Products with bleach should be the most common cleaning product in homes, and office complexes are not far behind. Go to most home bathrooms and you will probably find a bleach product. Go to the office toilets that are only cleaned by contract cleaners once, twice or three times a week and you will probably find a container of bleach of some description on the windowsill or next to the toilet bowl, especially in bathroom bathrooms. ‘women’ . Males don’t seem to have the same dependency on bleach, or they just don’t think of clean toilets!

What’s this fascination we seem to have with bleach not as a bleach but as a cleaner? Is it effective as a disinfectant? Yes, because the alkaline nature of the bleach plus the small amounts of chloride ions produced are effective in killing bacteria and viruses. Is it effective as a bleach? Yes, because in contact with water it produces oxygen free radicals that will oxidize some color pigments. Hence the whitening effect. Oxygen radicals are also effective disinfectants, helping to destroy harmful organisms.

However, what are the cleaning properties of bleach? They seem minimal. Does bleach remove dirt? Does bleach remove stains on toilets? The answer to all this would seem to be no, it is not. In fact, what bleach does is make the stain or dirt transparent. It is whitewashing it. It is still there but not visible!

So homeowners gladly soak toilets with bleach. This cleans them with minimal effort and has the added benefit of smelling ‘clean’. Porcelain will certainly look clean and shiny, but it really isn’t – you can’t see it anymore since it’s been bleached!

I think we rely a lot on bleach due to past use by our parents and grandparents and it gives the effect of looking clean and most importantly smells clean. Psychologically we see it clean, we smell it clean, and all the nasty ‘germs’ have been removed, so it must be clean. It’s actually a gimmick, the dirt or stain is still there, we just can’t see it, and whatever smells around it are being masked by the chlorine smell, the clean smell. Like mold that’s been bleached, they’ll come back!

More articles about our fascination with bleach will appear shortly.