Toxic dump

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I don’t know how he did it because the bottle was so BIG, but my son dumped ultra bleach all over the laundry room floor. I happen to have a nice sized laundry room (yay) but it happened to be a day with dirty laundry all over the floor (boo.) The dark clothes took it the worst. The bleach ate clean through (lame pun intended to cheer me up) a heavy denim skirt- making it streaking sickly yellow in color and weakening the fabric to shreds. A nice blue terry robe is now spotted and I expect the spots to weaken to holes in a few washings, too. I threw a bunch of stuff away, thanking G-d Above that no precious child got hurt. I was in the same area of the house but I was not in the laundry room itself when this all went down. Guardian angels must abound in my house, but this little incident really shook me up as a mom.

I “wiki”-ed bleach and this is what I came up with, in addition to the feeling of: “Whoh – I paid money to bring this into the house??!!” I made a mental note not to buy bleach anymore.

Since bleaches are strong oxidizing agents, they can be quite hazardous, especially when reacted with other common household chemicals. Chlorine is a respiratory irritant that attacks mucous membranes and burnsppm can be detected as an odour, and 1000 ppm is likely to be fatal after a few deep breaths. Exposure to chlorine has been limited to 0.5 ppm (8-hour time-weighted average – 40 hour week) by OSHA^[2] to the skin.

Sodium hypochlorite and ammonia react to form a number of products, depending on the temperature, concentration, and how they are mixed. ^[3]. The main reaction is chlorination of ammonia, first giving chloramine (NH₂Cl), then NHCl₂ and finally nitrogen trichloride (NCl₃). These materials are very irritating to eyes and lungs and are toxic above certain concentrations.

The warning labels should be printed bigger, I guess. I imagine there are some good uses for bleach. Like killing anthrax spores, according to the EPA. Which it was used for in October 2001.

But I also searched for bleach alternatives and I’d just as soon use them, especially with the good of my children in mind.