of ignorance (sorry!) evident in media coverage and, quite often, the political responses relating to discovery and containment of serious hazards, please don't lump the "scientifically half-literate corporate and organizational safety dweebs" in with the "environmentalists" as if each member of the latter lacked all common sense and education. You may yet find one or two environmental scientists who understand basic chemistry and would rather drink their tea from a pot washed out with a weak bleach solution than a quaternary ammonia product.
polyvue
Having had a couple of doses of Norovirus (formerly Norwalk Virus, aka 24 hour stomach flu) on ships in the last 8 years, and have had my better half catch it once, (we're inveterate cruisers) I'm a believer in risk analysis. IOW, is the cure or the disease worse? Dumb question. One 24 dose of Noro and you'll be scrubbing even the CEILINGS with bleach!
ReplyDeleteI've got nothing against environmentalists. I like to think I'm kind of one, too. But I do have a problem with "stupid". "Stupid" means putting yourself, your family, your friends and your neighbors at severe risk out of a misplaced level of appropriateness about sanitation.
Noro scares people even though it's just not that dangerous. But the REAL water-borne diseases don't seem to--and they kill. Cholera, Typhus, Typhoid Fever are all due to poor sanitation.
And the most serious contaminants are body fluids: Fecal matter and saliva/mucus. They carry exactly the bacteria and viruses we are susceptible to. Strangely, urine is not as it is actually sterile as it leaves the body.
I'm not going to dump used motor oil or brake fluid down the storm sewers or into the public sewer system. But I'm not going to stop using the best safety measure for cleanliness in my pool: Bleach.