Trying to green clean that shower? Consumer Reports says...

GreenerChoices.org, the eco-minded version of Consumer Reports. They test as report on supposedly "green" alternatives.

Cleaning up the shower? GreenerChoices says:  "Most 'green' shower cleaners haven’t wowed us. We found one decent choice by Green Works, called Green Works Natural Bathroom Cleaner, but it wasn’t great at removing mildew. Do-it-yourself cleaning recipes might be a better way to go."

Their recipe for a tub and tile cleaner.

Mix 1 2/3 cup baking soda, 1/2 cup liquid soap, and 1/2 cup water. Then, as the last step, add 2 tablespoons vinegar (if you add the vinegar too early it will react with the baking soda). Immediately apply, wipe, and scrub.

This is a variation on the common recipe for a tub and tile cleaner for your bathroom.

Other Recipes

EarthEasy recommends:

For simple cleaning, rub in baking soda with a damp sponge and rinse with fresh water. For tougher jobs, wipe surfaces with vinegar first and follow with baking soda as a scouring powder. (Vinegar can break down tile grout, so use sparingly.)

Green Joyment breaks it into two parts: 

Combine 2 cups of baking soda with enough water to make a smooth thick paste. Apply the paste to the tub or tile and let sit for 20-30 minutes. Scrub off with a soft rag in a circular motion. After the paste is removed, spray the tub or tile with a 50/50-vinegar and water rinse. The rinse will remove any residue and disinfect the area as well.

Someone on Associated Content has a little different take on it:

1 1/2 cups of white vinegar (only use white vinegar it works much better than apple cider or other flavored vinegars); 1 1/2 cups water; 3/4 cup of hydrogen peroxide (comes in a brown bottle you may already have some in your first aid kit). If you would like you can also add 40 to 50 drops of essential oil, for this recipe and oil that is naturally antiseptic such as lavender, orange, grapefruit or lemon will give the recipe added disinfecting power.

What are these recipes really telling us?
In your shower/tub you will basically have three kinds of cleaning to do: hard water spots, soap scum, and mold/mildew. What does this really amount to? Let's have a closer look at each problem.

Hard Water Spots: This is also known as limescale. The minerals in your water remain behind after the water evaporates off the tile and glass door. Lime is an alkaline substance (above 7 on the pH scale), so the best way to attack it is with something acidic. But hard water is also hard so you will need something abrasive to scrub with.

• Vinegar is a mildly acidic (below 7 on the pH scale), so it makes an excellent choice to attack the limescale. Lemon juice would also work, but I think white vinegar is a little more economical. However, lemon juice is actually more acidic, so if you have a tough problem you might want to go with the lemon or even lime juice.  Another way to getting more work out of your cleaner is to let it sit longer before wiping it up. So try leaving the vinegar/lemon juice to sit there for a five or ten minutes before wiping it up. 
• Baking Soda is a mild abrasive, so it should work well with the vinegar to give it some scrubbing power. However, baking soda is an alkaline and will neutralize the vinegar. You can see the reaction taking place as it bubbles up. Something like Bon Ami or Borax is a little more abrasive (and alkaline) and could be used instead of the baking soda. (But be careful with Bon Ami on glass shower doors.) All you need to do is make sure you don't let the vinegar and baking soda sit around mixed together for too long. 
• If I were using this vinegar/baking soda combination I would wipe or spray the vinegar around the shower/tub and let it sit for a few minutes. Then put some baking soda on a sponge (a little liquid soap can also help) and start to scrub. But be careful: vinegar is acidic and if you use it too much it might eventually eat away at the tile grout and caulking.

Soap Scum: Basically, soap scum, like limescale, is above 7 on the pH scale, so the same thing we said above about limescale applies here. Vinegar and baking soda make a good combination, along with some elbow grease.

Mold/Mildew: Tackling the mildew problem is a little more difficult. Vinegar, because it's an acid, can kill mildew but it's not always completely effective. Many sites will recommend using essential oils and tea tree oil because of their disinfectant qualities. But I would stay away from them for reasons mentioned here. It seems to me that a better solution is to use hydrogen peroxide along with the vinegar. However, like the vinegar and baking soda, I would not combine them beforehand.

My Recipe
So my final recommendation would be along these lines:

1. Put some white vinegar in a spray bottle and spray your shower with it.
2. Wait five minutes.
3. Put some hydrogen peroxide in a separate spray bottle and spray your shower with that too.
4. Wait another five minutes.
5. Mix together in a jar: one part baking soda and two parts borax.
6. Put a few drops of liquid soap on a sponge and sprinkle the baking soda/borax generously on the sponge then start to scrub your shower in a circular motion. Use some water if you need more moisture.
7. Rinse your shower out with water and wipe out any residue with a clean rag/sponge.

Certificate from FEMA

I just took the online course (IS-55 Household Hazardous Materials - A Guide for Citizens). The course is free and only takes a couple hours to complete. It covers a lot of different areas from household cleaning supplies to outdoor fuel tanks. There are a lot of hazardous materials around our homes. They teach you about acids, bases, and pH; pesticides; gases such as carbon monoxide, and how to read labels on hazardous chemicals.

They also give practical advice for making your home a safer place. One eye opener is a video demonstration of how pool chlorine mixed with brake fluid can easily burst into flames. It would be easy to buy some pool chemicals at the store, put them in the trunk of your car where you might have petroleum products stored, and drive off. One bump or a tap on the brakes and your car could burst into flames. They are certainly right when they state: "You may be surprised how dangerous mixing chemicals can be. After only a few seconds, the mixture begins to produce heavy smoke and then burst into flames."

Get trained, get safe. We can all use a little refresher course now and then.

The Two Most Important Environmental Lessons I Ever Learned

Discover has a site that I really like called Green Planet. They have sections and articles about almost every kind of eco-friendly topic. The site covers topics such as fashion and beauty, food and health, home and garden, as well as technology and travel. Almost everything we do impacts the environment in which we live. I learned this lesson years ago in two separate incidents.

Lesson One: Lowering My Consumption
In the mid-80s I took a trip to Tanzania. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. While I was there I stayed with some friends of a friend. I had a great time and got a chance to see all kinds of exotic wild animals such as giraffe's, zebras, a hippo, elephants, and others. But what really impacted me the most is that the people I was staying with had to be super careful about their consumption habits. The littlest thing impacted me the most. To this day it has changed the way I live my daily life. One night after dinner they were washing the dishes and I saw them washing a plastic sandwich bag. At first I didn't get it. "Why are you washing that?" I asked naively. But their answer was so obvious that I should have known. That's what really shook me up: the answer should have been obvious, but it wasn't. "We can't just run down to 7-Eleven and buy more. It's a four hour drive to the nearest store." And besides that, they didn't have a garbage service. They had to either bury, compost, burn, or drive all their refuse away.

But why should I be any different? Shouldn't I make the best use of the products I buy? Why can't I use a plastic sandwich bag until it's unusable. And it isn't just sandwich bags, it's everything. Because we have weekly garbage pickup we can't be bothered to wash and re-use plastic bags. But the reality is our garbage doesn't go that far away. We are throwing away far more than we need to. So I've learned to wash those flimsy sandwich bags and I've learned to compost. You can too, just read a book like Complete Book of Composte and get a little compost keeper for your kitchen (Norpro Ceramic Compost Keeper, White). You'll be on your way to a healthier garden and a healthier planet.

Lesson Two: Reducing My Impact
In the mid-90s I went on a week long backpacking trip in Yosemite. If you walk around out in the woods you might be like me and think you're taking care of the earth if you pack out what you pack in. As the slogan goes "leave only footprints, take only pictures." But on that trip our guide had what might seem like a strange rule: don't leave any footprints. We all had to walk in a line and stay on the trail. As it turns out, millions of people hike around in Yosemite and even though one person's footsteps won't hurt the forest, when you do that a million times you leave a wake of devastation in your trail. The grass can only bounce back so many times before it withers and dies. If all the hikers follow the same trail then all we end up with is a six inch wide dead strip instead of killing the whole place.

One human living out her life on this planet can't do much damage. The ecosystem in which we live can absorb anything we throw at it. The earth is huge and I'm a small part of it. Even if I drove a Hummer around all day and had a fire in my fireplace running constantly it wouldn't matter. But when six billion people do that same thing it's like all those hikers in Yosemite. We devour the earth like a swarm of locusts. One little locust can't eat very much, but when they swarm it becomes life threatening. One swarm in 2004 was 230km long and contained an estimated 69 billion locusts. We're no different, our collective impact on the ecosystem can have disastrous effects.

Our carbon footsteps are just like our physical footsteps in our national parks such as Yosemite. We all need to make a conscious effort to limit the damage we are causing.

President's Cancer Panel

I regularly read Nicholas D. Kristof's New York Times essays. They are informative and interesting. Recently he had an essay on the President's Cancer Panel. This is a great article, mostly because he has given the panel's report a much wider audience than it otherwise would have had. I've noticed mentions to the report on LinkedIn as well as by Seventh Generation.

So what's the report about? You can Read the Report yourself. Although the report is 240 pages, there is a nice executive summary that's worth taking a look at. Basically, as Kristof point out, the new thing about this report is that they essentially support many of the same things the organic food movement has been advocating. They also suggest testing for radon (you can buy a detector here: Safety Siren Pro Series HS71512 3 Radon Gas Detector, or just get a test kit here: Pro-Lab RA100 Household Radon Gas Test Kit), and microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic.

The report states: “Only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the United States have been tested for safety,” the report says. It adds: “Many known or suspected carcinogens are completely unregulated.” This exactly what many organic and green advocates have been complaining about for years.

The report also says that "Children Are at Special Risk for Cancer Due to Environmental Contaminants and Should be Protected." This is one reason that many women first become interested in organic products and green cleaning products when they get pregnant. We know this is true, but it's more than just lead paint that we need to be worried about.

The biggest problem, however, is that these 80,000 chemicals mix in all kinds of different ways that it's impossible to study thoroughly. Even products that are safe in isolation may not be when combined with other chemicals.

However, now the American Cancer Society has come out in criticism of the report. The New York Times covers this side of the story too. The American Cancer Society is right to point out that there is not enough hard evidence for linking a lot of cancers to environmental causes.

However, my mother died of cancer and the doctors never told us what caused the cancer. Sure, there's no conclusive evidence that it was caused by this or that combination of chemicals, but that seems to me to be the point that the President's Cancer Panel is trying to make. We don't know, but we should be trying to find out.

Even though we are not just going to stop using these 80,000 chemicals, we can start to do something now. We know that there are dangerous chemicals in our household cleaners. We also know that there are safer alternatives: Method, Seventh Generation, etc. Besides these commercial products, with a little searching we can find ways to making our own green cleaning products out of common household items such as baking soda, vinegar, salt, and hydrogen peroxide.

Mixing it up with Bleach

When I was in the Marine Corps we had to clean, clean, clean all the time. It's what got me into the cleaning business. But when I was in boot camp one of my fellow recruits was taken to the hospital because he mixed bleach with ammonia. Boy did we get a big lecture after that.

When you mix bleach with ammonia you get a very dangerous gas. That's easy, don't mix bleach with ammonia and you should be alright. Right? Well, it's not always that easy. Bleach (sodium hypochlorite or calcium hypochlorite) is found as an ingredient in some household cleaners other than the bleach you might have in the laundry room. And it's the same way with Ammonia. Ammonia is found in glass cleaners, some interior and exterior paints, and -- drum roll please -- urine. So when you're cleaning our the kitty's litter box or the diaper pail you might want to stay away from bleach. And if you are cleaning your shower you might be tempted to use window cleaner (ammonia?) for the shower door and tile cleaner (bleach?) for the tiles. This can get you into trouble. If you are cleaning your shower, first do the tiles, rinse the shower out, then clean the door.

Or better yet, use a non-chlorine bleach (I usually look for one that uses hydrogen peroxide) or other green alternatives for your tile cleaner and your glass cleaner. Hydrogen peroxide can help you keep mold away. For scrubbing the tile and grout you can just use some baking soda and water. If you need more power to get the grout clean you can spray some vinegar before scrubbing with the baking soda (but be careful because vinegar is acidic and can eat away at the caulking around your tub/shower and it might eat away at your grout too). You can buy baking soda in bulk for cleaning (but don't bake with the bulk stuff as it's not food grade).

A little Bon Ami might also do a nice job on the tile, but you might not want to use it on the shower door as it may scratch glass. There's some controversy about the scratching. Bon Ami has feldspar which has a Moh's hardness of 6 which is the same as glass. But I think it's a good cleaner and I like to use it when I need a little more scrubbing power than baking soda can give.

Biodegradable (NOT)

I bought a "green" mop that also happens to be colored green. It is advertised as green because it's made out of recycled PET bottles. These are the kinds of bottles that you might get when you buy water or a soda. Although it is good that these bottles are recycled into a usable product (and the mops work nicely), the problem with PET mops (as opposed to pet rocks) is that they are still not biodegradable. So you recycle your water bottle so that it doesn't end up floating in a giant floating garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean.



But in the end, is a floating mop any better than a floating water bottle?

This is one reason that more and more people are advocating reduction rather than recycling.  Getting a water filter seems to be a better choice than buying bottled water.

You can get a water filter that attaches to your sink.












Or one that you fill and put in the fridge.

Removing a Frosting Stain

My daughter got a nice white dress for her birthday, tried it on, and then had some birthday cake and immediately spilled blue frosting on the dress. Since frosting is a fat I figured that the best way to remove the stain was to use an alkaline agent. So I mixed a tablespoon of Oxo Brite in some cold water. Oxo Brite is mostly made of sodium percorbonate and sodium carbonate.
When you mix sodium percarbonate into water it breaks down into hydrogen peroxide and sodium carbonate. And since Oxo Brite already has sodium carbonate in it, the pH is about 11 which makes it pretty alkaline. Hydrogen peroxide by itself is slightly acidic, so while it's a good cleaner it wouldn't work as well on the blue frosting. The high alkalinity together with the hydrogen peroxide combines to make a nice bleaching agent.

So I soaked the stained part of the dress in my mix and five minutes later you couldn't even tell that anything happened. I rinsed the dress and then later washed it. So a birthday disaster was averted. Of course, since this has a bleaching effect you would need to check for color fastness before you tried this with anything but a white garment. It will also work for stains on carpet or furniture, but again, check for color fastness.

See also:
Organic Chemistry Portal
Ecos.com

Web Site Hosting

In an earlier post I talked about my research into hosting services. Well, I finally decided on a service. I decided to use InMotion Hosting. I went with the basic business plan. So far the service has been fine, but after one day it's hard to really make a good evaluation. I spent a couple hours putting the site together.

The next thing I would like to do is see if I can get this blog to load into my main web site, but I'll leave that for another day. For now you can get to my new site through the link in the upper right hand corner of this blog or just click on this link: http://www.demesser.com/.

Tea Tree Oil: An Evaluation

When you look around the web for green cleaning or eco-friendly cleaning products, especially the home-made kinds, you will sometimes come across Tea Tree Oil. This is not to be confused with the tea you drink. Tea Tree Oil comes from a different plant altogether. Tea Tree Oil comes from a tree in Australia known as melaleuca alternifolia.

Warning: Tea Tree Oil, which can be purchased in health food stores or online, is toxic and should never be swallowed. Even though you can buy it as a mouthwash (e.g. DESERT ESSENCE, Tea Tree Oil Mouthwash Spearmint - 8 fl oz) you should not even swallow the mouthwash version. And it probably should not be put in the ears because it may cause hearing loss. [See these warnings by the Mayo Clinic]

The great thing about tea tree oil is that it has antimicrobial properties. People claim that it can be used to treat a variety of medical conditions including acne (DDF Benzoyl Peroxide Gel 5% with Tea Tree Oil 2 oz (59 ml)), dandruff (Neutral ph Tea Tree Oil Shampoo 16 fl oz (474 ml) Liquid), warts, athletes foot (FungaSoap Pedifix Liquid with Tea Tree oil - 6 oz.), and many more. But you have to be careful, even when you apply it topically to your skin, because some people have adverse reactions to it, especially if you use the undiluted oil.

The Mayo Clinic's conclusion is that for every human trial that's been conducted "there is a lack of definitive available evidence for the use of tea tree oil in any of these conditions, and further study is warranted."

However, what I'm interested in is should it be used as a disinfectant or to kill mold and mildew? Should I add it to my cleaning solutions? I'm not really sure that there is sufficient scientific evidence to warrant it's use in cleaning products either. Here's my reasoning:

1. First, there is reasonable evidence that tea tree oil does have antimicrobial properties. This fact is not in dispute.

2. However, at the low levels that it is used in cleaning solutions, it can create microbial resistance.

3. In the long run, creating resistent strains of dangerous microbes is more detrimental to humans.

Therefore, for now I'm not going to use tea tree oil in my household cleaning products.

The study where I got this information can be found here: http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/59/1/125