5 ms·
A fun trick is to google for the safety data sheet (SDS) of household chemical products. They'll tell you rough proportions of some of the ingredients. (Not all
by meatmanek 6y ago
A fun trick is to google for the safety data sheet (SDS) of household chemical products. They'll tell you rough proportions of some of the ingredients. (Not all, just the ones they're required to -- the more dangerous ones.)
For example, the SDS for Cascade Pacs[1] tells us that there's ~40% sodium carbonate (washing soda, a fairly strong base), a few percent of sodium percarbonate (washing soda + hydrogen peroxide), and a few percent of an ethoxylated alcohol, a surfactant.
There are also some notes further down about Subtilisin, which apparently is a protease, an enzyme that breaks down protein.
(I'm not a chemist, so my interpretations of what these chemicals are/do is based on search results for the chemical names / CAS numbers.)
I bet if you looked up the SDS for Dawn dish soap, it'd be mostly surfactants, so sodium bicarbonate + Dawn dish soap is a reasonable approximation of sodium carbonate + surfactants.
OxyClean is also sodium carbonate, sodium percarbonate, and ethoxylated alcohols, so it'd also probably do just fine -- whether it's safe to use in a dishwasher depends mostly on the toxicity of those ethoxylated alcohols.
1. https://www.pg.com/productsafety/sds/SDS_2018/SDS_Feb_2018/Cascade_Complete_Action_Pacs_Dishwasher_Detergent_-_Fresh.pdf https://www.pg.com/productsafety/sds/SDS_2018/SDS_Feb_2018/C...
2. https://www.ahprofessional.com/_downloads/sds/SDS%20OxiClean%20Versatile%20Stain%20Remover.pdf https://www.ahprofessional.com/_downloads/sds/SDS%20OxiClean...
- kortex 6y agoI am a (former) chemist, and you are spot on. They are pretty comparable. One is Polyethylene glycol (PEG) isotridecyl ether, one is PEG decyl ether (and friends, various carbon chain lengths. These neutral detergents act as surfactants without much foam. Dawn has anionic detergents which foams up.
- TwoBit 6y agoAre you suggesting the OxyClean dishwasher detergent recipes may be good?
- kortex 6y agoIt's far from the worst. The big unknowns are the PEG chain lengths (how many -CH2CH2O- links in the chain, more means more solubility, to a point) and how clean the product is. It's a dirt simple synthesis and there aren't a ton of real nasties (toxic at low concentration) that can be generated, so there's not a huge amount of risk in my opinion. Like, eating fried food is probably a higher risk in the long term.
- briHass 6y agoI love doing this. Often, they'll give a range e.g. 5-15% to protect their 'trade secret', but it gives you a decent-enough idea of what's in there. Always fun to lookup some kind of expensive cleaning product (e.g. tile grout cleaner) and find out it's made from a few percent NaOH (sodium hydroxide) and water. You're paying $30+ for a quart of water and $0.10 worth of lye.
- a_imho 6y agoI'm baffled by this. Many times it is listed under the ingredients, no need to look up anything. NaOCl, HCl, NaOH make up the majority of cleaners. My wife prefers to buy the expensive stuff even though she knows I consider them a blatant rip off. I lost count of the arguments that started with a grocery shopping.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoMarketing and FOMO works
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- a_imho 6y agoI always wondered, how safe are dish soaps? Can they replaced with something more natural, like vinegar or lemon juice? We have those around for simple household cleaning, only bringing out sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide for heavy duty cleaning.
- kortex 6y agoDepends on the "dish soap". I've seen everything from sodium fatty acetates (old fashioned lye-and-grease soap, Castille soap) to PEGylated alkanes and sodium lauryl sulfate. Vinegar and lemon juice work well on Lewis bases (amines, some proteins) and some inorganic salts, but they aren't detergents. NaOCl and NaOH are right proper cleaning agents and will saponify fats.
- EricE 6y ago"natural" is over used - arsenic is natural. If dish soap wasn't safe we would have known about it well before now.