Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
You want your home, your clothes and your car to be really clean. You don't want to put harmful chemicals down the drains, nor to breathe them indoors. And maybe you would like to save money at the same time, and to enjoy the creative satisfaction of making your own simple cleaning agents. Not only does Austrian author Manfred Neuhold tell you what works, he explains in plain English WHY it works. Which means you can clean better… Here are 160 easy, illustrated recipes to inspire you to make all your own basic cleaning products such as: • washing up liquids • rinse aids • fabric conditioners • toilet cleaners • dishwasher powders And the specialist stuff: • anti-flea carpet cleaner • wine stain remover • car air fresheners • anti-mist window and mirror cleaners • sweat-mark removers • car seat cleaners • rust removers • lingerie handwash liquid
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 199
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
ii
iii
CONTENTS
GLOSSARY
The word in bold below is the term we have used throughout the book for the following synonyms.
Caustic soda: sodium hydroxide, lye
Washing soda: sodium carbonate, soda crystals, soda powder
Bicarbonate of soda: baking soda, sodium bicarbonate
Cream of tartar: tartaric acid
Baking powder: cream of tartar mixed with bicarbonate of soda
Surfactant: a wetting agent, or tenside, one which reduces the surface tension. If coconut-derived, it is a coconut surfactant or tenside
OCCASIONAL MINOR ADJUSTMENTS TO SUIT YOURSELF
The environmentally-friendly products that you will buy to make the recipes in this book may vary slightly from shop to shop and manufacturer to manufacturer. With the exception of the soap-making on pages 202-203, don’t be afraid to add a little more, or sometimes less, water to your recipe to obtain the right consistency. It will not compromise the effectiveness of your finished product. You will quickly learn the exact proportions through experimentation.
viii
CHAPTER ONE
THE SHORT PHILOSOPHY OF CLEANING
Keeping your own environment clean – and how you do this – benefits the whole community
FEEL-GOOD CLEANING
HOW CLEAN DOES IT NEED TO BE? OPINIONS VARY…
It might be one of the unspoken consequences of the Fall of Man from Paradise: dirt. There is not a hint that Eve cleaned in Paradise. Adam, of course, didn’t either. But for whatever reason, dirt is a constant companion of mankind. There isn’t much good to say about dirt, except perhaps as the layer of dust on an old wine bottle. And no matter how many times you remove it, dirt keeps coming back.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why cleaning is often perceived as a negative activity. You clean because you have to. You rarely find pleasure in cleaning and when you do, you probably don’t like to admit it. It’s not considered particularly cool to be a passionate cleaning devil. Anyone who likes to clean and admits it is considered odd. 2
Cleaning is one of the last bastions of cultural identity. The way we clean is a clear reflection of cultural diversity. A manufacturer of wipes and scrubbers, who sells his products worldwide, will have looked into this carefully. The expectations of cleaning and wiping cloths vary from country to country. In the global village, everyone sweeps his own doorstep, but each in his own way, determined by tradition and culture.
In Central Europe and North America, the vacuum cleaner, cleaning bucket and mop are the main pillars of domestic cleanliness. But even here, there are differences: while Europeans mainly use a bucket, Americans rinse the mop directly in the sink. All, that is, except Americans with Hispanic roots: they clean like Europeans, with buckets but with lots and lots of water. What both have in common is the use of chemical cleaning agents, often in excessive quantities. What’s clean must smell clean. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why allergies are so widespread in these two cleaning cultures and are on the increase.
The market research carried out by our wipes manufacturer will have revealed further insights into cleaning behaviour. In southern European countries, a lot of water and chemicals are generally used for cleaning. Scandinavians, on the other hand, tend to clean dry and attach great importance to the environmental compatibility of their cleaning agents. Belgians and Dutch people click wide fabric cloth-heads onto poles and pull them over tiled floors and laminates – a method that is also favoured in Italy and Spain. The classic mop we are familiar with is almost unknown there.
People build their houses in different ways and with different flooring, according to the climate of the country. High humidity and stone floors require a different cleaning method to low humidity and wooden floors. Some countries with colder climates favour carpets.
The greatest influence on cleaning behaviour, however, is tradition – personified by the mother. The way mother cleans, so the children clean. And because about two-thirds of these cleaning children are female, this tradition is continuously passed on through the generations. With the increasing number of single households, the picture changes only slightly. 3
Cleaning is something that almost everyone does, only more or less regularly. It is important for well-being, because nobody likes to roll in the dirt. A clean apartment is an apartment in which you feel comfortable, where you literally feel at home.
But when it comes to standards of cleanliness, opinions differ widely. While some are satisfied with superficial cleanliness, maintained by regular vacuuming, floor wiping, toilet cleaning and wiping the shelves in the kitchen, others are constantly on the hunt for dust and streaks. The latter only feel comfortable in a hygienically clean environment. They not only use cloths and cleaning agents, but also disinfectant spray. Thus one could roughly separate the two types: the pragmatic cleaners and the passionate cleaners. Most of us will probably find ourselves somewhere between these two extremes.
However, cleaning can be more than the removal of constantly recurring dirt. Cleaning can help us look closely at our immediate living environment and sharpen our awareness of which things are important to us and which have merely accumulated over time. The important things are the ones treated with care and kept clean and in good condition. You like to clean these things because you like to use them. These are the items that are either regularly or constantly used and are therefore the focus of our attention. A thing that hasn’t been cleaned for two years is probably unnecessary, so the frequency of cleaning an object can be an important test when deciding what to keep and what to throw away
This act of cleaning – bringing order into one’s own environment – has another dimension. The Japanese, with their Zen Buddhist tradition of concentrating on the essential and consciously performing a particular activity, know ‘the way of cleaning’ as a spiritual exercise. This spiritual tradition, called ‘misogi’, sees the main purpose of meditation as cleaning within oneself. It can be seen as a form of psychotherapy by other means. One of the methods is to connect the ‘inner cleaning’ with the ‘outer cleaning’, ie. housework. The cleaning thus becomes a kind of active meditation. Concentrating on wiping various surfaces with a damp cloth frees up the mind from compulsive thoughts. The mind becomes an empty – and of course clean – vessel, ready to receive new thoughts in an orderly manner.
Important in this ‘misogi’ is cleaning with the bare hand and a damp cloth. If you 4wipe with sufficient pressure, the friction of the damp cloth creates water ions on a solid surface. This is important because life is largely based on water ions. Healthy air contains many water ions. So ‘misogi’ leads to a healthy environment. It goes without saying that only pure water without industrial detergents is used.
This approach to cleaning is widespread in Japan. Perhaps it also helps that Japanese apartments are very small, and the amount of dirt produced is concentrated in one small room. So you have to clean often to keep the little apartment clean.
This Japanese ‘way of cleaning’ is one way of looking at the job: as an exercise of mental relaxation. It could start to turn an ordinary, routine or even dreaded task into something that can find the cleaner themself equally improved, through carrying the job out with respect.
Of course cleaning is essential to our well-being and health. And this brings us to the main topic of this book: cleaning agents, detergents that make cleaning easier but do not harm our health. Neither our own health nor that of the environment. Everyone has the right to create grime. But everyone also has a responsibility to remove their grime in a way that does not harm anyone else.
CLEANING CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH
Industrially-produced cleaning products often contain substances that you don’t want in your living environment.
CLEANING DOES NOT MEAN DISINFECTING
In Western Europe alone, currently around 70,000 products in the field of detergents, cleaning agents and disinfectants are approved for household use.
The average per capita consumption of cleaning products in Germany, for example, is around eleven kilograms per year. Most of it ends up in the sewage, but the rest is distributed around our homes, our clothes and our bodies. That could lead to the 5conclusion that we are particularly clean. However, because industrially-produced cleaning agents usually contain a whole range of substances that not only guarantee hygienic cleanliness but at the same time have side effects on our health, the question arises: is our dazzlingly clean living environment, which smells of synthetic aromas, really a healthy environment for us? Chemists from environmental and consumer protection organisations regularly examine the cleaning chemicals available on the market. Many products contain combinations of substances for which the term ‘poison cocktail’ is perhaps not entirely inappropriate.
Especially in those products that smell strongly, toxins lurk. Very few products contain the scent of natural additives such as lemon oil. The vast majority only mimic natural freshness with the help of synthetically assembled molecules, which primarily act on our noses and, even if it is a good product, make only a minor contribution to the cleaning performance of the product. This is one of the differences between natural aromas and synthetic fragrances: the latter only smell strongly at best and at worst cause irritation to the skin, eyes and respiratory tract. But natural aromatics from, for example, essential lemon oil, have immense fat-dissolving power.
It is very difficult for consumers in a supermarket to read from the list of ingredients the proportion of substances that are harmful to health or even toxic. Even if ‘bio’ is emblazoned on the packaging in giant letters, this is no guarantee of a ‘healthy’ cleaning agent. In contrast to its use in foodstuffs, the term ‘organic’ in the case of cleaning agents, is not tied to any particular criteria.
What should a cleaning agent be able to do? It should loosen dirt and make it easy to remove in a solution. What a cleaning agent does not need to do – and in the interests of a healthy living environment should not be able to do – is to disinfect your home. The disinfection of a room is necessary in public toilets and clinics, but certainly not in a normal house with residents without infectious diseases. The fear of bacteria lurking everywhere is not based on scientific knowledge, but on the influence of the advertising of the cleaning agent industry.
Bacteria are actually everywhere. In our body we carry a considerable amount of them around with us too. Very few of them are harmful to our health, and a 6functioning immune system can cope with them easily. Many types of bacteria actually promote our health; some are even vital for us. So anyone who treats all bacteria the same and eliminates them chemically, does no good for himself or his health. On the contrary, it appears that children who grow up in a germ-free household suffer much more from a weakened immune system and a whole range of allergies than those whose immune system is allowed to deal with bacteria and germs in a natural way. It is said for good reason that children who grow up with pets are the healthiest children. The immune system of a child who often comes into contact with a dog’s tongue is challenged and strengthened. It will be able to cope with other, greater challenges in the future. There is increasing scientific evidence that children cannot develop their immune system sufficiently in an environment that is too clean.
The negative effects of a disinfected household are of course not limited to the development of a child’s immune system. Many experts believe that household cleaners with antibacterial active ingredients, germicidal additives and integrated disinfectants should not be kept in the cleaning cupboard, but in the poison cabinet. They not only attack the beneficial bacteria on our skin, but also cause harmful bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics.
As far as disinfectants in household cleaners and their effect on germs are concerned, a recently published study by the University of Massachusetts paints a clear picture: usually only some of the germs are killed by the disinfectant cleaner. The surviving germs are then able to adapt, to develop resistance. This means that these germs will in future become immune to this disinfectant cleaning agent, so its use will be completely pointless.
TERPENES AND ETHYLENE GLYCOL
If a room smells of cleaning agents, it is usually assumed that the room is clean. If the room is not sufficiently ventilated, it can still smell for days after cleaning.
That clean, hygienic smell from chemical cleaning products actually means something completely different: that the room is saturated with chemicals! Even 7bio-cleaners have their risks. Some detergents that ‘naturally’ smell like oranges or lemons get this scent from the terpenes they contain. Those cleaning agents that leave a breath of fresh forest air in the room fall into this category. Their scent comes from pine resins. Resins and terpenes are generally not considered toxic. However, they have a high allergenic potential and they react chemically with ozone. Ozone is constantly present in the air, in increased concentrations on hot summer days and in rooms where copiers, printers or electric air fresheners are used. The biochemical reaction of terpenes and resins in contact with ozone leads to a number of toxic compounds such as formaldehyde, which is believed to cause cancer. In addition, toxic fine dust is also produced, the concentration of which depends on the respective ozone value.
Today, it is accepted that conventional cleaning agents contain unhealthy or even dangerous substances. The most common are various glycol ethers. These are alcoholic compounds with high fat-dissolving and disinfection powers. They smell pleasantly fresh or are odourless. However, the most widely-used ethylene glycol has the unwelcome property that our body absorbs it through the skin and through respiration. The consequences range from irritation of the eyes, mucous membranes and respiratory tract to dizziness and persistent unnatural fatigue. If ethylene glycol is used for a long period of time, permanent damage to blood cells, bone marrow and the reproductive system may occur. Ethylene glycol can be a particularly dangerous ingredient in conventional cleaning agents because it is odourless, so not noticed.
INVISIBLE AND ODOURLESS: NANOPARTICLES
The use of nanoparticles in detergents is still relatively new and their health effects have only been researched to a limited extent.
Nanoparticles are particles with a diameter of less than a millionth of a millimetre, and they work primarily because of their tiny size.
If a material is shredded into ever smaller particles, its surface area increases. A powder of nanoparticles therefore has a huge surface. It offers its surroundings far 8more surface contact and this makes it more effective. This is also due to the fact that the molecules on the surface of a particle have different physical properties to those inside the particle. The surface molecules are not completely surrounded by neighbouring molecules of the same type, but they ‘rub shoulders with’ the molecules of the substance surrounding them. It is these surface molecules that determine the properties of a nanoparticle. Because of the unimaginably tiny size of a nanoparticle, there are considerably more surface molecules than there are those inside the particle. Nanoparticles of zinc oxide, for example, absorb UV radiation, but larger particles of the same substance do not.
Cleaning agents mainly contain nanoparticles of silver. They have the ability to kill bacteria and germs and are therefore used in hygiene cleaning products for kitchen, bathroom and toilet. At first glance, the advantages of nanoparticles made of silver seem immense: no harmful disinfectants, no chemical contamination of the room air and the fact that it is considered unlikely bacteria and germs can form any resistance to the effects of nanosilver.
Nanoparticles are just as convincing in floor cleaning agents, especially for laminate and parquet floors. As soon as the cleaning agent hits the floor, nanoparticles settle into even the tiniest joints and cracks and do not let a drop of water come into contact with the sensitive wood. Swelling parquet floors are thus a thing of the past. Or, to take another example: a glass cleaner for streak-free shiny windows and mirrors, which puts a protective film of nanoparticles over the glass pane and thus reduces future dirt.
The chemical industry is continually developing new products for household cleaning that are pepped up with nanoparticles. You usually won’t find them in the list of ingredients. But for some manufacturers, the great effectiveness of nanoparticles is used as a convincing sales argument.
Scientists warn against particles that are a thousand times smaller than fine dust. There is still a lot of research to be done before anyone can say with certainty whether or not the tiny particles penetrate the human body through inhalation, through the skin or through residues on crockery and cutlery and what damage they can do there. 9
First results from recent experiments should, however, sound alarm bells. For example, it is already considered certain that our body’s defence system does not recognise penetrating nanoparticles because it is aimed at protecting against larger foreign bodies. Nanoparticles of this kind do not occur in nature, so no natural defence strategy has been developed by the body.
Inhaled nanoparticles can get into the smallest alveoli. Normally foreign bodies are enveloped and rendered harmless by the special defence cells called macrophages. Nanoparticles, on the other hand, are too small to be recognised by macrophages.
The lung is not the only organ endangered by nanoparticles because, via the lungs, nanoparticles could pass with ease into the bloodstream. Only a wall a thousandth of a millimetre thick separates the vesicles from the blood vessels. Nanoparticles have no problem penetrating this wall. The amount of nanoparticles that enter the blood depends on the material, size and surface properties of the particles. Nanoparticles can also penetrate the blood through the intestinal wall. Healthy skin, on the other hand, is considered impermeable to nanoparticles.
Science is only gradually discovering what nanoparticles can do once we have them in our blood stream. A team led by Professor Anna von Mikecz at the Institute for Environmental Medicine Research at the University of Düsseldorf was able to prove that certain types of nanoparticles in sufficiently high concentrations interfere with the functions of the cell nucleus (press release of the Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medicine Research January 2014). Other possible effects are circulatory damage and even brain damage. The experts are unanimous in their view that nanoparticles in household cleaners harbour a risk potential whose full extent cannot yet be assessed.
Other additives in conventional cleaning agents that have recently made a name for themselves are microplastics. Microscopically small plastic beads are used to increase friction during scrubbing – in toothpastes as well as in scouring cream and toilet cleaners. After it has fulfilled its task, this microplastic is mostly discharged into the wastewater. However, most water treatment plants are not able to eliminate microplastics from the wastewater so it can enter rivers unhindered. Fish and sea creatures with plastic balls in their organs are one of the consequences. 10
Since this problem was first recognised, measures have been taken to tackle it and, given the damage already caused by microplastics, its use is already being limited. The future will show whether this restriction is fully enforced.
HOMEMADE HOUSEHOLD CLEANERS: A BIT OF BACKGROUND SCIENCE
Those who do not want to damage their health and pollute the environment have an alternative to industrially-produced cleaning agents. Make your own.
Industrially-produced household cleaners have been around for only about a century. In 1884 the world’s first packaged, branded household soap was created at the Sunlight soap factory in northern England. Meanwhile, the first synthetic detergent was introduced in 1930, dishwashing detergents were launched in 1948, and the first synthetic detergent to do entirely without soap was only introduced in 1952. So the history of industrial detergent chemistry is relatively young.
Before the chemical industry started to produce all kinds of household cleaning agents, these products were made either in small factories and were mostly soap-based, or they were made in the household itself. These cleaning agents had one obvious advantage: they did not harm the health of the residents or the environment.
In order to follow this tradition of ‘healthy cleaning’, we first need a little bit of chemistry, because the dissolving of dirt is a chemical process.
The simplest and most environmentally-friendly cleaning agent is pure water. Water has the ability to dissolve and absorb substances. But only water-soluble substances. Many substances are only fat-soluble, and some are only alcohol-soluble. So if the dirt consists entirely or partially of greasy components, pure water has no effect. Pure water is pH-neutral, ie. neither acidic nor alkaline. The rule of thumb is: 11‘Like dissolves like’, which means that fatty components can only be removed with fat-soluble agents, such as soaps produced from fats.
THE pH
The pH value is critical when it comes to cleaning. It indicates the proportion of oxygen ions in a solution. The further the pH value deviates from the neutral value pH 7, the more reactive a solution is.
12Acids contain positively charged hydrogen particles which attract where they find negatively charged particles, to balance their charge. Alkalis have an excess of negatively-charged particles which are attracted to positively charged particles in their environment.
The following examples are intended to illustrate the scale of pH values:
Our stomachs are very acidic with a pH of 1, lemon juice has a pH of 2, vinegar has a pH of 3, wine has an average pH of 4, coffee has a pH of 5 and mineral water has a pH of 6. The surface of our skin usually has a pH of 5.5. Only distilled water reaches a neutral pH of 7. The alkalis begin above pH 7. From slightly alkaline solutions such as our blood with an average pH of 7.4, seawater with a pH of 8, soap with a pH of about 10 to strongly alkaline caustic soda with a pH of 14.
Because the pH scale is logarithmic, mineral water with a pH of 6 is ten times more acidic than distilled water with a neutral pH of 7, for example. Coffee with a pH of 5 is a hundred times more acidic than distilled water.
In order to use the right detergent, you must first be aware of the type of dirt you want to remove. Greasy dirt requires a high pH value, such as soap, soap solutions or washing soda. Cleaning agents based on soap or soda are therefore the ideal fat solvents. They are suitable for all areas of the household that are mainly soiled with grease: cookers, ovens, sinks and dishes, kitchen floors and the edges of bathtubs.
A low pH value such as vinegar has no effect on greasy dirt. Therefore cleaning agents based on acetic acid (vinegar essence) are particularly suitable for removing calciferous staining, such as the tarred stains in cups and jugs, limescale deposits in washbasins and taps, but also as water softeners for dishwashing and washing laundry. Detergents based on vinegar or acetic acid are effective against mould growth and are a mild disinfectant that eliminates bacteria, germs and spores.
