[HN Gopher] Do we know enough about the safety of quat disinfect...
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Do we know enough about the safety of quat disinfectants? (2020)
Author : luu
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-03-08 04:17 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cen.acs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cen.acs.org)
| keikobadthebad wrote:
| From Aug 2020
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I was thinking yesterday how 70% ethanol is like the perfect
| disinfectant and we don't use it. It's what we used when working
| in sterile conditions when I was a scientist. You certainly
| wouldn't use quat disinfectants to spray your gloves before
| working in a hood. You'd know it would probably get in your
| experiment and mess it up. Ethanol is perfect, it evaporates and
| leaves nothing. I assume we don't use ethanol because people
| would drink it, or it costs too much. Both aren't great reasons
| when safety is what you are throwing out.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It evaporates too fast to fully penetrate all surfaces and
| isn't as effective against a bunch of biological vectors like
| spores that require prolonged contact to really kill. Quat
| disinfectants leave a residue behind that continues killing
| stuff and they're _generally_ less irritating to skin and the
| respiratory system (though that 's for people using the room
| after it was disinfected, not necessarily for the person doing
| the disinfecting).
| arijun wrote:
| What about suspending the ethanol like in alcohol gel? Could
| we find a gelling agent that is less irritating than the quat
| disinfectant residue?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| It's also very flammable, which is a bit of a problem.
| briHass wrote:
| Well, we do use it in most hand-sanitizer solutions. I assume
| alcohol isn't a popular (home) cleaner because it is volatile
| and requires high concentrations (70%+) to be effective.
|
| From a cost perspective, the Clorox Company no doubt prefers to
| add a few grams of a quat to multiple gallons of scented water,
| which means they're basically selling a spray bottle of a
| nearly-free solution that is 99.5% water for $5. Shipping 70%
| alcohol also brings with it a Flammability-3 (high) hazard
| label.
| copperx wrote:
| It should be illegal to sell such unconcentrated solutions,
| except perhaps in food (e.g., even milk is easily
| reconstituted). It would be much more efficient to sell the
| concentrated chemical and let consumers dilute them. Imagine
| the fuel savings, shelf space savings of not having to ship
| 99.9% water around the world.
|
| I remember some medicines were dispensed like that in the
| 80s, and the patient had to reconstitute them before using.
| briHass wrote:
| You can usually get concentrated cleaning solutions, but
| they tend to be used more by industry/businesses. These
| quats are sold concentrated as dish sanitizer (mixed in a
| sink full of water) for restaurants, for example.
|
| I think consumers would just rather have ready-to-use spray
| bottles in most cases. There's probably a surprising number
| of people that couldn't do the basic math of diluting based
| on a formula.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| One of the issues that I discovered during COVID is that
| alcohol isn't a scheduled pesticide because it predates the
| regulation.
|
| So applications that are regulated cannot use alcohol unless
| they can use a listed product, which is rare and expensive
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Personally I'm a fan of putting a mixture of salt, water, and
| vinegar through hydrolysis to get sodium hydroxide and hydrogen
| chloride.
|
| Super cheap and effective cleaner, easy to make at home.
|
| Only downside is it isn't shelf stable, so you have to make a
| new batch every ~2 weeks.
|
| Force of nature has a pretty neat kit that automates the
| chemistry.
| amluto wrote:
| You do _what_?
|
| I'm afraid you have the reaction products wrong. This is the
| chloralkali process, and you get hydroxide, hydrogen, and
| chlorine _gas_. The latter is extremely nasty. If you do it
| right (which I can almost guarantee you are not doing), it
| will react with water to form hypochlorite (that's your
| fairly safe disinfectant) and chloride (harmless).
|
| But this reaction goes the other way in acidic conditions:
| hypochlorite will turn into chlorine gas.
|
| DO NOT run the chloralkali process indoors. DO NOT run it
| near your face. DO NOT think you're clever and run it in a
| closed container -- not only is the chlorine toxic, but it
| can explode when mixed with hydrogen. DO NOT mix bleach-
| containing products with acids. Just buy plain bleach (the
| "sanitizing" kind), dilute it carefully with water, and use
| it in an appropriate concentration.
|
| (You can safely do the chloralkali process in a cell with a
| high flow of salty swimming pool water, with safety measures
| to turn it off if the flow stops.)
| Filligree wrote:
| Speaking of sanitising bleach, does it have a best-before
| date?
|
| I have a bottle of it sitting around, but it's quite old
| and I'm not sure if the date on it is when it was made or
| when it should be discarded.
| amluto wrote:
| Probably discard it. Hypochlorite is unstable, and it
| loses potency. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, dilute
| it 1:20000 or so and measure it with a pool test kit.
| Also, one of the degradation products is chlorite, which
| is somewhat nasty.
|
| You can find actual research from the swimming pool
| chemical industry. At higher concentrations (bleach sold
| for swimming pools is more concentrated), it's less
| stable and apparently should ideally be used within 30
| days in hot weather. The household stuff ought (good
| luck!) to be more stable, and you're probably not storing
| it in a hot pool equipment room.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Even if concentrated (5%+), it will expire after about 1
| year.
|
| If it's diluted for use, it will expire in a few months.
| neilv wrote:
| The brand might document. For example:
| https://www.clorox.com/learn/how-to-tell-when-a-bleach-
| bottl...
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| My company's product includes a piece of acrylic (PMMA).
| Ethanol would jellify it, quats are basically our only approved
| disinfectant.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Lots of stuff is resistent to 70% ethanol - norovirus for
| example.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I really want to see stuff like this tested in massive cohorts
| (ie. 1 billion+ participants) via variable dosing.
|
| Here's how it would work:
|
| * Companies that make products would randomly increase by 5% or
| decrease by 5% the dosage of each ingredient in a product headed
| to a specific town.
|
| * The government would publish A/B groupings for every town in
| the US and every chemical they track.
|
| * Average health data would be collected, and whenever a specific
| chemicals A/B group difference exceeds some threshold,
| investigation is done.
|
| The main downside is production costs of products goes up, since
| every product will now have a final step of adding all the A/B
| adjustment doses to the bottle before sealing. But I believe this
| is worth it for rooting out chemicals that have low level yet
| very widespread negative effects.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| Maybe we should just spray each town from the air and cut out
| the middleman? While we're at it we can infect a portion with
| polio just to see what happens.
| MiddleMan5 wrote:
| Sarcasm aside, I agree testing on populations raises a whole
| bunch of ethical and morality concerns.
|
| Also how would we control for environmental health effects,
| or even interactions between multiple product variances. This
| kind of testing would be wildly expensive, pose potential
| public health risks, and the data collected would be coarse
| and noisy at best
| londons_explore wrote:
| This would only be of substances already approved for
| general use, and wouldn't expose anyone to any substance
| they wouldn't otherwise be buying/using.
|
| The only difference is it very slightly adjusts the
| quantity - and does so in a way that is within existing
| allowed tolerances, so effectively this might already be
| happening, just we aren't collecting the results.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| Wait.... You weren't being sarcastic? This suddenly isn't
| funny any more.
| mrob wrote:
| Products are already allowed to contain slightly more or less
| than is stated on the packaging so long as the average is
| high enough:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_sign
|
| By tightening the required tolerances, londons_explore's
| proposal could be implemented without exposing anybody to
| different levels of product than are already permitted.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I was thinking 5% was probably within the range of ordinary
| variations for a lot of domestically used chemicals .. that
| might mean one could already do such a study.
|
| However, you have to get people to tell you how much
| product they use, which brands, how often, and not lie
| about it. That's basically impossible without antisocial
| levels of monitoring (which supermarkets probably already
| do, but which they don't want to tell their customers they
| do).
|
| It's like the early days of mass customer data tracking
| where they'd tell customers they were probably pregnant, or
| probably gay, or whatever. People didn't receive the
| information in a way that suggested they were happy about
| the data being gathered.
|
| It's probably too unethical to even use that data. Unless
| you're only trying to sell more crap, then it's A-OK! /s
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| We use this stuff to mop the floors where I work. Hmm
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Is it normal to know what is used to wipe the floor?
| sambapa wrote:
| Yes, if you're a cleaner
| jprival wrote:
| It's a pretty good bet that quaternary ammonium compounds are
| used to wipe many surfaces wherever you are. They are
| probably the most widely used non-chlorine disinfectants.
| boppo1 wrote:
| This guy has only ever worked comfy desk jobs.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Yes
| dist-epoch wrote:
| You use mistery unlabeled bottles for cleaning products?
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Of course we do, we have no evidence of harm.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| absence of evidence is very different from evidence of absence
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| From 2020. I wonder if there have been updates.
| RachelF wrote:
| Quats are widely used in eyedrops as a preservative.
|
| Some companies have started to remove them recently.
| xyst wrote:
| when I used to wear monthly contacts, "quats" were used in
| the disinfecting solution. I only know this because one of
| the "quats" was my daily used password.
|
| Eventually switched to daily contacts for a couple of years
| before going back to wearing glasses.
|
| Then eventually settling on LASIK :)
| colechristensen wrote:
| My eyes are pretty sensitive so i always used the solution
| that was hydrogen peroxide based and then had a little rock
| in the case which catalyzed the reaction to neutralize it
| over hours and you ended up with mostly just saline.
| amluto wrote:
| There are related compounds that people regularly expose
| themselves to in _much_ higher concentrations: behentrimonium
| chloride, cetrimonium chloride, and the same cations paired with
| other anions. They're used in hair products, apparently in
| concentrations above 5%.
|
| For those who, as the article describes, think they're maybe
| harmless unless inhaled, you can buy hair detangling sprays.
| Maybe you're supposed to only use them outdoors while hearing a
| very well-fitting mask?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I'm a little more concerned about
| occupational exposure, where people like hospital orderlies are
| exposed to it for hours every shift, 5-6 days a week, all year
| and don't have a choice in whether they use it or something
| else.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Why do so many people need so many disinfectants? I get by with
| chlorine bleach for the toilet once in a while. Just ordinary
| cleanliness and some detergent seems sufficient to me.
|
| I never use fabric softeners either.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Does it come as a shock to you that the people making your
| food, the people working in healthcare, all use disinfectants
| on a regular basis? From the article also: toothpaste,
| mouthwash, eye drops.
| jamie1np wrote:
| Quats are almost exclusively used by industries like food and
| health care.
| copperx wrote:
| And the household. I use quats for laundry, too.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Food safe standards. If you get inspected they will test the
| concentration, in PPM, of your cleaning product. You can either
| use a chlorine bleach or quaternary ammonium.
| bitfilped wrote:
| I've always used quats over bleach since they don't destroy
| your clothing.
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