We can all appreciate the value of common bleach when we need to sterilize something and want it done right. I can remember my mother as she seemed to use bleach for just about everything. She would clean the floors with it. When the coffee cups were stained she would pour a bit of bleach in each one and let it set for a while after which she would wash the cups as she usually did. When doing the wash she would never forget to add a cup of bleach to the whites to brighten them up.
Generally the proper method in those days was to mix a small amount of bleach with a bucket of hot water. It must have worked all right as it was used by just about every housewife in America. Even today in certain areas of the world bleach can often be the difference in good drinking sources and disease ridden water.
All aspects of bleach are not happy results however. If you suffer from allergies or have asthma, bleach can be one of your most deadly foes. Once the bleach releases its deadly gas it can cause your lungs to quickly stop functioning.
It is not uncommon for your usual household bleach to combine with other cleaning supplies and produce some very dangerous combinations. This procedure is a very grave mistake as you should never mix various types of cleaning products together as the interaction can and will quickly form noxious fumes.
Mixed with ammonia, bleach produces Chlorine gas which as you will recall is a very toxic substance that was used as a weapon in World War I. Unfortunately human urine also contains some amounts of ammonia. So when you go to the bathroom in a toilet full of bleach you are endangering your life. The urea from the urine will quickly degrade under microbial actions and start to form ammonia. The resulting odor is not only nasty smelling but highly toxic. It is the production of hydrazine from mixing these two cleaners together that produces this danger.
2NH3(aq) + OCl-(aq) ---> N2H4(aq) + Cl-(aq) + H20(l)
Chemically Chlorine gas is Cl2 and the danger presented is a derivative known as chloramines gas which is NH 2Cl. If you accumulate enough of the ions and they become mixed with other substances you could create a form of poisonous gas. This gas as well as other hydrochlorides can in the proper equilibrium become a bit unstable. As an example when NCl 3 is exposed to sunlight it will explode.
Chlorine gas being very toxic to breath in causes seriously damage to the human nasal passages and if taken into your lungs in vast doses it will cause damage to brain cells. The combination of chemicals is extremely flammable as well. All this concern is from the bleach breaking down into chlorate. Chlorate has for many years been considered a powerful oxidizer and therefore could easily be employed to create various explosive devices.
To give you an idea just how nasty the chloramines really are, there was once a man who lived in an apartment building. He got annoyed with people using his outside stairway and so he proceeded to mix ammonia and bleach together and he then poured it onto the stairway in an attempt to discourage people from using it. Since this combination made chloramines the people walking on the stairway would quickly develop burning eyes and possible nausea. In order to place the chemical into the proper perspective I would like to state that Chloramines is considered a war gas. That's right it is the same type of gas from World War I which caused severe chemical burns, temporary blindness, conjunctivitis, bleeding and blistering from within the persons respiratory system, and occasionally in some cases cancer.
If you still think the combination is not dangerous consider this. A young college student put Purple Lightning Tile Cleaner and Clorox together in a bucket. Within moments the student was so sick that she passed out and had to have poison control respond. The proper response for the student was that the emergency personnel had to immediately remove her from the room, remove and launder her clothing while decontaminating her completely. It took at least 7 hours before she regained control of her senses.
As an added note here, I would like you to known that when bleach is mixed with any sort of organic matter it produces a chloroform type product. Inhaling these chloroform vapors will depress the nervous system causing fatigue, dizziness, and eventually unconsciousness. Any prolonged exposure will harm several organs of your body such as your liver, the kidneys, and could burn your skin.
Not only is it dangerous when mixed with ammonia but when combined with certain soaps it could possibly form another war chemical known as Mustard gas.
You may be asking yourself, "but what can I do, I have to clean." No problem in that respect. Noting how dangerous it is to use bleach for cleaning perhaps an alternative would be to clean your toilet by using borax. It actually does a much better cleaning job without the danger of any sort of toxic fumes. In addition for any kind of light cleaning you may wish to try the formula below.
Ingredients
12 cups of water
1/4 cup of lemon juice
1 cup of hydrogen peroxide
Take all the ingredients and mix them together. You can add two cups of this compound to your wash load or put some in a spray bottle to use as a local household cleaner. There it is folks. No noxious fumes, no nasty burns and above all it's safe.
Copyright @2010 Joseph Parish
By Joseph Parish
For more information relating to survival visit us at http://www.survival-training.info.
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