Are there toxic ingredients in home cleaning products?

Absolutely, there are.

A lot of these cleaning products are very good because they have a very high pH, so they’re quite alkaline. This allows for efficient cleaning, it’s able to kill harmful bacteria. It’s able to work with water to efficiently scrub out grime, dirt, and so on. 

However, these chemicals with such high pH – they can also cause quite a lot of harm, especially if they’re ingested.  Even on skin, you can have skin absorption of alkaline substances such as bleach, and that could cause irritation, redness, rash – and you must wash immediately. 

Usually, they do not even recommend using any soap because that could even interact with the potential, maybe if you have bleach in your hand, it’s just water – you want to remove it from the site as soon as possible. 

So, this is why you have a lot of those hazard labels on cleaning products telling you whether it’s corrosive, or whether it is an alkaline and so on, and telling you especially – do not drink.

Tiago Toxicologist
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