Hand Sanitizers

Hand sanitizers have become, for want of a better word, epidemic.

OK - there is a better word - pervasive.

Basically there are two kinds - alcohol based and not alcohol based.

Alcohol kills most of the stuff we are interested in killing instantly.

Alcohol will also give you very scaly lizard like skin. Which can also be painful.

If you can use alcohol use it - if you are having trouble with skin reactions to the alcohol go find some of the water based variants. I haven't done the research (yet) - but I doubt they are as effective. Basically the 'instant kill' feature of alcohol means that you don't have to do prolonged hand washing with it. If using a water based sanitizer - read the instructions for how long it has to be on the hands to be effective.

The same cautions apply to sanitizing in commercial cleaning applications as to hand washing (prior post) tho - the minute you touch a contaminated surface, your hands are no longer pathogen free. No point in sanitizing if the next thing you are going to do is wipe your nose or touch a doorknob.

Bob

How to pick the right Ice Melters

We got our first ice storm since I started this blog, so it's time for this one.

First, if you want the whole story I recommend the Peters Chemical website - peterschemical.com. I pulled a great write up down from there.

They list 10 different active ingredients for their various purpose ice melters, as do several of the other manufacturers' web sites. hence they make money no matter what you chose and have no axe to grind re the different formulations.

Morton salt, on the other hand recommends sodium chloride (for obvious reasons).

Most commonly used are sodium chloride (table salt, rock salt, water softener salt, kosher sea salt, etc), calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.

Regular salt has two advantages:

1) It's cheap. (Well - it's cheap on a per pound basis)

2) If you forgot to buy ice melter it's on your table, in your water softener salt bag, etc.

It has two disadvantages -

1) It's expensive - if you are salting a large area some of the other formulations will actually do a better job with less salt - on a per square foot basis or as used basis - then sodium chloride. They are so much more effective that the higher per pound cost is more than offset by the higher productivity.

2) Kills your grass. Some of the other formulations don't.

The local TV station put their gardening guy on the other nite and recommended that you buy magnesium chloride formulations for this reason. Who am I to disagree ?

Not that it matters much but I learned researching this that ice melters don't so much melt ice as they undercut it.

What happens is they melt a small amount of the ice. The melt (salt brine) then spreads out underneath the rest of the ice and melts the layer adjacent to the pavement or sidewalk underneath the ice. It then becomes easy to scrape the ice, now detached from the pavement off to the side.

Cool huh ?

Bob

Odor control - daughter's cat

Ok - time to put my money where my mouth is - daughter's fiance is allergic to her cat. Worse, the cat finds the fiance's lap more comfortable than the daughter's, compounding the problem.

Bought two of the Newaire ozone generators for her apartment for a "cat christmas present". They are rated at about 500 square feet per install - basically a room sized appliance.

I'll keep you posted on whether it solves the problem or not.

I also hit on the idea of putting them on timers and only running them noon to 5 pm so that the level of ozone when daughter and or fiance are present is further reduced.

Supposedly you can run them 24 / 7 with no health effects, but if it'll sufficiently knock down the allergens / dander with no ozone exposure to humans whatsoever, why not do it ?

If it doesn't work they can always add hours incrementally until they completely eliminate any allergic reactions.

Bob