Electrolyzed water

The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current . . .

Used as a sanitizer for decades in Russia and Japan, it's slowly winning acceptance in the United States. A New York poultry processor uses it to kill salmonella on chicken carcasses. Minnesota grocery clerks spray sticky conveyors in the checkout lanes. Michigan jailers mop with electrolyzed water to keep potentially lethal cleaners out of the hands of inmates.

From the LA Times, via BoingBoing.net. But is the stuff as mild as all that? I don't think dilute lye is all that green:

It turns out that zapping salt water with low-voltage electricity creates a couple of powerful yet nontoxic cleaning agents. Sodium ions are converted into sodium hydroxide, an alkaline liquid that cleans and degreases like detergent, but without the scrubbing bubbles. Chloride ions become hypochlorous acid, a potent disinfectant known as acid water.

The Wikipedia entry is here; it is brief, but includes a link to this site which is very good on debunking a lot of the silly health claims for "ionized water". Further down the page, it takes on the "miracle cleaner" touted in the LA Times article:

As is explained above, these electrolysis devices produce what amounts to a dilute solution of sodium hypochlorite, similar to what can be obtained by diluting some ordinary laundry bleach such as Chlorox to the point at which the odor is no longer noticeable. If this is made slightly acidic (by addition of some vinegar or lemon juice, for example), then most of the hypochlorite ion is in the form of hypochlorous acid, which is a bactericide and is the active product produced when chlorine is used to disinfect drinking water.

The only real issues here are

• Is it worth purchasing an expensive electrolysis device to generate the same mixture than one can get perhaps several hundred gallons of by diluting a $1.49 bottle of home laundry bleach?


• Is this stuff any more effective for purposes such as disinfecting vegetables and foods than by simply washing with ordinary water, or with water acidified by vinegar or lemon juice?


• Do you really want your food to come into contact with an oxidizing agent that can react with some of the organic components to produce potentially carcinogenic by-products? (This is, of course, one argument against the use of chlorine to disinfect waters containing a lot of organic material)?

So while "EOW" may have some legitimacy as a disinfectant, I consider it somewhat deceptive when promoters tout it (as some do) as a special, "chemical-free" disinfectant".

There's also a similar rash of rightly skeptical comments following the BoingBoing thread noted above. An excerpt:

There is no free lunch in the universe. Not now. Not ever. Get used to it.

Just because something is 'forgotten wisdom' or 'used for years in Europe' doesn't make it better, safer, cheaper.

Renaming bleach to be hypochlorous acid or lye as sodium hydroxide is an obvious obfuscation process. It's like calling water dihydrogen monoxide.

Just because a big recognizable name uses a product, doesn't mean they are smart or that it works. . .

Does this product work. Probably. Is it better (in any sense) than other solutions? Probably not.

Caveat luor.

Posted by David on February 25, 2009 2:01 PM