apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Does anyone know of a good substitute along these lines that I could use instead of bleach to kill the crazy mildew in our shower? Vinegar and water just don't cut it.

Actually chlorine bleach is the best disinfectant you can buy for your laundry.

OR for your shower.

In the minute amounts that are used for disinfecting a load of laundry or cleaning a shower there's nothing to get anyone's knickers in knots over.

All this "chemicals are bad, umkay" thing is really getting blown out of proportion.

There's nothing anti-green about using Raid to kill ants, or chlorine bleach to disinfect.

I mean look, to disinfect a shower you're talking 1/8 cup of bleach in a quart of water.

Chlorine is only toxic in high concentrations.

Every time you drink tap water, you're ingesting chlorine. Shocked?

boomer, you remind me of my late father-in-law who used to eat handfuls of DDT to illustrate to us how perfectly safe it was. ::rolls eyes::

caitlin - I'd recommend sodium percarbonate. It's completely safe, non-toxic, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and is a strong fungicide.

It's also a bargain at $4.00 for a 2lb jar:
http://www.chemistrystore.com/sodium_percarbonate.htm

from wikipedia:
"Sodium percarbonate is an ingredient in a number of home and laundry cleaning products. It is the primary ingredient in OxiClean products and a component of Cillit Bang crystals. It offers many of the same functional benefits as liquid hydrogen peroxide. It dissolves into water rapidly to release oxygen and provides powerful cleaning, bleaching, stain removal and deodorizing capabilities. Besides, sodium carbonate decomposed from sodium percarbonate is able to increase the pH value in washing water to knock down the activities of calcium ion and magnesium ion, thus softening the water. Another benefit offered by sodium carbonate by raising the pH value is to reduce the negative charges of dirt and fibre resulting in the strengthening repellency between dirt and fibre, which leads to the improvement of bleaching and stain removing effects.

Compared with chlorine bleaching chemicals that leave contaminating residues in the environment, sodium percarbonate is an environmentally friendly chemical which decomposes into oxygen, water and natural soda ash when subjected to moisture.[1]

Sodium percarbonate is increasingly being the substitute for sodium perborate in detergent formulations due to its lower dissolving temperature in water.

Detergent or bleach compositions formulated with sodium percarbonate have a strong stain removal capability. It is very effective as a laundry presoak for heavily stained articles. It is color safe. It brightens colors and prevents fabric from becoming yellowed or darkened. Sodium percarbonate is effective as a disinfectant on both bacteria and viruses."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_percarbonate

Actually Boomer, chlorine in our drinking water along with fluoride isn't the best thing in the world for you. In fact, YES I'm appalled by the amount of chemicals we're surrounded by in our daily life. Not all chemicals are bad. But chlorine bleach is one of the worst things you can introduce to yourself.

Caitlin, I'm not an expert on mildew - thankfully my apt remains relatively on the dry side - but I've had luck with cleaning agents that are enzymatic in nature to deal with stains and odors. I had doggy throw up on my rug, and a natural cleanser with plant enzymes did the trick for me.

summer - if you can point me to some peer-reviewed studies I'd like to read them.

boomer,
Are these the sort of articles you'd like? Got them from a casual search on Google Scholar.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0091-6765(198212)46%3C47%3ASTOCDA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3660423&dopt=Citation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3377557&dopt=Citation

Those are just on drinking water. There are of course many more, which you could check out. Furthermore, there are a ton of studies linking adverse estrogenic (and cancer-producing) effects of chlorine dioxide in general, which gets spewed into our environment from multiple industries (like paper mills).

Sea,

That's fine and I appreciate the links - those are first rate. You convinced me. My dogs and I are switching (from Britta filter water) to bottled.

Thanks.