Ologies with Alie Ward - Disinfectiology (BLEACH) with Evan Rumberger

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

It lives under your sink and may have saved your life but… WHAT THE FUNK IS BLEACH? Hot off of a beaker-laden lab tour, Alie chats with Dr. Evan Rumberger, a bleach scientist, about his work, his history, what bleach IS, what it turns into, and how to appreciate this household staple. Also: what exactly is in swimming pools and how to tie-dye shirts when you’re goth. This was part of a partnership with Clorox, but Alie thought the chemistry was cool enough to share with Ologites.For more bleach facts, this link's got 'em: FactsAboutBleach.comA donation went to the EvidenceAction.org Sponsor links: Progressive.com; TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/Ologies; functionofbeauty.com/ologies, TakeCareOf.com (code: OLOGIES)Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's the pigeon staring at you on your lunch break while you eat a salad. Halliward. Back with another episode of Allergies. So if you listened to the last two episodes, you may now have quite a handle on the U.S. Constitution. What did you do while you listened? Did you work on a macrame project? Did you drive through Kentucky?

Did you watercolor 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 no joke get you pumped about glistening ceramic and crisp linen. So dust off your brainwebs. Let's get fresh. Okay, but before I do, first off, thank you, everyone who has told another living person

about allergies. Thanks to everyone wearing Allergies merch from olergiesmerch.com. Thanks to all the folks on Patreon who submit questions. And to all the folks who have rated allergies and subscribed and kept it up in the charts. Everyone who have left reviews for me to read by flickering lamp light 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 homodology.

It is the siblinghood of enthusiastic learners. Pam, thank you much from old pappy dad word. I'm here to give you some weird facts and puns and make you pancakes on Saturdays. And to tell you about why mopping 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 disinfectology 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 our 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 science-ing 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 Marie Kondo kick months later and still want sparkling surroundings.

No one interested in potable water in emergencies or what's in the pool you're swimming in. 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 disinfectiologist, Dr. Evan Rumberger. Is it Dr. Evan Rumberger? It is, yes.

That's what I figured. And now you are, would you call yourself a chemist? Yeah, I'm a chemist 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 record? Yeah, sure. What did you study?

Where? So I, 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 organic chemistry, which actually has some overlap with some of the work I'm doing right now in some very indirect ways, but I think they're relevant. And after getting my PhD, I moved to back to the Bay Area and native California was born in, 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 postdoc, studying the sunlight gathering and oxidation of plants. Now there are probably a lot of people in Berkeley right now whispering into a house plant. You're eating light. What is up with that? How do you do it?

But Evan was doing it in a lab. My work at Berkeley was trying to make synthetic analogs of the, the chemical and something called photosystem 2, this, this, this part of the leaf that can, that does some of the chemistry dirty work of, of the energy gathered by sun. So what I was attempting to do as, 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 electrolyze 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? Electrons are just names for atoms or molecules or 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 isn't equal, you have a charged ion and a cation is positively charged. If you have a positive reaction to cats, this is easy to remember. And an anion is negatively charged, thinking 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 electrolygist on the show? Because I kind of do. P.S., if you're in Seattle and you're looking for an electrolygist, you can look up a place called ZipZap. The owner is named Jake and is an oligite. So perhaps next time I'm up in Seattle, electrolygist 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. I was generating these catalysts that would help make that process a little bit more economically feasible. Industrial work has done with things like platinum and other really precious metals. If you want to make ground headway and alternative energy, you need to be able to get scale as

opposed to just getting laboratory bench stuff and you need to move some cost out of it. We turn it into 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 duvet cover? As it turns out, that's actually kind of my connection to Clorox. It seems like kind of a roundabout. How do you go from doing like alternative energy research 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 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 I got a recruiter off of the UC Berkeley campus and I've been at Clorox ever since that moment 11 years ago working on bleach.

That salt is NaCl, sodium chloride, which is table salt. Wait a second. Wait a second. Do you know that I just realized right now that Clorox comes from chloride? Like right now? Yeah. How did I never know that before? Yeah.

Oh my God. I think I told you this before in a post-credit secret, but I also thought U-Haul was a Hawaiian company called Yahoo Well before I realized it just meant U-Haul. So 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 hydrolysis?

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 hypochlorite.

So it starts from salt water, electricity to make chlorine. That chlorine reacts with that caustic lye, the same thing that's used to make soaps and other things and like soap boiling methods and that combines to make the NaOCl, the sodium hypochlorite. Oh, 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 hypochlorite that's in there.

Chlorine is used in its production as part of electrolyzing the salt water. There is no chlorine in it. I had no idea. No, is there chlorine in chlorine pools? Yeah. Or is it the same thing? It's one of those things because chlorine is one of those things that brings in a bunch of bad stuff.

The analogy I like to use is like, most people think of no water as H2O, right? And then there's oxygen gas, O2. Water has oxygen in it, but oxygen is a totally different thing that we breathe. If you breathe water, you're in trouble. If you breathe too much oxygen, you get in trouble as well too, but it's necessary for life. But it's how those things connect together that really make the chemical special. So like in chlorox bleach has got sodium hypochlorite, so the chlorine is attached to oxygen in a

similar way that like hydrogen is attached to oxygen and water. It changes everything. So to recap, electrolysis turns saltwater H2O 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 14 with acids on the low end and bases on the high end.

So bleach is around 12.6. Your blood is about 7.6. What's lemon juice? It's around 2.2. Battery acid? Oh, Nelly, that's a 0.3. So anyone identifying as a smelly person has heard probably the age-old ads for an antiperspirant that is pH balanced for their swampy armpits and been like, sure, whatever, deodorant.

But how about this alkaline water trend that claims to fix cancer and even more importantly, make your zits disappear? Well, I looked into it. And most people in lab coats, I would wager 99.9% 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 nixed 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 on fire? Yeah, you caught me. You caught me. I think, yeah, it's the little strapping firecrackers to GI Joes and saying what the magnifying glass will do in the sunlight to plastics and things like that. Yeah. At what point were you like, how could I turn this into a PhD and a job with a lab coat?

Did you kind of always know like a chemist was going to be your view? Yeah, I kind of already, I kind of always known that. 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 blend together. But I remember being really, really fascinated with why water is clear. Why can't you look through it?

Why can't you look through your desk the way it's 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 teachers is, 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 like, it's almost like a magic trick, you know? You know how things work, you can kind of put things together and create some really

awesome things. Let's back up a sec. We have a smart people and I have a stupid question. Why is water clear? Is that easy to explain? Yeah, it's actually, you know, that's one of those questions that is, it's always, those real fundamental questions are the best ones because they really get at the root of things. Like, I've got my two daughters, you know, they're asking like, why is the sky blue?

You know, those things are like really tough questions that take 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 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 science.

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 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, like it was electrically made. I had no idea. And how was this discovered? Like, where does this come from? So it actually came, you know, it was discovered quite some time ago. It's a rather old, old chemistry, and it started even back in the late 1700s.

It was discovered by an individual, and I'm just going to butcher his name, but I'll try it anyway. A French gentleman in Paris, it was severed by an individual named Claude-Louis Berthollais and last name was B-E-R-T-H-O-L-L-E-T. Berthollais. He had isolated the compound and initially actually repositioned it to work in textile bleaching. It immediately went to its oxidative properties, its bleaching properties were immediately

recognized as something that could be used in treating textiles. And this was all the way back in the late 1700s, 1785. 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 galette. Anyway, he was a respected French scientist who left us with a legacy of much better laundry practices.

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, Berthollais. Anyway, by the late 1800s, scientists, including a German guy named Robert Koch, 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 is the director of disinfection and government

relations in the chlorine chemistry council. I bet he doesn't even know. He's a disinfectiologist. But he has said that the filtration and disinfection of drinking water has been responsible for a large part of the 50% 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 1854 London cholera outbreak and exactly where all of those cholera ghosties came from and what they do to your bow day. 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 that ends up is it was used by the Apollo, the Apollo missions to disinfect the spaceship cabin after the astronauts return

from space. And I believe it was also used as part of its water system inside the spacecraft to ensure that the astronauts had not contaminated water on board. Oh my gosh. It's been to space. From the sewer to space. It's been a good journey. It's like started from the bottom now, are you?

Yeah. You know, all the way from like from some lab and so ends in Paris all the way to space. So Clorox started in Oakland, 1913 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 form, 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 70s and the 80s, 1970s, 1980s that it started becoming available as a ready to use cleaning product. And you know, it's been used on laundry. It's used widely as one of the most versatile and powerful disinfectants. It's a great cleaner and it shows up in a lot of really surprising places. I think one of the biggest misconceptions around bleach 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. I mean, like Davey, 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 of disease and 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 timey days, you just go to the creek with Mama Paul and swan dive into a cold soup of algae and alive turtles, but around 1900s, people wanted fancier things with fewer sunken logs in them. Now the Colgate Hoyt Pool, built in the name of very wealthy donor of Brown University in 1903, had browned some. So funky.

And in 1911, they got the idea to try chlorinating it because that had been so effective at stopping disease outbreaks in municipal water. Now bacteria counts went from 700 parts per million to zero parts per million in 15 minutes after chlorinating it. They were like, boy, howdy hot damn. That's a lot less alive, gross stuff in there. And in case you're planning on swimming the summer, yes, there is a bunch of human pee in pools, but one thing you can do about it is not pee in pools.

Anyone, anyone do not pee in pools. If you can drive a car, I know, I know. You can train yourself not to urinate into a communal 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 one, kiddos. 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 reduced it to practice bringing home with respect to the early question of how is it made is you'll see a really popular these days are the salt swimming pools. Have you seen those before? Yeah, I have. That's exactly how bleach is made. How those salt swimming pools work is they literally add a bunch of sodium chloride,

table salt to the swimming pool, and then they have a device that is plumbed into it that basically zaps it, electrolyzes the water right there. Electrolyzes the chloride in there to make sodium have a chloride on the spot. It's convenient because in a normal pool, a person would have to go and adjust the levels and add to the pool. Is that no pool boy? 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 mini sea, so they're like, ah, different bacteria can't grow in this much salt. So 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 in Cell Magazine, the active ingredient in bleach causes proteins

in bacteria and viruses to unfold in the same way that a fever would fight an 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 radiation. That's being explored, but for folks with weak immune systems, it may not be powerful enough to zap all the baddies 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 bleach. At least nobody's observed it ever in the history of it, whereas you hear of certain bacteria becoming resistant to certain bacteria out there. There's a lot of those hospital acquired diseases can't stand no chance against bleach and it's used there to treat outbreaks of something called MRSA, this little bacteria that's quite resilient against particular types of antibiotics and bleach is just wonderful at eliminating that.

Insane with Ebola? Yeah, it does the same thing there as well too. Ebola is a virus and bleach will go in there and rip the guy apart and it's quite efficacious for that. In fact, Clorox bleach was the only commercially available product that has undergone that testing is approved for heaven 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 great appearance, but there can be a lot of bacteria left behind. These bacteria are things you can't see under normal conditions. Sanitizer and a disinfectant and a sterilizer, those are kind of key words 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 Environmental 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 insofar 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. In 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 and detergent and water. A sanitizing product kills 99.9% of the germs identified on the label. A disinfecting product kills nearly 100% of germs identified on its label. This can take a few minutes of contact with the surface. But what is happening with that 0.01%? What's going on there? Why does it usually say 99.9? Is that just a legal thing that you have to put at the point?

Yeah, so 99, those terms come through, that's the level of which the product is able to kill the bacteria for which it was tested against. Those levels are set against what is believed to be efficacious from a public health standard. If you sanitize, you remove 99.9% of microorganisms, you disinfect as 99.999. At some point, then some of those things become less and less meaningful from a consumer standpoint. Just in case you're reading a label that hard. 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 Goths do at summer camp. Okay, don't touch me. Anyway, how does it lift color like that? Yeah, so the brightening and cleaning, so there's 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 a lot of coffee and I've got this little coffee mug that has a bunch of coffee stains in it.

If you just take a little bit of bleach in there and it'll just takes care of that coffee stain just like magic. It's ridiculously awesome how well it removes that stain and rinse it with water and you're good to go. How bleach works there is the molecules in stains have kind of like a connectivity, a molecular kind of connectivity among it that are unique to the color that you see. What bleach does is it goes in there and breaks that connectivity. It's almost like snipping the electrical wire on for a light bulb.

The molecules break apart and 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 goes and gets rinsed away with the water that you have. PS, I had a Latin teacher in high school, the amazing Anne B.C.O. 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, Anne B.C.O., rest in peace. I hope you're sipping coffee with Jupiter and I'll be honest, I not only typed Zeus first before I remembered 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, rinse thoroughly and then raise a shimmering toast to Anne B.C.O., a great Latin teacher.

She was really good. I saved Latin. What did you ever do? You got to try it. It's just like, you know, you want to rinse it after you're done, but it's just the 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 whites. These 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 gawked at various white t-shirt samples under different lighting conditions. It was like the Wonka factory, but for laundry. They absorb like the visible light kind of a little bit on the yellow side and they spit back a blue light. And that gives the gives the appearance of it just looking much more on the bright end

of things. It's kind of like similar to how like, if you look at an incandescent light bulb, and they 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 or is the incandescent light looks a little bit yellow. The the laundry detergents, they have these ingredients in there that kind of shifted over into that fluorescent light looking thing 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 laundry detergent to make sure that the detergent is doing its 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 and 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. 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?

Yeah, you know, it's it's a very safe product to use, you know, like, just wish 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 of it being harmful, but use when used as directed. It's very safe. It's been used for, you know, over 100 years. It starts from salt with some electricity. And then through its use, it goes back to salt. It's processed through the municipal water system and otherwise.

So it gets a bad rap on that on that little that doesn't 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 asses for like five to 10 minutes, depending on your counter. I didn't know that. I always just wiped it right away. You just leave it there.

Let it do its thing. And then you rinse it off. Anyway, when it goes down the drain, the sodium hypochlorite breaks down like 95 to 98%. They said into salt and water and then that remaining three to 5% 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, no. And 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. Bleach smell is our consumerism. A lot of them love it because it's a good indication of coming into a clean bathroom. 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 here. We're in the rest part. That's a really good side. I'm just knowing how well it works at disinfecting.

That smell, it is the smell of the bleach kind of fragmenting up the things that comes in contact. That is a little bit of what you're smelling. And that's a nice cue that 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 chemistry. Well, actually, you know, 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 released by certain as part of your immune defense. It's in mammals. It's in part of, it's in seaweed. It's also in certain fungus as well too. It will emit a very small amount of hypochlorite, hypochlorous, and as part of its immune response. So 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 some very, very, very small quantities, fighting off as part of the immune system. This checks out. I read about it in that study published in Cell. 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 at Donation One Two, Evidence Action, that's EvidenceAction.org, and they run the Dispensers for Safe Water Program. And according to their site, globally about 842,000 people die each year because of unsafe drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene. Clorox is partnered with EvidenceAction 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 EvidenceAction for their Dispensers for Safe Water. And now a few words from other sponsors who are making that possible. Okay, your questions. Can I ask you 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 and viruses? So it's not all the same. We take great pride in the product. Those are patented technologies that we've incorporated in that product. And we're really proud of that. When I visited, I will say it was very cute how much people working there seemed to dig it. I mean, one of the things that springs me out of bed every day is, you know, it's challenging

working on bleach. It's an 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 we're really proud of that. Jason Goodwin asks, could we expect to see bacterial resistant bleach anytime soon like we're seeing with antibiotics? It kills the bacteria and viruses we have claims for on it. So if you're interested in a particular whether the product kills this bacteria or that bacteria, check the label, and you'll find out the specifics there.

As part of that review process with the EPA, we have to provide data to prove any sort of claim like that. So it's kind of out of bounds for us to say it does all, but it's highly efficacious. I'll just say that. So check the label and you'll find it there. In terms of antibiotic resistance, there's been no indication of it that ever occurring so far. That's cool.

Yeah. A lot of people, including Danny Kav, Hans Nehamer, Chelsea Carl, Sierra Venus, Bruce Gordon, Allison Hughes, Andrea Marsh, Kelly Brydenthal, and Abigail asked, why do I like the smell of bleach? It seems like a bad thing to like. Bleach is part of its long history. To me, that's like, I can speak personally about it. Bleach has a long history.

I associate it with getting that fresh batch of cleavage laundry all the way to my childhood. I think it's just, for me personally, it's been part of my life, 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 olfactory bulb in your noggin can store memories. So not only is it a straight shot to your hippocampus and amygdala, 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 that an ex used and cry in a target about it. Anyway, moving on. This next one was asked by Megan Da, Katie Cobb, and Ruth Anthony Vernato. A few people asked, including Azzam, what is the deal with color safe bleach? Azzam wants to know, is it black magic? Color safe bleach is actually a different technology. What? Color safe bleach is based on hydrogen peroxide.

You can apply the product directly on like a coffee stain or grass stains and amongst others, any particular stain that the person is after, they can just check the package of what it's good for and it delivers some additional different benefits that already has some fragrances in there that smell great, makes your laundry smell and great. It also has brightens your clothes as well, too, working with the detergent, but 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 this is where bleach is both a verb and a noun, so bleach in your hair, it'll lighten your hair, but they use different things for that. They usually use a hydrogen peroxide for that. One of the differences between hydrogen peroxide and the Clorox bleach, the laundry bleach as you know it, is they work differently on different things at different speeds. And so for your hair, maybe that product is tuned just right and is designed for that

and they use hydrogen peroxide for that. Same thing is true for teeth whitening products, they also use hydrogen peroxide as well. This next question also asked by Alexander N. Castro-Navarro, Sierra Venus, Megan McLean, and Carly Ketz. A few people, including Mike Monakowski and Anna Talley, asked about ammonia. Anna Talley says, because of the ammonia and cat pee, if I use bleach to clean near my cat's litter box, will I poison us at all or is that just flimflam? Yeah, so like, no.

You won't have any, there's no issues of some sort of exposure like that. That said, you know, with any cleaning product, you don't want to mix cleaning products with whatever. So, you know, mixing bleach with ammonia is a big no-no. In terms of the cats, there's nothing to worry about there, there's nothing to worry about at all. Small quantities. And Ron LeBlanc 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 on how bleach is used in emergency situations. What makes bleach important for this is that 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 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, 40 drops, or 2.5 milliliters of bleach. If the water is cloudy, murky, colored, or very cold, add double the amount of bleach. Let stand 30 minutes before drinking. But yes, it can. And in fact, it kind of goes back to that, you know, that the salt pools and how bleach is made.

You'll see there are some camping water purification kits out there that you bring along a little salt and with some batteries and you kind of electrolyze the brine to get you a little bleach to add to your water to make it potable and kind of do these situations. Oh my God. 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.

I'm guessing on at least one of those. Anyway, this next question was also asked by Natalie Krinkla, Diane Stersenik, Dean, and Isabel B. Hopper. Emily Fossey 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 a question was, Isabel B. Hopper, this says, what makes it the kryptonite for mold or is that flimflam?

Can bleach kill mold? Yeah. Yeah, I can kill mold. And in fact, it's actually routinely used by roofers to remove mold off of roof. So it not only helps with the removal, but it can kill it as well too. It can be, when used as directed, there's, we have a product called Outdoor Bleach, which is used to grade for doing that. Oh, okay.

Most definitely. It also kills the mold if we're going to kind of, said that it causes athlete's foot as well too. So, you know, if you've got people that are suffering from that, cleaning your bathtub and shower with it will help control that. Several patrons asked this including Caitlin Carter, Amanda J., Jesse Crass, and Ducks Float. Brian MacIntosh 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, is remarkably ineffective as a disinfectant sanitizer in comparison. Really? It, it, it is, it, I think it can work under certain scenarios, but not, it is not. Not even the same ballpark with respect to how well it works.

Not even close. Wow. Yeah, that's funny. Cause 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, but not, not any more 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, I love Nirvana. I've always been a fan of them. I was a, 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, Nevermind album and I always loved that. So it's like, yeah, that's cool. 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 and, 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, you know, science or science, product development, R&D, it's all a process. And it's hard stuff.

You know, if it 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, is so inspirational to me that we are continued 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 a tear point is also the hardest thing that 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 run into dead ends on experiments? Any, any advice to future chemists? I'd say, you know, embrace, embrace the curiosity. Science is, is not something that is like separate from the world as 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 does, why is this, why is that, that, you know, that, that's an insatiable thing. Um, 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

insatiable curiosity, the one way to express it. Do it, have fun. It's cool stuff. What's your favorite thing about your job? Um, my favorite thing about my job is working with the folks here at Clorox. We've got a small team of folks that, um, design products for millions of people. And it's a tight team. The stuff doesn't all come together, um, 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, um, literally change the lives of people out there. It's just one of the most inspirational, fun things to do. Love it. Oh, so you love your coworkers. Well, thank you for making the world a less a germy place. Every time I go into a hospital, I'm very glad that there's not C diff everywhere.

And, and Ebola and flu. Thank you so much. I literally look at bleach so differently now. That's cool. So ask some smart people some stupid questions. And if someone offers you a lab tour, you should take it. It's kind of like backstage access at a concert. Only usually no one's on drugs or taking selfies.

And thank you again, Clorox. Now, if you want to regale your friends and family with more facts about bleach, you can go to factsaboutbleach.com. It's just sitting there waiting for you. Now, this episode was 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.

I'm next week running here all about coral and oddly coral bleaching, which has nothing at all to do with bleach. So we're going to dive into that next Tuesday. Now, to follow along socially, we're at oligies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm Allie Ward with one L on both. Ask questions for oligists at patreon.com slash oligies. You can join for a dollar a month. You can find us on Facebook at oligies podcast.

Thank you, Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lipo for all the adminning you do there. Thank you, Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis of the comedy podcast. You are that for being merch queens. And if you just like wonderful ladies with mouths like sailors and quips like your best friends from college, go listen to your that they're amazing. Thank you to Jarrett 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 salty 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 and even more often if you sleep nude, because let's just say underpants mean cleaner sheets. So bonus fact in 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 plant's 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, Clorox 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 it. Speaking of water, please promise me don't pee in any pools this summer. I believe in you. OK, bye bye.

Psychology, seriology, psychology.