Bleach it's not just for pools. Interesting story.

[bobodaclown]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/ ... man-nature

All of those problems can be solved by adding just a tiny bit of chlorine, which keeps water free of germs for days. So aid workers started trying to get people to use chlorine. In Kenya today, you can buy little bottles of chlorine, made just for purifying water, for pennies.

 

[Jenischmeni]

Surprisingly, I already knew this. The same is recommended if you're trying to store water for a disaster. It's recommended to add a very small amount of bleach to the container you're storing water. (IIRC, it was like a teaspoon or tablespoon per garbage can.)

We use bleach to clean out our camper's water tanks after winter storage. (To flush out the RV antifreeze.) We've been helping out a new camper owner who bought a used camper that had been winterized. They keep panicking because they can smell bleach and I have to keep referring them over to various sites to show them "it's okay, you've flushed that tank five times. It's OKAY!"

Years ago, I read an interesting article about chlorine bleach killing the AIDS virus. They were trying to figure out how they could use this for the human body. I'm sure the levels were too high to use in that manner, but it was an interesting article.

I've always used bleach as my "go to" cleaning chemical in the house. I associate that chlorine/bleach smell as "clean and disinfected".

 

[cramar]

Sounds similar to DDT, this chemical became the poster boy for environmental activism and no ends of claims to it's negative side effects.
But one positive effect was virtually eliminating things like malaria from 3rd world countries.

Same with CFC's and our wonderful and mysterious ozone layer back in the 80's.
I used to work in forestry in grizzly infested country, our wonderful federal gov't mandated that CFC's be removed from bear spray. So now a pepper spray that used to launch a liguid jet of spray 20-30 feet only discharges a uselss cloud in the immediate area - including the area one is standing in. Gee, thanks for making me less safe in my job.

Science is becoming too politicized.