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Speaker 6: Oh hey, it's the pigeon staring at you on your
Speaker 6: lunch break while you eat a salad. Ali ward back
Speaker 6: with another episode of Ologies, So if you listen to
Speaker 6: the last two episodes, you may now have quite a
Speaker 6: handle on the US Constitution. What did you do? Will
Speaker 6: you listened? Did you work on a macroma project? Did
Speaker 6: you drive through Kentucky? Did you water color a picture
Speaker 6: of a fish? Maybe you cleaned a toilet. I kind
Speaker 6: of hope you cleaned a toilet because it's apt for
Speaker 6: upcoming elections. And also this episode will know joke get
Speaker 6: you pumped about glistening ceramic and crisp linen. So dust
Speaker 6: off your brain webs. Let's get fresh. Okay, but before
Speaker 6: I do, first off, thank you everyone who has told
Speaker 6: another living person about Ologies. Thanks to everyone wearing Ologies
Speaker 6: merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thanks to all the folks
Speaker 6: on Patreon who submit questions, and to all the folks
Speaker 6: who have rated Ologies and subscribed and kept it up
Speaker 6: in the charts and who have left reviews for me
Speaker 6: to read. By flickering lamplight when I feel vulnerable, such
Speaker 6: as Pam runs happy, who said, if you've ever made
Speaker 6: loved ones, wait while you looked under one more rock,
Speaker 6: or walked around one more corner, or read one more placard,
Speaker 6: you have found a home adologies. It is the siblinghood
Speaker 6: of enthusiastic learners. Pam, thank you much, Lee from old
Speaker 6: Pappy Dad word, I'm here to give you some weird
Speaker 6: facts and puns and make you pancakes on Saturdays and
Speaker 6: tell you about why I'm opping floors is a great
Speaker 6: science experiment. Let's get into it. So disinfectology. Once again,
Speaker 6: I did not make this up. It is not a
Speaker 6: commonly used word. It is a word that exists, but
Speaker 6: apparently only in Russia by one college, where there is
Speaker 6: a disinfecteology program at some Moscow university. But it exists. Okay,
Speaker 6: so we're going with it because this chemist has spent
Speaker 6: over a decade figuring out how bleach works. Here's the deal.
Speaker 6: I got an email from Clorox up in the Bay Area,
Speaker 6: my old stomping grounds, and they were like, Hey, we're
Speaker 6: inviting some science communicators to tour research labs. You want
Speaker 6: to come learn what the funk bleach is? And I thought,
Speaker 6: what the funk is bleach? And heck yeah, And suddenly
Speaker 6: there I was in a lab coat and goggles, smelling
Speaker 6: things and watching laundry under black lights, living every social
Speaker 6: media influencer's dream. Well it was my dream. And I
Speaker 6: had just agreed to post a few hashtag sponsored photos,
Speaker 6: but the facts were so great that I brought my
Speaker 6: equipment along in case I could record. But this scientist
Speaker 6: was busy sciencing and touring us around. So we got
Speaker 6: on the horn when I got back to LA and
Speaker 6: I had him record into his phone memo app, and
Speaker 6: it sounds pretty dang decent, and we talked all about
Speaker 6: things that I didn't even learn in the facility, but
Speaker 6: I really wanted you guys to know. So chemistry fans,
Speaker 6: clean freaks, history buffs, folks who are on a Mariecondo
Speaker 6: kick months later and still want sparkling surroundings, anyone interested
Speaker 6: in podable water in emergencies, or what's in the pool
Speaker 6: you're swimming it, Or anyone right now who may be
Speaker 6: staring out of a train window is wondering what is bleach?
Speaker 7: What is it?
Speaker 6: Snap on some rubber gloves and get ready to fill
Speaker 6: your buckets with the perfect ratio of everyday helpful hints
Speaker 6: and some bizarre science facts with a senior scientist and
Speaker 6: technically disinfectologist, doctor Evan Rumberger. Is it, doctor Evan Rumberg?
Speaker 1: It is?
Speaker 6: Yes, that's what I figured. And now you are Would
Speaker 6: you call yourself a chemist?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm chemistry by trading. I have a PhD in chemistry.
Speaker 6: And now where did you Where did you study? Can
Speaker 6: you give me a little bit of your scholastic background,
Speaker 6: like what did you study where?
Speaker 7: So I began. I did my graduate work down at
Speaker 7: the University of California at San Diego. My work down
Speaker 7: there was about kind of a mix of physical and
Speaker 7: inorganic chemistry, which actually has some overlap with some of
Speaker 7: the work I'm doing right now in some very indirect ways,
Speaker 7: but I think that are irrelevant. And after getting my PhD,
Speaker 7: I moved to back to the Bay Area and native
Speaker 7: California was born and born in Oakland and did a
Speaker 7: postdoc at UC Berkeley slash Lawrence Berkeley Labs on alternative
Speaker 7: energy work there.
Speaker 6: So, Evan Bay Area born got his bachelor's and his
Speaker 6: PhD in chemistry from UC San Diego, and then headed
Speaker 6: back up to Berkeley for his post doc studying the
Speaker 6: sunlight gathering and oxidation of plants. Now there are probably
Speaker 6: a lot of people in Berkeley right now whispering into
Speaker 6: a houseplant.
Speaker 1: You're eating, right? What up?
Speaker 4: How do you know it?
Speaker 6: But Evan was doing it in a lab.
Speaker 7: My work at Berkeley was trying to make synthetic analogs
Speaker 7: of the chemical and something called photosystem too. This this
Speaker 7: this part of the leaf that can that does some
Speaker 7: of the chemistry dirty work of the energy gathered by sun.
Speaker 7: So what I was attempting to do as a postdoc,
Speaker 7: what I was making some progress on, was how to
Speaker 7: make these more natural kind of alternatives to what's used
Speaker 7: in industry to electrolyize water.
Speaker 6: Well, electrolysis can mean two things. One is running direct
Speaker 6: electrical current through a liquid or a solution that has
Speaker 6: ions in it. What are ions? Ions are just names
Speaker 6: for atoms or molecules. Molecules made up of atoms, not
Speaker 6: a big deal, that have some electrical charge. So electrons
Speaker 6: have a negative charge, protons have a positive one. So
Speaker 6: when this number is ant equal, you have a charged
Speaker 6: ion and a cat ion is positively charged. If you
Speaker 6: have a positive reaction to cats. This is easy to remember.
Speaker 6: And an anion is negatively charged, think an antagonist. So
Speaker 6: when you take two electrodes and run a current through
Speaker 6: the solution, the negative ions will be attracted to the
Speaker 6: cathode with the opposite charge. What else can electrolysis mean?
Speaker 6: How does it relate to mustache hairs? Well, it can
Speaker 6: mean running a tiny electrical current via a needle in
Speaker 6: a hair shaft to kill the root of the hair cell.
Speaker 6: Do I have a couple that could benefit from this?
Speaker 6: Probably that's none of your business. Does anyone want an
Speaker 6: electrologist on the show, because I kind of do. Ps.
Speaker 6: If you're in Seattle and you're looking for an electrologist,
Speaker 6: you can look up a place called zipsapp. The owner's
Speaker 6: named Jake and is an ologite. So perhaps next time
Speaker 6: I'm up in Seattle, electrologist Jake will let me ask
Speaker 6: them questions. This mention will probably surprise them. Hi, Anyway,
Speaker 6: where were we?
Speaker 7: Chemistry water is something that is looked at as a
Speaker 7: potential energy storage system to generate hydrogen, and I was used.
Speaker 7: I was generating making these catalysts that would help make that.
Speaker 7: The idea was to make that that that process a
Speaker 7: little bit more economically feasible and industrially. That work has
Speaker 7: done with things like platinum and other really precious metals.
Speaker 7: And you know, if you want to make ground headway
Speaker 7: and you know and and and alternate energy, you need
Speaker 7: to be able to get scale as opposed to just
Speaker 7: getting you know, laboratory bench stuff, and that you need
Speaker 7: to move some cost out of it. So we turned
Speaker 7: to nature and try to get some you know, I'll
Speaker 7: see how nature does it and try to mimic that
Speaker 7: synthetically and work from there.
Speaker 6: What does all this science have to do with your
Speaker 6: sexy crisp dovey cover.
Speaker 7: As it turns out, that's actually kind of my connection
Speaker 7: to to clorox. It seems like kind of a round
Speaker 7: about it. How do you go from doing like alternate
Speaker 7: energy resource to to to working on bleach. It's a
Speaker 7: little bit kind of indirectly connected to how bleach is made.
Speaker 7: The work I was doing as a postdoc is actually
Speaker 7: what you don't want to do when you're when you're
Speaker 7: making bleach. You want to prevent the reaction of oxidizing
Speaker 7: water so that you can productively oxidize the salt. That's
Speaker 7: in the water to make bleach. And so you know,
Speaker 7: it's like understanding something upside down is just as good
Speaker 7: as understanding upside up. And so that I got recruited
Speaker 7: off of the UC Berkeley campus and I've been at
Speaker 7: Clorox ever since that moment eleven years ago, working on bleach.
Speaker 6: That salt is NaCl sodium chloride, which is table salt.
Speaker 6: Wait a second, lazy, do you know that I just
Speaker 6: realized right now that Clorox comes from chloride? Like, right now?
Speaker 6: How did I never know that before?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think I told you this before in a post
Speaker 6: credit secret. But I also thought U Haul was a
Speaker 6: Hawaiian company called Yahula before I realized it just met
Speaker 6: you Haul. Also a lot of people think unicorns are
Speaker 6: real extinct creatures and narwhals are fantasy whales. So let's
Speaker 6: all just be gentle with each other, okay. And so
Speaker 6: how is bleach made? How is hydrolysis involved? And what
Speaker 6: is hydraulogics?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so how it works is it starts with really
Speaker 7: just two ingredients, that is sodium chloride and electricity. And
Speaker 7: what happens is in passing electricity through a water solution
Speaker 7: of sodium chloride you oxidize the chloride to chlorine, and
Speaker 7: that's one of the first ingredients that's made. Secondly, that
Speaker 7: chlorine is reacted directly with sodium hydroxide LYE and the
Speaker 7: two come together to make sodium hyperchloride. So it starts
Speaker 7: from salt water electricity to make chlorine. That chlorine reacts
Speaker 7: with that caustic live the same thing that's used to
Speaker 7: make soaps and other things, and like you know, soap
Speaker 7: boiling methods, and that combines to make the NAO c
Speaker 7: L the sodium, the sodium hypochlorite. Ooh.
Speaker 6: Buckle up for a debunk because Evan has a myth
Speaker 6: to bust.
Speaker 7: There is no chlorine in chlorine bleach. That's kind of
Speaker 7: a misnomer and really one of those terminology things. It's
Speaker 7: all sodium hyperchlorate that's in there. Although chlorine is used
Speaker 7: in its production as part of electrolyzing the salt water,
Speaker 7: there is no chlorine in it.
Speaker 6: I had no idea. Now, is there chlorine in chlorine pools? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Is it same thing?
Speaker 7: You know, it's it's one of those things because chlorine
Speaker 7: is one of those things. It brings in a bunch
Speaker 7: of bad stuff. The analogy I like to use is like,
Speaker 7: you know, water, most people think of you know, no
Speaker 7: waters H two O right, and then there's oxygen gas
Speaker 7: O two. You know, water has oxygen in it, but
Speaker 7: oxygen is a totally different thing that we breathe. You know,
Speaker 7: if you breathe water, you're in trouble. If you breathe
Speaker 7: too much oxygen, you get in trouble as well too.
Speaker 7: But it's in a cird for life. But it's how
Speaker 7: those things connect together that really make the chemical special. So,
Speaker 7: like and chlorox, bleach has got sodium a chloride, So
Speaker 7: the chlorine is attached to oxygens in a similar way
Speaker 7: that like hydrogen is a text attached to oxygen and water,
Speaker 7: it changes everything.
Speaker 6: So to recap, electrolysis turns saltwater H two O plus
Speaker 6: NaCl that becomes sodium hypochloride NaClO household bleach. There you go. Now,
Speaker 6: as long as we're talking basics, let's talk basics. So
Speaker 6: the pH scale ranges from zero to fourteen, with acids
Speaker 6: on the low end and bases on the high end.
Speaker 6: So bleach is around twelve point six, Your blood is
Speaker 6: about seven point six. What's lemon juice? Around two point
Speaker 6: two battery acid. Oh nelly, that's a point three. So
Speaker 6: anyone identifying as a smelly person has heard probably the
Speaker 6: age old adds for an anti perseprint that is pH
Speaker 6: balanced for their swamp armpits, and been like, sure, whatever
Speaker 6: do you d rate? But how about this alkaline water
Speaker 6: trend that claims to fix cancer and even more importantly,
Speaker 6: make your zips disappear. Well, I looked into it, and
Speaker 6: most people in lab coats, I would wager ninety nine
Speaker 6: point nine percent have debunked this, pointing out that your
Speaker 6: stomach is a slimy pillowcase containing an acid bath. So
Speaker 6: any alkaline water you drink from the shelves a is
Speaker 6: usually mislabeled and is much less alkaline than promised, and
Speaker 6: b it gets mixed pretty quick by your simmering gastric contents. Anyway, water, salt, electrolysis, bleach.
Speaker 6: Did you always love chemistry? Were you the type of
Speaker 6: person that was setting things up?
Speaker 7: Fine? Yeah? You me? You cot me, I think, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's the little strapping firecrackers to g I Joe's, and
Speaker 7: you know, seeing what the Magni fire glass will dude
Speaker 7: in the sunlight too, to plastics and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 7: that really an essay.
Speaker 6: At what point were you like, how could I turn
Speaker 6: this into a PhD and a job with a lab code.
Speaker 6: Did you kind of always know like a chemist was
Speaker 6: going to be your Yeah.
Speaker 7: I kind of I kind of already. I kind of
Speaker 7: always known that. It's it's just been my passion. I
Speaker 7: could probably trace it back to some high school teachers.
Speaker 7: I think I remember very very distinctly, like you know,
Speaker 7: having a class discussion. I think it might have been
Speaker 7: physics or chemistry. I'm not sure what they kind of
Speaker 7: blown together, but I remember being really really fascinated with
Speaker 7: why water is clear? Why can you look through it?
Speaker 7: Why can't you look through your desk the way the
Speaker 7: same way you can look through water? And it was
Speaker 7: just completely blown away with the fact that with the
Speaker 7: feedback I got from the teacher says, I mean you
Speaker 7: can predict that. I was like, what, how can you
Speaker 7: predict that? That just seems so mysterious to me. It's
Speaker 7: like science to me is is like it's almost like
Speaker 7: it's almost like a you know, it's you know how
Speaker 7: things work. You can kind of put things together and
Speaker 7: create some really awesome things.
Speaker 6: Let's back up a sick We have a smart people,
Speaker 6: and I have a stupid question. Why is water clear?
Speaker 6: Is that easy to explain?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's it's actually, you know, those are of those
Speaker 7: questions that is it's always those real fundamental questions are
Speaker 7: are are are the best ones because they really get
Speaker 7: at the root of things. Like I've got my two daughters,
Speaker 7: you know, they're they're asking like why is the sky blue?
Speaker 7: You know, those things are like really tough questions that
Speaker 7: took a lot of really science to kind of get
Speaker 7: the root of it. Water is clear because it absorbs
Speaker 7: light and part of the spectrum your eyeballs can't see.
Speaker 7: Just like that your desk absorbs light and part of
Speaker 7: the spectrum your eyeballs can't see. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 7: like to me in high school, that was just like
Speaker 7: blew me away, and like I'm hooked. I want size.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, why is the ding dang ocean blue? You
Speaker 6: want to know? Well, I look this up for us.
Speaker 6: And because light can only penetrate so far through water,
Speaker 6: what gets kicked back are the blue wavelengths, so the
Speaker 6: reds get absorbed by the water. And I also, as
Speaker 6: long as I was noodling around on the Internet looked
Speaker 6: up what does the devil in the deep blue sea mean?
Speaker 6: And it's an idiom that means to be in a
Speaker 6: real pickle. And the phrase was once between the devil
Speaker 6: and the not longer wavelengths such as red and orange sea.
Speaker 6: But that just didn't stick. That is not true information.
Speaker 6: I just gave you. It was very stupid. Okay. Anyway,
Speaker 6: when it comes to bleach, which you can also see through, correct,
Speaker 6: how is it made? Because I didn't know until obviously
Speaker 6: very recently when I came to tour the lab that
Speaker 6: it was like this is it? Like it was electrically made?
Speaker 6: I had no idea. So, and how was this discovered?
Speaker 6: Like where does this come from?
Speaker 7: So it actually came. It was discovered quice some time ago.
Speaker 7: It's a rather old old chemistry and it started even
Speaker 7: back the late seventeen hundreds. It was discovered by an
Speaker 7: individual I'm just going to butcher his name, but I'll
Speaker 7: try it anyway, a French gentleman in Paris. It was
Speaker 7: severed by individual NC Claude Lewis Bertholet and the last
Speaker 7: time was b r thho l L E t Bertule.
Speaker 7: He had isolated the compound and initially actually repositioned it
Speaker 7: to work in textile bleaching. Immediately when this oxidated properties,
Speaker 7: it's bleaching properties were mainly recognized as as something that
Speaker 7: could be used in treating textiles. And this is all
Speaker 7: the way back in the late seventeen hundred seventeen eighty five.
Speaker 6: Of course, I needed for myself a visual image of
Speaker 6: this frenchman, and in every old timey engraving of him,
Speaker 6: he looks kind of like Benjamin Franklin's less attractive half brother,
Speaker 6: but his eyes are always shifted out of frame, looking away,
Speaker 6: as though he just caught two people gossiping about him
Speaker 6: between bites of a fruit goalette. Anyway, he was a
Speaker 6: respected French scientist who left us with a legacy of
Speaker 6: much better laundry practices. Now, if you listen to the
Speaker 6: Roman Archaeology episode, you will remember in what is now Italy,
Speaker 6: people used to pay professionals to dip their togas in
Speaker 6: urine for cleaning, so merci. Anyway, by the late eighteen hundreds, scientists,
Speaker 6: including a German guy named Robert Cock, who realized that
Speaker 6: bleach killed bacteria. Scientists all agreed that it was germs
Speaker 6: actually and not airborne ghosts that caused pandemic disease outbreaks,
Speaker 6: and thus municipal water disinfection began. So I found one
Speaker 6: quote from Keith Christman, who was the director of Disinfection
Speaker 6: and Government Relations in the Chlorine Chemistry Council. I bet
Speaker 6: he doesn't even know he's a disinfecteologist, but he has
Speaker 6: said that the filtration and disinfection of drinking waters been
Speaker 6: responsible for a large part of the fifty percent increase
Speaker 6: in life expectancy of the last century. So if you're
Speaker 6: bummed out about having to save for retirement, just blame
Speaker 6: it all on water disinfection for keeping us alive. That's
Speaker 6: very grim. Honestly, thank you water disinfection systems, because I
Speaker 6: just want you to know I got sidetracked reading about
Speaker 6: an eighteen fifty four London cholera outbreak and exactly where
Speaker 6: all of those cholera ghosties came from and what they
Speaker 6: do to your boudet, and I need not share it
Speaker 6: with you, but I will tell you that I was
Speaker 6: eating while also researching, and I continued because I love you.
Speaker 6: Now Where else has bleach.
Speaker 7: Been one of my favorite to little tidbits with respect
Speaker 7: to how like it's long history and kind of what
Speaker 7: the funny places it ends up is. It was used
Speaker 7: by the Apollo the Apollo missions to disinfect the spaceship
Speaker 7: cabin after the astronaut's return from space, and I believe
Speaker 7: it was also used as part of its water system
Speaker 7: inside the spacecraft to ensure that the asturants had not
Speaker 7: contaminated water on board.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh. So it's been to space. From the
Speaker 6: steward to space.
Speaker 7: It's pretty good journey space.
Speaker 6: It's like started from the bottom, now are here?
Speaker 7: Yeah, started front of the bottom, now, you know, all the
Speaker 7: way from like from some lab and in Paris, all
Speaker 7: the way to space.
Speaker 6: So Clorox started in Oakland nineteen thirteen by a Scottish
Speaker 6: American couple and Annie Murray had the idea to give
Speaker 6: out diluted samples at the grocery store she worked in.
Speaker 6: People in nuts Warm. They're still based in Oakland, And
Speaker 6: when I was growing up in the Bay Area, the
Speaker 6: company sponsored the cheap seats in the coliseum and it's
Speaker 6: still perhaps my favorite corporate pun. Ever, this section in
Speaker 6: the A's games were called the Clorox Bleachers.
Speaker 7: So good.
Speaker 6: So it gradually made its way into space and then
Speaker 6: under your sink.
Speaker 7: It was around the seventies and the eighties, nineteen seventies,
Speaker 7: nineteen eighties that it started becoming available as a ready
Speaker 7: to use cleaning product. And you know, it's been used
Speaker 7: in laundry, it's used widely as one of the most
Speaker 7: versatile and powerful disinfectants. It's a great cleaner and shows
Speaker 7: up in a lot of really surprising places. I think
Speaker 7: one of the biggest misconceptions around bleach is is just
Speaker 7: a variety of places that it's used that are important
Speaker 7: to really our health, collective health in ways that many
Speaker 7: of us aren't even aware of. If it's doing really
Speaker 7: awesome stuff to help us. And I mean, like, do
Speaker 7: you have an example, like you brought it up earlier.
Speaker 7: It's in our swimming pools. We bathe in the stuff
Speaker 7: when we go in, and that's you know, that was
Speaker 7: really critical to preventing you know, the spread disease in pools.
Speaker 7: But most famously, you've the you know, polio and bleach
Speaker 7: will take care of that quite quite easily.
Speaker 6: Okay, quick aside, when did we start chlorinating pools? Well,
Speaker 6: in old timy days, you just go to the creek
Speaker 6: with Mam and Paul swan dive into a cold soup
Speaker 6: of algae and a live turtles. But around nineteen hundreds
Speaker 6: people wanted fancier things with fewer sunken logs in them.
Speaker 6: Now the Colgate White Pool, built in the name of
Speaker 6: a very wealthy donor of Brown University in nineteen oh three,
Speaker 6: had browned some so funky, and in nineteen eleven they
Speaker 6: got the idea to try chlorinating it because that had
Speaker 6: been so effective at stopping disease outbreaks in municipal water. Now,
Speaker 6: bacteria accounts went from seven hundred parts per million to
Speaker 6: zero parts per million in fifteen minutes after chlorinating it.
Speaker 6: They were like, boy, hotty, hot damn, that's a lot
Speaker 6: less a live grows stuff in there. And in case
Speaker 6: you're planning on swimming this summer, yes, there is a
Speaker 6: bunch of human pea in pools. But one thing you
Speaker 6: can do about it is not pea in pools. Anyone, anyone,
Speaker 6: do not pea in pools. If you can drive a car,
Speaker 6: I know, I know, you can train yourself not urinate
Speaker 6: into a commune water supply. We can do this, America.
Speaker 6: We can do this. Also, Shower before you get in
Speaker 6: a pool and then shower after again while eating. I
Speaker 6: did some research on why and just trust me on
Speaker 6: this weekidos. Now, if you've been to a pool party
Speaker 6: and not had cholera afterward, think bleach in some form
Speaker 6: one of the.
Speaker 7: Things I think really reduce it to to practice, bring
Speaker 7: it home with BacT to your earlier question of like
Speaker 7: how is it made? Is you'll see really popular these
Speaker 7: days are these salt swimming pools. Have you seen those before? Yeah?
Speaker 6: I have.
Speaker 7: That's exactly how bleach has made. What they how those
Speaker 7: salt swimming pools work is they they literally, you know,
Speaker 7: add a bunch of sodium chloride table salt to the
Speaker 7: to the to the swimming pool, and then they have
Speaker 7: a device that is plummed into it that basically is
Speaker 7: apposite electoralizes the water right there, electoralizes the chloride in
Speaker 7: there to make sodium applegloride. And on the spot. It's
Speaker 7: really it's convenient because normally, like a whole person would
Speaker 7: have to go and you know, adjust the levels and add,
Speaker 7: you know, add to the pool. Is an This is
Speaker 7: kind of on the spot bleach factory in the pool.
Speaker 7: That's how those things work.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, I did not know that I thought
Speaker 6: it was just like a I thought it was like
Speaker 6: a mini c So they're like a different bacteria can't
Speaker 6: grow in this much salt. That's so fat. I didn't
Speaker 6: know that. Now, how is bleach disinfecting things? So some
Speaker 6: research that came out only about a decade ago zeroed
Speaker 6: in on the house and according to a study published
Speaker 6: and Cell magazine, the active ingredient and bleach causes proteins
Speaker 6: in bacteria and viruses to unfold in the same way
Speaker 6: that a fever would fight in infection. Also, it's able
Speaker 6: to disintegrate the fats in bacterial cell walls. Now, when
Speaker 6: it comes to drinking water, we've been treating it for
Speaker 6: over a century and have cut down dramatically, obviously on
Speaker 6: infectious disease. Though there are other ways of treating municipal water,
Speaker 6: like UV radio that's being explored. But for folks with
Speaker 6: weak immune systems, it may not be powerful enough to
Speaker 6: zap all the batties like chlorination is. Now, what about superbugs?
Speaker 6: Are we just cultivating one that is going to laugh
Speaker 6: in the face of bleach.
Speaker 7: There's no chance of antibiotic resistance with with bleach, at
Speaker 7: least nobody's observed it ever in the history of it.
Speaker 7: Whereas you know, you hear of certain bacteria becoming resistant
Speaker 7: to certain bacteria out there. There's a lot of those
Speaker 7: hospital acquired diseases are are I can't stand no chance
Speaker 7: against bleach, And it's used there to treat treat we
Speaker 7: have outbreaks of like something called MRSA. This staff, this
Speaker 7: little bacteria that's quite resilient against particular types of event.
Speaker 7: Antibiotics and bleach are just wonderful at eliminating.
Speaker 6: That insane with ebola, Yeah.
Speaker 7: It does the same thing there as well too. So
Speaker 7: like ebola is a virus and and bleach will go
Speaker 7: in there and rip it apart, and it's quite efficacious
Speaker 7: for that. In fact, Clarax bleach was the only commercially
Speaker 7: available product that's that has undergone that that testing has improved,
Speaker 7: approved for having forbid that it's ever used for controlling
Speaker 7: such a thing.
Speaker 6: What is the difference between cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization, those
Speaker 6: are different words.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, So cleaning again is about soil removal. You
Speaker 7: can actually clean something and have it have the appearance
Speaker 7: of being have a great appearance, but there can be
Speaker 7: a lot of bacteria left behind. These bacteria are things
Speaker 7: you can't see under normal conditions. A sanitizer and a
Speaker 7: disinfectant and a sterilizer that that those are kind of
Speaker 7: keywords with respect to how well the product works against
Speaker 7: under certain test conditions. For example, all of our products
Speaker 7: that make these disinfectant or public health claims undergo rigorous testing.
Speaker 7: We produce data that's reviewed by the EPA Enviromental Protection Agency.
Speaker 7: They look at that, and when we pass and do
Speaker 7: well in that, we're able to make those claims. The
Speaker 7: term disinfectant, sanitize, or sterilize are regulated terms by the EPA,
Speaker 7: and so far as how the breadth of microorganisms that
Speaker 7: the product has been tested on and how effective it
Speaker 7: is on those tests.
Speaker 6: Okay, look this up and the EPA says yes. Cleaning
Speaker 6: is the process that physically removes debris from the surface
Speaker 6: area by scrubbing, washing, and then rinsing. It can be
Speaker 6: accomplished with soap, intergent, and water. A sanitizing product kills
Speaker 6: ninety nine point nine percent of the germs identified on
Speaker 6: the label. A disinfecting product kills nearly one hundred percent
Speaker 6: of germs identified on its label. This can take a
Speaker 6: few minutes of contact with the surface. But what is
Speaker 6: happening with that point oh one percent? What's going on there?
Speaker 6: Why does it usually say ninety nine point nine? Is
Speaker 6: that just a legal thing that you have to put
Speaker 6: that is point?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so ninety nine those terms come through. That's the
Speaker 7: level of which the product is able to kill the
Speaker 7: bacteria for which it was it was tested against, and
Speaker 7: what those levels are set against what is believed to
Speaker 7: be efficacious from a public health standard. So if you're
Speaker 7: if you sanitize, you remove ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 7: of microorisms you've disinfected ninety nine point nine nine nine.
Speaker 7: At some point them some of those things become less
Speaker 7: and less meaningful from a consumer standpoint.
Speaker 6: Just in case you're reading a label, how does bleach
Speaker 6: lighten things? If you throw it on some sheets or
Speaker 6: maybe if you have a black shirt that you splash
Speaker 6: it on intentionally? Listen. Reverse tie dyeing is a thing,
Speaker 6: and it's what gods do at summer camp. Okay, don't
Speaker 6: judge me anyway. How does it lift color like that?
Speaker 7: Yeah? So the branding and clan So there's so there's
Speaker 7: two a bunch of different things that are happening when
Speaker 7: you are brightening a stain. So let's say you have
Speaker 7: like one of my favorite things to do is I
Speaker 7: don't know about you, but I drink I drink a
Speaker 7: lot of coffee and I've got this little coffee mug
Speaker 7: that has a bunch of coffee stains in it. And
Speaker 7: if you just take a little bit of a bleach
Speaker 7: in there, and it'll just takes care of that coffee
Speaker 7: stain just like magic. It's it's ridiculously awesome how well
Speaker 7: it removes that stain and rintse it with water and
Speaker 7: you're good to go. How bleach works there is the
Speaker 7: molecules and stains have kind of like a connectivity, a
Speaker 7: molecular kind of connectivity among it that that are unique
Speaker 7: to the color that you see. And what bleach does
Speaker 7: is it is it goes in there and breaks that connectivity.
Speaker 7: It's almost like snipping the electrical wire on for a
Speaker 7: you know, for a light bulb. The molecules break apart
Speaker 7: and or are just unable to make that color anymore.
Speaker 7: And then those broken molecules are lifted away because they're
Speaker 7: more soluble in water and they come out. So not
Speaker 7: only does it remove the stain from a fundamental color, standpoint,
Speaker 7: but the rest of it just gets rinsed away with
Speaker 7: the water that you have.
Speaker 6: PS. I had a Latin teacher in high school, the
Speaker 6: amazing and Bco. And one day, to be helpful, we
Speaker 6: cleaned her ancient stained coffee mug. The inside looked like
Speaker 6: a rusty cave and it was a herculean effort. Let
Speaker 6: me tell you, but I wish I'd known this trick anyway,
Speaker 6: And Bco rest in peace. I hope you were sipping
Speaker 6: coffee with Jupiter. And I'll be honest, I not only
Speaker 6: typed Zeus first before I remember that Zeus is the
Speaker 6: Greek one, but I also misspelled Zeus every single time.
Speaker 6: You've just heard me say it. Anyway, clean your crusty
Speaker 6: mugs ords thoroughly, and then raise a shimmering toast to
Speaker 6: and Bco a great Latin teacher. She was really good.
Speaker 7: I saved Latin. What did you ever do? You gotta try.
Speaker 7: It's just like you know, you want to rinse it
Speaker 7: after done, But it's just a magic how well it
Speaker 7: gets that it'll get that stain out you have like
Speaker 7: a brand new cup. So that's for stains. For brightening
Speaker 7: is a little bit brightening that kind of like shock
Speaker 7: your eyeballs looking at that bright white. So there's two
Speaker 7: parts to it. There's like getting the stain out effectively,
Speaker 7: and then there's also the part about working with the
Speaker 7: detergent to make sure that the detergent is working well.
Speaker 7: Also on your clothes. I'm talking about and I think
Speaker 7: of like, you know, the whitest whites, the brightest brightest whites.
Speaker 7: Detergents contain ingredients in there that work with the light,
Speaker 7: the sunlight, and it makes those clothes look a lot brighter.
Speaker 6: This part is so weird and cool. And during the
Speaker 6: tour we all gocked at various white T shirt samples
Speaker 6: under different lighting conditions. It was like the Wonka factory,
Speaker 6: but for laundry.
Speaker 7: They absorbed like the visible light kind of a little
Speaker 7: bit on the yellow side, and they spit back a
Speaker 7: blue light and that that gives the gives the appearance
Speaker 7: of it just looking much more on the bright end
Speaker 7: of things. Its kind of like similar to how like
Speaker 7: if you look at an incandescent light bulb and then
Speaker 7: compare that to like a fluorescent light bulb. Fluorescent light bulb,
Speaker 7: just like tack on white or really really bright white
Speaker 7: increases the color temperature where zangodescent light looks a little
Speaker 7: bit yellow. The the Launder detergents, they have these ingredients
Speaker 7: in there that kind of shift it over into that
Speaker 7: fluorescent light looking thing. Right. In addition to just you know,
Speaker 7: eliminating those stains, you know, snipping the snipping the stains
Speaker 7: up into things that can be washed away by the water,
Speaker 7: it also works with the launder detergent to make sure
Speaker 7: that the that the detergent is doing this. It's magic
Speaker 7: as well too.
Speaker 6: Is there any flim flam that you would like to debunk?
Speaker 6: Any myths about bleach that really annoy you.
Speaker 7: I think that the big one was there's there's no
Speaker 7: chlorine in bleach. We call it chlorine bleach, but that's
Speaker 7: really just sort of a historical thing. There's no chlorine
Speaker 7: in it, and that goes back to what we talked about,
Speaker 7: like you know, oxygen water and oxygen gas. It's such
Speaker 7: a wonderful thing and it irks me that it gets
Speaker 7: burdened by it's it's upstream cousin that has nothing to
Speaker 7: do with it.
Speaker 6: You know, we all have that upstream cousin that taints
Speaker 6: the family name wards you know who I'm talking about
Speaker 6: the one who occupied the family land with a shotgun
Speaker 6: and charges us to mow the lawn. But we love
Speaker 6: them anyway. Are there any myths about it being harmful
Speaker 6: to the environment that annoy you or being yeah, you know.
Speaker 7: It's it's a very safe product to use, you know,
Speaker 7: like just which also back up, you know, like any
Speaker 7: any household products, you want to use it as directed.
Speaker 7: You can always abuse anything to the point of it
Speaker 7: being harmful, but use when used as directed. It's it's
Speaker 7: very safe. It's been used for you know, over one
Speaker 7: hundred years. It starts from salt with us some electricity,
Speaker 7: and then through its use it goes back to salt.
Speaker 7: It's processed through the Universibal water system and otherwise. So
Speaker 7: it gets a bad wrap that on that level that
Speaker 7: doesn't deserve whatsoever.
Speaker 6: So by the time bleach is done doing its dirty work,
Speaker 6: it's just broken back down to water and salt. What Also,
Speaker 6: when you spray it first on the counter, you can
Speaker 6: leave it there to kick some bacterial and viral ascess
Speaker 6: for like five to ten minutes, depending on your counter.
Speaker 6: I didn't know that. I always just wiped it right away.
Speaker 6: Just leave it there, let it do its thing, and
Speaker 6: then you're in stuff. Anyway, when it goes down the drain,
Speaker 6: the sodium hypochlorite breaks down like ninety five to ninety
Speaker 6: eight percent they said, into salt and water, and then
Speaker 6: that remaining three to five percent is either removed by
Speaker 6: sewage treatment or it reacts with stuff in your pipes
Speaker 6: and is consumed before it even reaches sewage treatment. I
Speaker 6: didn't realize that it could shape shift like that depending
Speaker 6: on what it comes in contact with, and then it
Speaker 6: just turns back into the thing it started as. What Also,
Speaker 6: this part totally blew my mind. I was like, nah,
Speaker 6: what about the smell of bleach? I learned on the
Speaker 6: lab trip that the more bleach you smell, the more
Speaker 6: it's kind of busting up cell walls.
Speaker 7: Is that true? Yeah, that's true. So it's like the bleach.
Speaker 7: You know, that bleach smell is our consumerism. A lot
Speaker 7: of them love it because it's it's a good indication
Speaker 7: of coming into a clean bathroom. I can I can
Speaker 7: tell you nothing better than going into like at the
Speaker 7: ballgame and going into the bathroom and if you smell
Speaker 7: bleach in there, it's like okay, okay, we can go
Speaker 7: in a restaurant. That's that's a really good side. I'm
Speaker 7: just knowing how well how well it works at disinfecting,
Speaker 7: and that that smell yours it is it is the
Speaker 7: smell of of the bleach kind of fragmenting up the
Speaker 7: things that comes in content that is a little bit
Speaker 7: of what you're smelling, and that's a that that's a
Speaker 7: nice queue that it's done. It's done its thing.
Speaker 6: Is there anything that you know of in the natural
Speaker 6: world that kills germs and viruses like bleachers? There's just
Speaker 6: like no comparison when you've got.
Speaker 7: Like, well, actually, you know this is this is something
Speaker 7: that I didn't know this until I got to Clorox,
Speaker 7: but I'm just totally blown away by it. Is that
Speaker 7: bleach is actually natural as well too. Your body produces it.
Speaker 7: Your body produces it as it's it's released by certain
Speaker 7: as part of your immune defense. It's in it's in mammals,
Speaker 7: it's in part of it's in seaweed. It's also in
Speaker 7: certain fungus as well too. It will admit a very
Speaker 7: small amount of of hypochloride hypochorus and as part of
Speaker 7: its its immune response. So it's it's actually not that
Speaker 7: you know we're not that disconnected from it. We actually
Speaker 7: have it in our body, probably right now, fighting off
Speaker 7: in very very very small quantities, fighting off as part
Speaker 7: of part of the immune system.
Speaker 6: This checks out. I read about it in that study
Speaker 6: published and sell now feel free to share all of
Speaker 6: this at the next dinner party in which there's a
Speaker 6: gap in the conversation and you're afraid it's going to
Speaker 6: fill up with politics or gossip about nearby French scientists.
Speaker 6: And now we're about to ask some of your questions
Speaker 6: patrons who submitted for this episode, But before I do,
Speaker 6: I want to tell you about some sponsors of the show.
Speaker 6: And they make it possible for me to donate to
Speaker 6: a different charity each episode, and this week a donation
Speaker 6: went to Evidence Action. That's Evidenceaction dot org and they
Speaker 6: run the Dispensers for a Safe Water program and according
Speaker 6: to their site, globally about eight hundred and forty two
Speaker 6: thousand people die each year because of unsafe drinking water, sanitation,
Speaker 6: and hand hygiene. Clorox is partnered with Evidence Action to
Speaker 6: supply disinfecting solutions similar to the bleach in our homes
Speaker 6: in support of their Dispensers for Safe Water program in
Speaker 6: Kenya and Uganda. I took the donation and tripled it
Speaker 6: this week, so triple the donation will be going to
Speaker 6: evidence Action for their dispensers for safe water. Words from
Speaker 6: other sponsors who are making that possible.
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Speaker 6: Okay your questions? Can I ask you some some listener questions? Sure? Okay.
Speaker 6: Crystal Mendoza wants to know is all bleach one and
Speaker 6: the same and can it truly disinfect all things? Can
Speaker 6: it kill all bacteria viruses?
Speaker 7: So it's not all the same. We take great pride
Speaker 7: in the product of those were patented technologies that we've
Speaker 7: incorporated in that product, and I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 6: When I visited, I will say it was very cute
Speaker 6: how much people work. You there seemed to dig it.
Speaker 7: I mean, one of the things that I springs me
Speaker 7: out of bed every day is you know, it's challenging
Speaker 7: working working on bleach. It's an old it's an old,
Speaker 7: old chemistry. But the changes you can make and it
Speaker 7: really affect a lot of folks, and you know, the
Speaker 7: daily lives and their Daily Health and really proud of that.
Speaker 6: Jason Goodwin as could we expect to see bacterial resistant
Speaker 6: to bleach anytime soon like we're seeing with animatics.
Speaker 7: It kills the bacteria and viruses. We have claims for onit.
Speaker 7: So if you're interested in a particular whether whether the
Speaker 7: products kills this bacteria or that bacteria, check check the
Speaker 7: label and you'll find out the specifics there. As part
Speaker 7: of that review process with the e PA, we have
Speaker 7: to provide data to prove any sort of claim like that,
Speaker 7: So it's kind of out of balance for us to
Speaker 7: say it as all, but it's highly efficacious. I'll just
Speaker 7: say that. Check check the label and you'll find it there.
Speaker 7: In terms of antibiotic resistance, there's been no you know,
Speaker 7: there's been no indication of it that ever occurring so
Speaker 7: Far's yeah.
Speaker 6: A lot of people including Danny cav Hans Dehemer, Chelsea
Speaker 6: Carl Ciera, Venus Bruce Gordon, Alison Hughes, Andrea Marsh, Kelly Brienthal,
Speaker 6: and Abigail asked why do I like the smell of bleach?
Speaker 6: It seems like a bad thing to.
Speaker 7: Like, you know, bleach is part of its long history,
Speaker 7: you know, I think to me, that's like, uh, I
Speaker 7: can speak personally about it. You know, bleach has a
Speaker 7: long history. I associate it with getting that fresh batch
Speaker 7: of Cleve laundry all the way to my childhood. You know,
Speaker 7: it's it's I think it's just for me personally, It's
Speaker 7: been part of my life. But you know, maybe by association.
Speaker 7: I don't know. But I like the smell of it
Speaker 7: as well too.
Speaker 6: So quick side note, I learned recently that your old
Speaker 6: factory bulb in your noggin can store memories. So not
Speaker 6: only is it a straight shot to your hippocampus and
Speaker 6: a magdala, the parts of the brain that process emotion
Speaker 6: and memory, but it has its own memory. You don't
Speaker 6: have to be a neuroscientist to know that. You just
Speaker 6: have to sometimes sniff shampoo and an x used and
Speaker 6: cry and a target about it. Anyway, moving on, This
Speaker 6: next one was asked by Megan Da, Katie cob and
Speaker 6: Ruth Anthony Vernatico. A few people asked, including a zomb
Speaker 6: what is the deal with color safe bleach? Azam wants
Speaker 6: to know? Is it black magic?
Speaker 7: Color safe bleach is actually a different technology. Color safe
Speaker 7: bleach is based on hydrogen peroxide. You can apply the
Speaker 7: product directly on on a like a coffee stain or
Speaker 7: grass stains and amongst others, in a particular stain that
Speaker 7: the persons after they can just just check the check
Speaker 7: the package of what it's good for, and it delivers
Speaker 7: some additional different benefits. The party has some some fragrances
Speaker 7: in there, that's small grate makes your laundry small and grade.
Speaker 7: It also has brighten's your close as well too, working
Speaker 7: with the detergent. But it's it's a different technology.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 6: And Kelly, this kind of brings me to Kelly King's question.
Speaker 6: Is hair bleach the same as laundry bleach but in
Speaker 6: a different form?
Speaker 7: No, it's different. So like this is where you know,
Speaker 7: like bleach is both a verb and a now, so
Speaker 7: bleaching your hair, it will lighten your hair, but they
Speaker 7: use different and they use different things for that. They
Speaker 7: usually use they use a hydrogen peroxide for that. One
Speaker 7: of the differences between hydrogen peroxide and the clorox bleach
Speaker 7: as you know, the laundry bleach as you know it
Speaker 7: is that they just they work differently on different things
Speaker 7: at different speeds and so like for your for your hair.
Speaker 7: Maybe the you know that that product is tuned just right,
Speaker 7: you know, and it's designed for that, and they use
Speaker 7: hydrogen peroxide for that. Same thing is true for teeth whitening.
Speaker 7: Teeth whitening products, I'll se use hydrogen peroxide and as well.
Speaker 6: This next question also asked by Alexander and Castro Navarro,
Speaker 6: Sierra Venus, Meghan McLean, and Carly Katz. A few people
Speaker 6: including Mike Komonokowski and Anatally asked about ammonia. Anatally says,
Speaker 6: because of the ammonia and can if I use bleach
Speaker 6: to clean near my cat's litter box, will I poison
Speaker 6: us at all? Or is that just flim flam?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so like no, the you won't have any You
Speaker 7: won't there's no issues of of some sort of exposure
Speaker 7: like that. That's a you know, like with any cleaning product.
Speaker 7: You don't want to mix cleaning products with what other
Speaker 7: So you know, mixing bleach with ammonias is a big
Speaker 7: no no. In terms of the cats, there's nothing to
Speaker 7: worry there. There's nothing to worry there at all. Small quantities.
Speaker 6: And Ron the Bloc asked, I remember hearing when I
Speaker 6: was young that you can use bleach to purify water?
Speaker 6: Is this true and safe?
Speaker 7: Yeah? And in fact, the Center for Disease Control has
Speaker 7: recommendations and how bleach is used in an emergency situation.
Speaker 7: What makes bleach important for this is that it's it's
Speaker 7: widely distributed. It's really easy to you know, go to
Speaker 7: the store and get some. And it's also fairly cheap
Speaker 7: and can be used for many things in addition to
Speaker 7: to the to water disinfection. So it just takes a
Speaker 7: couple of drops. The Center for Disease Control has specific
Speaker 7: instructions on it.
Speaker 6: According to the CDC, to each gallon of water, add
Speaker 6: half a teaspoon forty drops or two point five milliliters
Speaker 6: of bleach. If the water is cloudy, murky colored, or
Speaker 6: very cold, at double the amount of bleach, let's stand
Speaker 6: thirty minutes before drinking.
Speaker 7: But yes, it can, and in fact kind of goes
Speaker 7: back to that, you know that the salt pools and
Speaker 7: the how bleach is made. You'll see there are some
Speaker 7: there are some camping water purification kits out there that
Speaker 7: you bring along a little salt and with some batteries
Speaker 7: and and you can electrialize electoralize the Brinde to get
Speaker 7: you a little bleach to add to your water to
Speaker 7: make it potable and to these situations.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's some serious DIY business right there. And you
Speaker 6: can find kits like these at camping stores, probably at
Speaker 6: Doomsday Prepper birthday parties. Guessing on at least one of
Speaker 6: those anyway. This next question was also asked by Natalie Krinklaw,
Speaker 6: Diane Stairs, Nick Dean, and Isabelle b Holper. Emily Fosi said,
Speaker 6: I had a contractor recently tell me that bleach does
Speaker 6: not kill mold. Is this true? And why doesn't it
Speaker 6: kill mold? And then the next person asking your question
Speaker 6: was Isabelle b Holper. This says, what makes it the
Speaker 6: kryptonite for mold? Or is that flim flam? Can bleach
Speaker 6: kill mold?
Speaker 7: M m Yeah, I can kill mold. And in fact,
Speaker 7: it's actually routinely used by the roofers too to remove
Speaker 7: mold off of off of off of roof, so it
Speaker 7: only helps with the removal, but it can kill it
Speaker 7: as well too. It can be when when used as
Speaker 7: as directed. There's we have a product called outdoor bleach
Speaker 7: which is used to grade for for doing that.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, well, definitely.
Speaker 7: It also kills that that the mold if we're gonna
Speaker 7: kind of uh said that that causes athletes foot as
Speaker 7: well too, So you know, if you've got people that
Speaker 7: are suffering from that, cleaning your bath to up and
Speaker 7: shower with that will help help control that.
Speaker 6: Several patrons assets, including Kaitlin Carter, Amanda j Jesse, Krast
Speaker 6: and Ducks Float. Brian McIntosh says, as an alternative to
Speaker 6: bleaching a surface to disinfect it, what concentration of acetic
Speaker 6: acid would need to be as effective as bleach is
Speaker 6: that vinegar? So is this like a vinegar versus bleach thing?
Speaker 7: What's the Yeah, vinegar is remarkably ineffective as a disinfectant
Speaker 7: sanitizer in comparison. Really it is. I think it can
Speaker 7: work under certain scenarios, but it is not even the
Speaker 7: same ballpark with respect to how well it works, not
Speaker 7: even close.
Speaker 6: Wow. Yeah, that's funny because I think like there was
Speaker 6: a Pinterest trend a few years ago where it's just
Speaker 6: like something dirty, clean it with vinegar.
Speaker 7: It'll do some but not not any work close.
Speaker 6: This was a personal curiosity. How do you feel about
Speaker 6: the Nirvana album Bleach?
Speaker 7: Oh? That's funny that comes up every now and then.
Speaker 7: I love Nirvana. I've always been a fan of them.
Speaker 7: I was, you know, I was born in the seventies,
Speaker 7: grew up in the eighties, and you know, Nirvana came
Speaker 7: out when I was in high school with its you
Speaker 7: know never Mind album. I always loved that. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 7: that's cool.
Speaker 6: But what's the hardest thing about your job? What sucks
Speaker 6: the most? Is it like the commute or not having
Speaker 6: the right size lab coat? Like, is there anything that
Speaker 6: just is the worst thing about your job or just
Speaker 6: the worst thing about chemistry or research in general?
Speaker 7: I think like this goes back to kind of just
Speaker 7: my own personal inspiration. I think the hardest part is
Speaker 7: also the best part science or science, product development, R
Speaker 7: and D. It's all a process and it's hard stuff.
Speaker 7: You know, if it's easy, we'd be coming up with
Speaker 7: new stuff all the time. When you're particularly when you're
Speaker 7: working on something that has such a long legacy, how
Speaker 7: do you continue to innovate in that area? Is so
Speaker 7: inspirational to me that we are continue to innovate in
Speaker 7: that in that area, doing the doing the right work,
Speaker 7: having the conviction to find find those little nuggets in
Speaker 7: the in the forest and getting there. So it's both
Speaker 7: very hard but also just incredibly incredibly rewarding. So it's
Speaker 7: it's it's I love it, but it's also, like, to
Speaker 7: your point, is also the hardest thing.
Speaker 6: It is. What do you do? You have any advice
Speaker 6: for anyone who's either intimidated by chemistry or struggling with chemistry,
Speaker 6: or maybe has running to dead ends on experiments. Any
Speaker 6: any advice to future chemists.
Speaker 7: I'd say, you know, embrace, embrace the curiosity. Science is
Speaker 7: not something that is like separate from the world. Is
Speaker 7: part of the world. You know, it's it's being out.
Speaker 7: You know, asking why is one of the most important
Speaker 7: questions and to me one of the most satisfying things.
Speaker 7: Why is that? Why is the sky blue? Why is
Speaker 7: water clear? You know? Why is why is this? Why
Speaker 7: is that that? And you know that that's an insatiable thing,
Speaker 7: and you know, follow that passion. It can come through chemistry, physics, medicine, writing,
Speaker 7: a lot of different a lot of different places where
Speaker 7: it shows up. But you know, like science is to me,
Speaker 7: is is just one output of of just insacial curiosity.
Speaker 7: The one way to express it. Do it? Have fun?
Speaker 7: It's cool stuff.
Speaker 6: What's your favorite thing about your job.
Speaker 7: My favorite thing about my job is working with the
Speaker 7: folks here at Claroks. We've got a small team of
Speaker 7: folks that design products for millions of people, and it's
Speaker 7: a tight team. The stuff doesn't all come together on
Speaker 7: any any individuals back. It's all of us working together
Speaker 7: to make it happen and doing great science and you know,
Speaker 7: making great, great products that that can literally change the
Speaker 7: lives of people out there is It's one of the
Speaker 7: most inspirational fun things to do. Love it.
Speaker 6: Oh, so you love your co workers? Well, thank you
Speaker 6: for making the world a less jermy place. Every time
Speaker 6: I go into a hospital, I'm very glad that there's
Speaker 6: not sea diff everywhere and epola and flu. Thank you
Speaker 6: so much. I literally look at Bleach so differently now,
Speaker 6: so ask some smart people some stupid questions, and if
Speaker 6: someone offers you a lab tour, take it. It's kind
Speaker 6: of like backstage access to a concert, only usually no
Speaker 6: one's on drugs or taking selfies. And thank you again, Clarks. Now,
Speaker 6: if you want to regale your friends and family with
Speaker 6: more facts about Bleach, you can go to facts about
Speaker 6: Bleach dot com. It's just sitting there waiting for you. Now,
Speaker 6: this episode was a kind of a rare pitch from
Speaker 6: a company, but it truly interested me and charmed me,
Speaker 6: and I was like, I want to share this. So
Speaker 6: I'm glad I could share some of this stuff with
Speaker 6: you next week when you hear all about coral and
Speaker 6: oddly coral bleaching, which has nothing at all to do
Speaker 6: with bleach. So we're going at dive into that next
Speaker 6: Tuesday now. To follow along socially, we're at Ologies on
Speaker 6: Instagram and Twitter. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both.
Speaker 6: Ask questions for ologists at patreon dot com slash Ologies
Speaker 6: you can join for a dollar a month. You can
Speaker 6: find us on Facebook at Ologies podcast. Thank you Aaron
Speaker 6: Talbert and Hannah Lippo for all the adminting you do there.
Speaker 6: Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis of the comedy
Speaker 6: podcast You Are That for being merch Queen's And if
Speaker 6: you just like wonderful ladies with mouths like sailors and
Speaker 6: quips like your best friends from college, go listen to
Speaker 6: you or that they're amazing. Thank you to Jared Sleeper
Speaker 6: of the mental health podcast My Good, Bad Brain for
Speaker 6: the editing help, and of course to the electric current
Speaker 6: that runs through these salt waters. Stephen Ray Morris for
Speaker 6: stitching all these clips and bites together each week. The
Speaker 6: theme music was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands.
Speaker 6: Listen to them? Okay, each week, you know I tell
Speaker 6: you a secret, and this week's secret, well, it's one
Speaker 6: bonus fact that you should wash your sheets weekly, even
Speaker 6: more often if you sleep nude, because let's just say,
Speaker 6: underpants mean cleaner sheets, So bonus factor there. Also, I
Speaker 6: downloaded this app called plant Nanny to help track water consumption,
Speaker 6: and it's a digital plant you have to water throughout
Speaker 6: the day by drinking water yourself. And I realized, wow,
Speaker 6: I care more about this digital plants health than my own.
Speaker 6: This is a real eye opener. Also, it took me
Speaker 6: at least five minutes to choose a style of pot
Speaker 6: to put my plant in, even though the pot doesn't
Speaker 6: exist and I can change it anytime anyway. Clocks may
Speaker 6: have paid me to learn about bleach for a day,
Speaker 6: but I only agreed because it was some legit cool,
Speaker 6: fascinating science. But Plant Nanny did not pay me a dime. Also,
Speaker 6: my plant is dying today. I have to go water.
Speaker 6: In speaking of water, please promise me don't peen any
Speaker 6: pools this summer.
Speaker 2: I believe in you.
Speaker 6: Okay, byebye, Pacaderman College, hommeiology, y doo, Zoology, lithology, Yeah, zology, meteorology, technology, seriosityogy.
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