Natural versus Store Bought Disinfectants

You need to disinfect your home; so, you want the best product for the job, right? That’s understandable. However, do you have to run to the store and pick up the first chemically-loaded disinfectant that you come across, or are there alternatives that are natural and safe for your home and family?

When most people think of a common disinfectant, they probably think of Clorox® or Lysol®. Are they the best choices to use? What about the natural products available online? Or can you make your own? How do they compare in availability, price, and effectiveness?

While Clorox® and Lysol® are available at almost any retailer that sells cleaning products; there are natural products that you can purchase online. You can also make your own disinfectant spray.

Clorox® Bleach has been available commercially since 1913. They have created numerous cleaning products in the ensuing years. Their products range from plain Clorox® Bleach to aid in whitening clothes to cloths to help clean and disinfect hard surfaces around your home and a disinfecting floor and surface cleaner.

While Clorox® is well known for disinfecting, the products are not entirely safe if not used exactly as indicated. Two hazardous ingredients in many of the Clorox® are didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride and n-alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. The packaging says to avoid skin contact and that you should use protective eye wear and gloves while using it.

The Lysol® products have been in production a year longer than Clorox® Bleach. However they’re not any less hazardous. Lysol® also lists dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride 0.08% and dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride 0.02% in their ingredients.

So, if you want to disinfect your home, but don’t want to subject your family to the chemicals in these well-known products, what options do you have? Watkins, a familiar name since 1868, found that pine oil is a natural disinfectant. This naturally-occurring disinfectant may just be what you’re looking for.

Pine oil (a phenolic disinfectant) is an essential oil used in cleaning products such as Pine Sol and similar products. You can use Pine Sol (which is a Clorox® product), but you can also purchase pine oil from various sources online as well as many local health food stores. By doing this, you are able to control the ingredients in your cleaner and disinfectant.

Other eco-friendly essential oils you can use to disinfect are tea tree oil and thyme. These essential oils are interchangeable when used in homemade all-purpose cleaners or disinfectants.

To make this homemade recipe, combine two tablespoons of borax (easily found in the laundry aisle of any grocery store) and one-fourth cup of lemon juice and two cups of hot water in a spray bottle. Cover the bottle and shake until the borax is dissolved. Add twenty drops of either tea tree oil or thyme essential oil. Shake again and then use as you would any commercial product.

Another homemade recipe, especially good for disinfecting toilets is a combination of vinegar and essential oils. Mix two cups of white distilled vinegar with three drops of tea tree, thyme, eucalyptus, or pine essential oils. Spray in the toilet then clean as usual. When making homemade cleaning products, please make sure to label the bottles.

While it may be easier to find commercially made cleaners and disinfectants, homemade cleaners and disinfectants can be made for pennies on the dollar. You can pronounce all of the ingredients that you add to them, and you can rest assured that what you use won’t be hazardous to your family.

Eco-Friendly Spring Cleaning

Most of us assume that if products are sold in stores, they are safe; and that our government has laws to protect us against harmful products. But most of the chemicals in ordinary products that we use or are exposed to every day have not been tested for safety. Worse yet, for years the chemical industry has known the toxic effects of many chemicals used in products today, but never revealed their studies to the public or to the government. Our government does not require a list of ingredients on products that are not for ingestion. Do you know what toxins are in the products you use everyday?

Kitchen
Many kitchen cleaners, particularly oven cleaners, are laden with harsh chemicals that can irritate your eyes and skin, not to mention Mother Nature. Natural cleaning products leave the kitchen clean and your health in check.

The Benefits:
* Natural alternatives exist for nearly every kitchen cleaning task, eliminating the need for chemical-heavy cleaners.
* Limit exposure to harsh chemicals. The average home today contains over sixty-two chemicals – that’s more than a circa-1900 chemistry lab.
* You know what you’re getting, and you can even pronounce the ingredients. * More than 72,000 synthetic chemicals have been invented since World War II. Americans spend 90% of their time indoors. Using natural cleaning products helps to create a safer environment in your kitchen, your home or your workplace.
* If every U.S. household replaced one 32 oz. bottle of kitchen cleaner containing chlorine bleach with one that was hydrogen peroxide-based, we’d save enough chlorine to disinfect 16,500 pools for a summer.

Windows & Floors
We’ve never been able to figure out why so many glass cleaners are blue, but in our quest for shiny floors and streak-free windows,the clear winners are actually green

The Benefits:
* Soothe your frazzled nerves. Neon-colored glass cleaner may contain nerve-damaging butylcellosolve and ammonia. Buy non-toxicor use a homemade recipe (below)
* Old newspapers offer a streak- and lint-free alternative to paper towels for cleaning windows.
* Avoid disinfecting floor cleaners without getting down & dirty. A 2002 study found disinfectants in 66% of U.S. streams sampled.
* Wipe out. North Americans threw away 83,000 tons of wet and dry disposable wipes – some of which also contain chemicals – in 2004.

Bathroom
Scrubbing bubbles: the new boogie man? Far too many bathroom cleansers contaminate waterways, and wreak havoc on your au natural living intentions. Natural products provide great results without the need for skull-and-crossbones warning labels.

The Benefits:
* Avoid memorizing the number to Poison Control. In 2000, traditional cleaning products were responsible for nearly 10% of all toxic exposures. Over half involved children under six. (Well, memorize the # anyway…)
* Down the drain, minus the guilt. Chemical products poured down drains contain ingredients harmful to plants and wildlife.
* Steer clear of toxins. When mixed, chlorine and ammonia produce toxic fumes creating a chemical cocktail that can irritate eyes and cause lung damage.
* Clean-o-cize. Many natural ingredients, such as baking soda, vinegar, and vegetable-based soap provide great results with a little extra muscle.

Laundry (I have a lot to say about this topic!)
Despite what those detergent ads want you to believe, most of us don’t need to wash our clothes after every wearing. Don’t wait for your jeans to stand up by themselves, but do wash ‘em only when they’re actually dirty.

~ Put away “clean-enough” clothes right after wearing to keep them from rumpling and mixing with the truly un-wearable stuff.
~ Hang already-worn items outside or near a window to air out, or in the bathroom while you shower to steam out light wrinkles.
~ Get your whites brighter without the health risks of chlorine. Just try an oxygen-based formula.
~ Find a natural laundry soap that you like: ecologically friendly detergents keep the groundwater clean, don’t contain any petroleum byproducts and can smell a lot better than the other kind .

The Benefits:
* Washing and drying less often keeps your duds looking newer, longer.
* Chemical “surfactants” in laundry detergents can harm fish and human health long after they go down the drain, so less is best.
* With less laundry to do, you’ll have more time and money for the activities you actually enjoy!
* Easier on clothes. Alternative bleaches aren’t as harsh as chlorine and you can use ‘em on colors.
* Safer for your family. In the US, 25,000+ kids “are exposed to” (EPA code for “have accidents involving”) chlorine bleach each year.
* Safer for the earth. Chlorine from bleach can produce carcinogenic compounds if it gets past water treatment.
* Smell better. Clothes bleached with chlorine smell like…well, chlorine.
* If 10,000 homes replace one 64-oz bottle of chlorine bleach with non-chlorine bleach, we’ll keep 50 bathtubs full of chlorine compounds outta production.
* Washing one less load of laundry each month can save nearly 360 gallons of water per year.
* Cuts the chemicals in your drinking water – studies found that 69% of streams in the US contain disinfectants and detergent metabolites.
* Contains no phosphates or petroleum distillates that can harm the environment.
* Softer for sensitive skin, containing non-polluting plant ingredients without animal products or testing.

Home Made Cleaners:
For a substance to be registered by the EPA as a disinfectant it must go through extensive and expensive tests. EPA recommends simple soap to use as a disinfectant. There are many essential oils, such as lavender, clove, and tea tree oil (an excellent natural fungicide), that are very antiseptic, as is grapefruit seed extract, even though they aren’t registered as such. Use one teaspoon of essential oil to 2 cups of water in a spray bottle (make sure to avoid eyes).

(sources IdealBite.com and Care2.com Healthy Home Channel)