Volatile organic compounds or VOCs are a class of chemicals that are volatile.
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds which means they contain carbon atoms. That easily become vapors or gases.
Which makes them great as a base for paints And ink. Anything that needs to dry quickly.
VOCs are released from burning fuel such as gasoline, wood, coal, or natural gas.
They are also released from many consumer products as they evaporate.
They can contain fluorine, bromine, sulfur, nitrogen and other elements.
Cigarettes
Solvents
Paints and thinners
Inks
Adhesives
Hobby and craft supplies
Dry cleaning fluids
Glues
Wood preservatives
Cleaners and disinfectants
Moth repellants
Air fresheners
Building materials and furnishings
Copy machines and printers
Pesticides
paint thinners
degreasers
aerosol cans
dry-cleaning products
paints
photographic supplies
printers and photocopying machines and supplies
Toxicity
Whenever the weather is hot, VOCs are more likely to be present in the air we breathe, and therefore more dangerous to human health. Not all VOC are known to be toxic, however in some cases there are clear negative effects, depending on the compound, the length and intensity of the exposure. Formaldehyde, diesel exhaust, styrene, benzene and perchloroethylene are known or suspected carcinogens, and heavy traffic, smoking and various types of workplace exposure can pose serious health risks. Known health effects include:
respiratory tract problems
headaches
fatigue
dizziness
nausea
liver and/or kidney damage
problems of the central nervous system
Read more here
When VOCs combine with nitrogen oxides in the air, they form smog.
Fossil fuel oil is slippery is very versatile. As well being the base for most plastics and driving our cars it can be found in less obvious places. It is sold as a moisturizer (think Vaseline and even E45), petroleum-derived, synthetic fragrances are added to many commercial cosmetic products and hexane (another petroleum derivative), is used to extract some vegetable oils.
While I don’t mind oil on my pistons I draw the line at rubbing it on my skin or using it to fry my eggs.
So what to use instead? Renewable Fatty Acids of course
What Are Fatty Acids?
So let’s talk fatty acids. For the purposes of this post, fatty acids are the oily greasy stuff you use to cook with, cut off your bacon, burn in your beeswax candles or rub on as your Shea Butter Body Moisturiser.
They are the oil that is formed in a plant or the fat stored by an animal. There is of course a lot more to them then that and Meanwhile here is a beginners guide.
Fatty acids are fatty, oily, greasy or buttery. They can be harvested from plants and animals. Vegetable Derived These are obtained from the seeds, nuts and even flesh of plants.There are many kinds of vegetable oils, butters and waxes. Mains uses are cooking & cosmetics. Animal Derived This is the fat stored by an animal. These are mostly solid ranging from hard and waxy like lard to the softer butterExamples would be butter & lard
Uses
Main uses of fatty acids are cooking, cosmetics, lubricating and soap making.
Some like Jojoba should only be used for cosmetic purposes. Coconut oil on the other hand can be used for just about everything.
Types Of Oil, Wax Or Butter
They come in a variety of forms under the following headings – but it is a rough guide only.
Liquid Oil – never solidifies
Solid Oil – firm when cool but has very low melting point so sometimes it may be counted as an oil i.e. Coconut oil
Butters – a solid oil. Has a high melting point. Rather confusing. Milk butter for example acts more like a solid oil, while Cocoa butter is more like a wax.
Waxes – very hard-of a candle (wax), like consistency. Bees wax for example.
Harvesting
Next you might want to know how your fats and oils they have been obtained and processed – especially if you plan to eat your oil.
Animal fats are collected after slaughter. Concerns here are rather about how the animal was treated before it was slaughtered.
Extracting vegetable oils and processing them is a more complex process. Most commercially produced oils are solvent extracted. This involves a chemical solvent like the petroleum-derived hexane. This technique is used for most of the “newer” oils such as soybean and canola oils.
Mechanical methods where the oil is squeezed or pressed out of the vegetable matter in a variety of ways involves less in the way of petroleum derivatives but depending on the method used can affect the oil. Cold pressed oil is considered the least invasive method of extraction though it also less efficient.
Read more abouts oil extraction here.
Hydrogenated Oil
Both animal and vegetable fats can be hydrogenated.
Hydrogenated oil is made by forcing reactive hydrogen gas gas into oil at high pressure in the presence of a palladium catalyst.
Hydrogenated oil is more stable, does not go rancid as quickly
It has a higher melting point, so can be used for frying.
It is used to make liquid oils more solid. Margarine is an example of a hydrogenated oil.
Oils have been hydrogenated since the 1930s. Concerns
Hydrogenating oil modifies the chemistry significantly.
The fatty acids in oils are unsaturated fats. They are unstable.
Hydrogenating oil turns these unstable fatty acids into new more stable fats known as trans fats acids.
There are concerns that trans fatty acids may increase LDL, or bad cholesterol, and decrease HDL cholesterol, the good cholesterol.
Because they are not natural the digestive system does not know what to do with them. They may actually bioaccumulate in the body. Read more here
Most oils and waxes last for ages. Some like butter will go off.
Oils Butters & Fatty Acids I Use For Cosmetics
You can use a lot of waxes and oils neat to moisturise and cleanse or as as ingredients in creams. Here are the oils we use to make creams and cosmetics
Cosmetics & Eating
I love a multi tasking product and you cant do better than a moisturiser you cook chips in. Rapeseed oil – a lighter oil with quite a strong scent but U.K. sourced. Read More Olive oil – a richer oil can sometimes be bought on tap in the U.K. Used for cooking and cosmetics.read more
Rice Bran Oil less “oily” than olive oil and rapeseed oil and not as malodorous as the latter. I used it to make suntan lotion and mosquito repellent.
Only Eating
While I love to get my monies worth I draw the line at lard as a beauty regime. Butter – eating only. Read more Lard – a plastic free substitute for cooking oil.
Oils I try To avoid
Palm Oil because it is often badly farmed read more here
Margarine because it is a hydrogenated oil.
And oils derived from petrol. Don’t want to eat them donut want to moisturise with them
These compounds may be simple with only a few atoms or more complex with more.
The compounds come in different forms. Methane the smallest hydrocarbon is a gas lighter than air while tar, a much larger compound, is thick and gloopy.
The ability of carbon atoms to bond strongly to each other allows them to form an almost unlimited variety of chains, rings, and other structures that form the backbones of organic molecules. Since each atom can form four bonds, these backbones include other elements, such as hydrogen. The compounds are flammable, since the two elements they contain will combine easily with oxygen in the air, releasing energy. Fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, are naturally occurring mixtures of hydrocarbons; coal also contains some, although it is mostly just carbon.
In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is categorised as an organic compound. {Organiccompounds are the complex compounds of carbon. Because carbon atoms bond to one another easily, the basis of most organiccompounds is comprised of carbon chains that vary in length and shape. Hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms are the most common atoms that are generally attached to the carbon atoms.}
Hydrocarbons contain a lot of energy.
Hydrocarbons like crude oil and natural gas are harvested for their high energy content.
Carbon is great at bonding and so can easily forms polymers. A polymer is a large molecule that is made up of many smaller, repeating molecules, called monomers, which are joined together by covalent bonds.
Hydrocarbon chains can be broken and rearranged in different ways. According to B.P. “the hydrocarbon compound is the most versatile on the chemical charts. It can make an estimated 2.5 million possible combinations. Longer, heavier molecules can be transformed into lighter ones and vice versa.”
And so they can be used to make new and different products such as plastic, a wholly synthetic product made from a natural resource.
I suppose I must have studied chemistry at school. I seem to remember some high jinks with a bunsen burner but nothing else. I now realize that you can understand nothing about the practical world without some basic knowledge of how it works. So I am trying to teach myself chemistry via Google. I know I get it wrong sometimes. Do bear that in mind when you read these fumbling explanations that I am learning as I go. Any help gratefully received.
A comment often made about plastic recycling in, (I would suggest), a rather disparaging tone, is that it is not recycling but downcycling.
Which seems dismissive of the recycling program and is wrong as it does not apply to all forms of plastic recycling
So what is downcycling?
The term down-cycling is applied to a recycled product that is not as structurally strong as the original product as made from virgin materials.
This downcycled material can
only be used to make a different product
or has to be mixed with virgin materials before it can be reused to remake the original product
Paper for example; the fibres in paper degrade as they are recycled so it goes from writing paper to loo roll, by way of newspapers. Cotton too. The recycled fiber is of shorter and harder to spin so it needs to mixed with virgin cotton fibers to improve yarn strengths before it can be reused.
This is true of plastic that is is mechanically recycled. The plastic gets weaker. One example of plastic down-cycling chain is as follows
virgin PET bottle to fleece or carpet
fleece or carpet fibers to plastic lumber
plastic lumber to landfill though manufacturers claim that plastic lumber can be recycled again..
But why call it downcycling?
You may think I am being picky but I think that the name has negative connotations. Down-cycling suggests that the products created by recycling are moving down some kind of linear scale. And if this is so, then toilet paper has a lesser value then writing paper. I beg to differ. Try wiping your bum with Basildon Bond.
Applying the term downcycling to the process of plastic recycling as outlined above, seems even more counterintuitive. If you consider that a bottle has a lifespan of months, a fleece has a life span of years, a carpet decades and plastic lumber hundreds of years, it seems more like upcycling to me. The base material may not be as strong, it may may even need to be mixed with virgin plastic, but it is being used far more sensibly.
Using the term downcycling to describe this process diminishes an essential and valuable practice that results in products with proven use whether it’s toilet paper or carpets. Or have I got it all wrong?
The New Recycling
Just to remind you, not all recycled plastic is “down cycled” and closed loop plastic recycling is already being offered by a number of companies. For example “We take discarded soft drinks and water bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and milk bottles made from high density polyethylene (HDPE) and recycle them back into food-grade plastic. The resulting rPET and rHDPE is then used to make new bottles and food packaging.”
Plus some of the new synthetic fibres can be recycled as the same fabric with no loss of quality almost indefinitely. Patagonia is promoting one such closed loop fabric recycling scheme.
Then there are the associated technologies that turn plastic waste back into oil. While you might argue that is not recycling, you would be hard pushed to call it down cycling.
Did you know that petroleum-derived hexane may be used to harvest your vegetable oil? No me neither but here’s how.
Extraction
Vegetable oil comes from plant components, nuts, seeds, or fruits, but typically seeds.
Oil from plants is can be obtained either chemically with the use of solvents or mechanically (often calledcrushing” or “pressing).
Solvent extraction
Most commercially produced oils are solvent extracted. This involves a chemical solvent like the petroleum-derived hexane and heat up to 500 degrees. Once the oil is dissolved, the solvent is removed by distillation.
This technique is used for most of the “newer” oils such as soybean and cannola oils. Many of these products do not give up their oil easily, it has to be forced from them.
Hexane is a colorless flammable liquid, C6H14, derived from the fractional distillation of petroleum.
It is classified as an air pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and as a neurotoxin by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It’s unclear how much hexane remains in the food after processing
Testing by Swiss scientists found no detectable levels but independent testing commissioned by the nonprofit Cornucopia Institute found hexane residues in soy oil.
The process recovers 99% of the oil but to get rid of the hexane, the oil is heated to a high temperature.
Also the high temperatures used in this process can and do change the chemical structure of oils. Many argue this reduces or even completely destroys the flavour of many delicate oils.
Mechanical The oi is squeezed or pressed out of the vegetable matter in a variety of ways;
Screw press, a large screw based mechanism in a housing. As it turns it increases the pressure and crushes the oils out of the seeds Ram press uses a mechanise piston in a cylinder that rams out the oil. Ram presses are generally more efficient than screw presses.
Expeller-pressing
Industrial machines for extracting oil mechanically are call expellers. They squeeze the oil out of the raw materials, under high pressure, in a single step. As the raw material is pressed, friction causes it to heat up and can sometimes exceed temperatures of 120°F (49°C). The amount of heat produced is important as heat can change the chemical structure of the oil. Wikkipedia
Cold Pressed Oils
Cold pressing tries to avoid the problems of heat. In this process the nuts, seeds, or fruits from which the oil is being harvested are ground into an even paste.
This is slowly stirred till the oil to separates from the solids.Then pressure is applied,(either with a machine or in the traditional way, with a stone) forcing the oil out.
N.B The friction caused by the pressure will increase the temperature and manufacturers must keep it within a certain degree range to be able to claim that the oil is cold pressed. This varies the world over
European Union cold pressed oil must never exceeds a certain temperature which varies depending on the source material, but is usually between 80° to 120°F (27° to 49°C).
In the United States, labeling is not as regulated, so consumers generally need to contact companies directly to enquire as to their manufacturing process.
Many people believe that cold pressed oil has a superior flavor.
Next
The extracted oil may now be purified, refined or chemically altered. More of that to come.
More
Go back to theoil index to find out about the plastic free oils and butters we use
Methane is a short-lived climate pollutant with significant climate warming potential.
Methane gas, or biogas, is released when organic material breaks down. But only when organic materials are so compacted there is no oxygen they break down anaerobically and produce methane.
This is why landfill sites produce methane and compost heaps do not
“Rotting stuff in a landfill undergoes anaerobic decomposition and produces methane. A compost pile undergoes aerobic decomposition and requires oxygen (O2) for the process to work. Because it is exposed to oxygen it produces CO2 (carbon dioxide) instead of methane.”
Cow farts are also made of methane.
Global methane emissions from landfill are estimated to be between 30 and 70 million tonnes each year. Most of this landfill methane currently comes from developed countries, where the levels of waste tend to be highest.
Over a 20 year period, one ton of methane causes 72 times more warming than one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Plants and animals are organic everything else is inorganic
Inorganic things are made from chemicals. Chemicals are also found in organic things too.
Confused yet?
All matter contains chemicals – either single chemicals, such as pure water or oxygen or a mixture of chemicals – such as shampoos.
Elemental chemical composition of the average adult human body. Six elements oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus account for 99% of the mass of the human body.
Chemicals are made from atoms and can be identified from the elements in the periodic charts
Some chemicals biodegrade – others do not.
Some chemicals occur naturally others are man made.
There are many new man made chemicals. Chemicals are also being combined a new and different ways with unknown consequences.
Chemophobia
The irrational fear of chemicals – usually a fear of man-made chemicals. Rational Wiki “the line between natural and unnatural chemicals is a blurred one, or even totally non-existent. Many industrially important chemicals are produced via natural (biological) processes, such as fermentation to produce ethanol and monosodium glutamate, or extracted from plants and bacteria, such as caffeine extracted from coffee beans. Equally, these substances can be synthesised in a lab and purified in the same way. Despite absolutely no detectable differences between purified natural products and their synthesised counterparts, chemophobia postulates that the “artificial” one is worse.”
Plastic & Chemicals – Concerns
Some of the chemicals used to make plastic have not been passed as fit for human consumption. More worrying still they leach from plastic into us. Other plastics like PVC will, when burnt, release dioxin one of the most powerful carcinogens known. Plastic particles attract persistent organic Pollutants (POPs). POPs are a small set of toxic chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods and accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals. Bottom feeders eat the plastic pellets and so the POPs enter the food chain.
Early warning signs of endocrine disruption in adult fish from the ingestion of polyethylene with and without sorbed chemical pollutants from the marine ... Read More
Perfluorochemicals (PFCs) are a family of man-made chemicals. They have been around since the 1950s. They include perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS; ... Read More
The first stage in plastic production, the polymerisation of raw material. Then substances such as fillers and chemicals (sometimes called ... Read More
So, is it safe to burn plastic? Well most plastics don't burn easily - it melts and bubbles. It will burn eventually ... Read More
N.B.
I have no wish to add to the massive amounts of misinformation out there.
Please note I am no chemist, I know nothing of the sciences. Any information here has been gleaned from the unreliable Google Mines and filtered through my total ignorance. I think it’s correct. If It’s not please do tell me.
It is the latter that makes glass environmentally challenging
Carbon costs of glass compared to plastic
a PET (a thermoplastic polymer resin) jar versus a glass one uses twice as much abiotic material (minerals and fossil fuel) to produce and 17 times more water (predominantly from cooling power plants) and produces five times the greenhouse gas emissions. Lucy Seigal writing in the Guardian
But start transporting glass and the figures change
Some calculate this could be as much as 2 tonnes of CO2, per 1 tonne of glass, when transport of such a heavy product is factored in. All this gives glass an Embodied Energy of about 12.7 MJ/kg. (By comparison aluminum is 170 (!!), cement 5.6 and kiln dried sawn softwood 3.4). Treehugger
The weight of three main packaging choices for beverages have big impact on truckload size and thus fuel use.
“For a 335 ml container, the aluminum can is the featherweight at 11 g. The middleweight PET bottle weighs 24 g, while the heavyweight champ of the drink container world, the glass bottle, weighs a comparatively colossal 200 g.
The additional 176-plus grams holds a sizable environmental punch, as fewer bottles can be loaded onto trucks due to weight limits, meaning more trips, and a heavier load uses more fuel. In a German study, researchers calculate that a recycled glass bottle could be the cause of 20 per cent more greenhouse gas than a virgin aluminum can due to its added weight on a cross-country truck journey.
Recycling
Glass can be recycled indefinitely and into the same product over and over again. Glass lemonade bottles can be made into glass lemonade bottles.
Every tonne of glass saves 225 kg of carbon dioxide.
Plastics degrade during the recycling process. They cannot be made into like for like products (though that is changing), but they can be made into other things. P.E.T. bottles can become fleeces for example.
LCA studies show that the level of benefits refillables have over single use systems is dependent on a number of key factors, e.g. capture rates, transport distances and recycling rates. This stresses the need to view refillables on a case-by-case basis and not simply to promote the wholesale use of refillables irrespective of circumstance.
End User Issues
Glass is also heavy for the shopper. It can be hard work lugging all those jars home. Heavier products are more difficult to manipulate. The elderly and infirm can find glass jars and bottles too bulky to manipulate safely.
Plastic is much lighter and easier to grasp. Glass is slippery.
And of course when it does slip from your trembling hands it can smash in nasty sharp potentially dangerous pieces.
But glass is inert. It does not leach chemicals whereas plastic does. Some consider this to be a potential health hazard.
Many claim that food tastes better when stored in glass. Possibly because there are no leaching chemicals.
Pollution
Plastic disposable items can easily end up as litter. Because plastic doesn’t biodegrade this is litter with a lifespan of centuries. Plastic waste is damaging the environment and is now a huge ecological threat.
Conclusions
The general consensus seems to be that glass is environmentally better than plastic but only if it doesn’t have to travel too far.
This is an area where you want to do your own research and decide what level of protection you need. I do not use antiseptic or disinfectants because I don’t do surgery on my kitchen table or have a low immune system. I keep stuff clean and it seems to work. BUT this is a subject about which I know little. This is my understanding of it. I strongly advise you to do your own research. Here goes…..
Microbes
The world is full of microbes – micro-organisms – or germs. “Microbes are single-cell organisms so tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle. They are the oldest form of life on earth. Microbe fossils date back more than 3.5 billion years to a time when the Earth was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point, hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth. Without microbes, we couldn’t eat or breathe.Without us, they’d probably be just fine.” Which is maybe why we seem determined to wipe them out. Microbes are everywhere. Inside you outside you swarming all over that keyboard you just touched to type in that fantastically appreciative comment.
They can be divided into four main groups – bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. Some are good such as the composting microbes, some are bad such as the pneumonia germs, some just bumble about doing what ever it is they do in their teeny tiny world. “By and large, the vast majority of the microbes on this planet are not those that make us sick. We have only scratched the surface to what microbes are out there, and more of them are harmless or even beneficial to us,” Says a scientist.
Kill THEM!!!!!!
But still we want them dead. And here’s how.
Antiseptics & Disinfectants
What are they and now are they different
Antiseptics are antimicrobial substances that slow or stop the growth of micro-organisms (germs)
They are used on living tissues and cells on external surfaces of the body and help prevent infections. Though they are antiseptics they are often called skin disinfectants,
Antibiotics destroy micro-organisms inside the body, NHS website says…Antibiotics are used to treat or prevent some types of bacterial infection. They work by killing bacteria or preventing them from reproducing and spreading. Antibiotics aren’t effective against viral infections, such as the common cold, flu, most coughs and sore throats.
Disinfectants destroy microorganisms which infect nonliving objects.
You would use an antiseptic to clean your hands, a disinfectant to clean your breadboard and an antibiotic to kill pneumonia Wikkipedia tells us that Some antiseptics are true germicides, capable of destroying microbes (bacteriocidal), while others are bacteriostatic and only prevent or inhibit their growth. Antibacterials are antiseptics that have the proven ability to act against bacteria. Antiseptics are not antibiotics.
Using Antiseptics and Disinfectants
This is not meant as advice I am just relating my personal choices. I never use disinfectants or antiseptics. I clean with soap and bicarbonate ( which is mildly antiseptic but not as good as vinegar).
Most Common Uses
Disinfecting The Home
Food preparation, kitchens and bathrooms are the obvious places for disinfectants. You don’t want bad germs in your food. I do the obvious things like wash my hands before eating and after I have touched anything dirty. I keep cooked and uncooked food separate. I don’t eat raw meat. I store food in clean conditions. I wash the chopping board if I have used it for meat before I use it for anything else. I have two boards that I use when preparing food. I clean fruit and veg before eating. For all of this I use soap and hot water. soap and a good scrub. I don’t think think that anything else is necessary. , Also disinfectants kill all microbes, the good the bad the stuff we don’t know what it does yet. Which is unessecary and possibly harmful. There are arguments that living in a sterile atmosphere lowers resistance to infection as the body has not built up any resistance. Clean not sterile is my mantra.
We need to talk about vinegar…..
Commercial disinfectants are extremely effective. Green alternatives are billed as kinder less harmful. They are certainly less harmful to the microbes because they don’t work as well.
Vinegar & Essentail Oils Vinegar is the much touted disinfectant of choice for the plastic free. It is about 5% acetic acid. It’s the acid that kills bacteria and viruses, most probably by denaturing (chemically changing) the proteins and fats that make-up these nasties. It is good but not as effective as common commercial disinfectants. Vinegar will not kill salmonella, “which can transfer from raw meat to chopping boards and onto other foods to give us food poisoning.” Ammonia, baking soda, vinegar, Borax, “are not registered with EPA and should not be used for disinfecting because they are ineffective against S. aureus.
Hydrogen peroxide can also be used The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer. It can kill salmonella. Research published by the Journal of Food and Science in 2003 showed effective results of using hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate apples and melons that were infected with strains of E.coli. Essentail Oils – there is even less evidence for efface of essential oils and they take a lot of resources to produce.
Cleaning A Wound
For a long time hydrogen peroxide was used as an antiseptic on open wounds and grazes. Now many recommend against it saying it also kills off healthy tissue and beneficial bacteria. In short using any antiseptics on an open wound is an area of medical controversy.
“In clinical practice, antiseptics are broadly used for both intact skin and wounds, although concerns are raised based upon their effect on human cells and wound healing. Opinions are conflicting. Some authors strongly disapprove the use of antiseptics in open wounds.[6-8] On the other hand, others believe antiseptics have a role in wound care, and their use may favor wound healing clinically.[9,10]
Web MD claim that cool running water “is the best treatments for common wounds, and that you should rinse the wound for at least five minutes to remove it of debris, dirt, or anything else that may be in there. The water will clean the wound out well enough for your body to take over without harming the still living tissue around the wound.“
I don’t get many wounds and when I do, I don’t use antiseptics. Most cuts and scrapes seems to clear up with out infection – even when travelling in some of the dirtier places. Again, not a recommendation just an observation.
Skin Disinfectants ( Antiseptics)
Removing bacteria from the skin is done to prevent the spread of disease. The area of skin you need to keep cleanest is your hand which carry microbes from place to place by touch.
Soap
The easiest way to disinfect the skin is to wash with soap and water. But don’t bother with anti bacterial soaps. “Washing your hands is extremely important for preventing the spread of infectious illness, especially at critical points like after using the toilet, changing the baby, or handling raw foods. But consumers can’t assume that antibacterial soaps are better for this than other soaps.”
Soap doesn’t kill bacteria but removes it .
“harmless and harmful microbes stick to the oil your hands naturally produce, and, absent removal, willingly hitch a ride until they reach their ultimate destination (inside of you or somebody else) where they can in some cases wreak havoc…. [washing hands]… for at least 20 or more seconds at a time, is a highly effective way of removing bacteria despite the fact that the bacteria doesn’t die, but is simply flushed away when you rinse (or wiped off on a towel).”
Alchohol
If you have no soap and water or that is not appropriate you can try alcohol. Both ethanol or ethyl alcohol and isopropyl alcohol, or isopropanol can be used as antisceptics and have similar effects. However ethanol or ethyl alcohol is the stuff that makes you drunk isopropyl alcohol, or isopropanol (also known as rubbing alchohol or surgical spirit) is made from propene derived from fossil fuels and water.You can read more about it here
If you want a petroleum free product use ethyl alcohol.
ethyl alcohol.
Can be used as a skin disinfectant. It effective against a wide range of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi, and kills most bacteria, fungi, and many viruses on the hands and skin.
It is commonly used as skin antiseptics, often in the form of wipes Wise geek
It is
effective against a wide range of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi,
kills most bacteria, fungi, and many viruses on the hands and skin
is commonly used as skin antiseptics, often in the form of wipes or gels, and for disinfecting surfaces
Its main main effect on microorganisms seems to be to coagulate essential proteins, rendering them ineffective, and causing cell death or inhibiting reproduction.
It may also have a dehydrating effect and may interfere with the functioning of cell membranes. Wise geek
Mouth & Mouthwashes
Now this I do use. I have a troublesome wisdom tooth that occasionally flares up. I can keep it at bay with a rigorous tooth cleaning regime. When it is bad I use a salt mouthwash. And I have used hydrogen peroxide which seems to work.
Sodium chloride (salt) solution can be used as a mildly antiseptic mouthwash.
Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a mouth gargle The Merck Manuals recommended diluting the 3% hydrogen peroxide 50 percent with water, but suggest it as a rinse and part of a treatment for trench mouth, for example. The FDA has approved 3% solutions of hydrogen peroxide for use as a mouthwash. Most sources said to use it only for a short time, however, such as part of a treatment of a mouth infection. A report from Well-Connected (written or edited by physicians at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) recommended against extended use, saying that overuse may actually damage cells and soften tooth surfaces. We were not able to find any authoritative information about hydrogen peroxide and canker sores.
Hydrogen peroxide may be amongst the better options.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer. It can kill salmonella.
Research published by the Journal of Food and Science in 2003 showed effective results of using hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate apples and melons that were infected with strains of E.coli.
You can use of hydrogen peroxide is to bleach hair. The concentrations are between 3% and 6%.
It can be used to clean blood stains out of clothes and brighten colours but do be careful it doesnt actually leave bleach marks.
DISCLAIMER
Absolutely no animal testing
The information in this blog is for guidance only. None of the recipes or tips in this blog have not been tested on anyone other than me and some fearless chums. I strongly advise you do your own research and proceed very carefully. Be aware of the risks of listening to someone who
N.B. lines changes, products get removed. For more information why not ask the Plastic Is Rubbish FB group for updates. They are a great source of tidbits, personal experience and the latest news. Why not join them and share the plastic free love x
Do not mix up your alcohols. This is not a warning of the type “wine after beer makes you feel queer” but an explanation of some rather confusing product names.
There are two kinds of alcohol
Ethyl alcohol – also known as booze
Isopropyl alcohol, or isopropanol (also known as rubbing alchohol or surgical spirit)
Ethyl alcohol
is a colourless volatile flammable liquid which is the intoxicating constituent of wine, beer, spirits, and other drinks,
It is produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeasts.
It is a one of the oldest recreational drugs used by humans.
Its structural formula, CH3CH2OH, is often abbreviated as C2H5OH, C2H6O or EtOH.
Isopropyl alcohol, or isopropanol (also known as rubbing alchohol or surgical spirit) is made from propene derived from fossil fuels (oil) and water. You can read more about it here
Ethyl alcohol
Uses include
The ones that don’t really concern us – as a fuel, an industrial solvent, preservative for biological specimens fuel., a solvent in the manufacture of varnishes and perfumes.
From a plastic free perspective it can be used as a
Short alcohols are what chemists call Amphiphilic; they interact favourably with both polar and non-polar things.
So if you add a bunch of alcohol to your grease the alcohol starts mixing with it. It mixes with it all over (because it is amphiphilic), but one of the important ways it mixes is by getting in between the long fatty chains. This helps liquefy the grease because the long fatty chains packing together is what makes grease a solid; if you stick something small in between the long grease chains they effectively melt (similar to plasticizing agents in polymers).
So why not use ONLY alcohol? Because while alcohol interacts favourably with all of the grease, it can’t actually dissolve much of it on a weight of grease per volume alcohol basis. You can dissolve (note this is not the correct technical term, but is serviceable for us) much, much more fat into water with soap. From Reddit
Buy
you can buy pure Ethanol from eBay. This is 95% alcohol. Do not drink it. Keep it out of the way of children ( which includes daft teenagers). It must be used carefully. Then there is the issue of packaging. It will probably come in a plastic bottle and plastic packaging.
Then you have to consider the additives. Denatured, or industrial, alcohol is ethanol mixed with unpleasant additives making it undrinkable. Obviously you cannot use this to make essences flavourings and tinctures.
The other option is to buy the highest proof booze you can find.
What Is Proof
Alcohol proof is a measure of the content of ethanol (alcohol) in an alcoholic beverage. The term was originally used in the United Kingdom and was equal to about 1.75 times the alcohol by volume (ABV). The UK now uses the ABV standard instead of alcohol proof. Alcohol proof – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The proof then comes out to be about 1.75 times the alcohol by volume percentage. So when alcohol is described as 100% proof it works out at roughly 50% actual ethanol (alcohol) to water.
100% Alchohol
So forget proof lets go for percent – is it possible to get 100% alcohol? Apparently not. This webpage explains why
The highest proof alcohol you can buy is Everclear, at 190 proof. That’s nothing! Let’s get together and make an alcohol that’s 200 proof! Except we can’t possibly do that. There’s a physical limit to how pure alcohol can actually get, and we’ll tell you why.
Difference between ethanol and vodka Ethanol is ~96% ethanol, 4% water. Vodka around 40% alcohol to 60% water.
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Incineration is to dispose of waste materials by burning them. The end results are heat, ash and gases.
High-temperature waste treatment systems are described as “thermal treatment”.
Incinerating reduces the need for landfill but does not eliminate it. It reduces the soid mass of waste by 80–85% . The reamaining ashes still have to be disposed of.
A dump truck drops the municipal waste into a warehouse-sized pit. Then a giant claw (much like one that picks up loot in an arcade game) grabs nearly a truckload of garbage and dumps it into an incinerator.
The incinerator is initially fired up with gas or other combustible material.
The process is then sustained by the waste itself. Complete waste combustion requires a temperature of 850º C for at least two seconds but most plants raise it to higher temperatures to reduce organic substances containing chlorine. Flue gases are then sent to scrubbers which remove all dangerous chemicals from them. To reduce dioxin in the chimneys where they are normally formed, cooling systems are introduced in the chimneys. Chimneys are required to be at least 9 meters above existing structures.
Technology developed in Europe mixes the waste at temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat then makes steam, which runs a turbine and produces electricity.
Pathogens and toxins can be destroyed by high temperatures making incineration a very good choice for certain kinds of waste.
Unlike landfill there is no release of methane. Every ton of MSW incinerated, prevents about one ton of carbon dioxide equivalents from being released to the atmosphere.
The leachates that are produced in landfills by waste are totally eliminated.
By reducing waste it reduces the pressure on landfill space.
As for carbon dioxide—the big class of emissions that isn’t yet regulated—WTE actually performs quite well compared with other methods of electricity generation. On its face, WTE appears to be very carbon-intensive. The EPA reports that incinerating garbage releases 2,988 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour of electricity produced. That compares unfavorably with coal (2,249 pounds/megawatt hour) and natural gas (1,135 pounds/megawatt hour). But most of the stuff burned in WTE processes—such as paper, food, wood, and other stuff created of biomass—would have released the CO2 embedded in it over time, as “part of the Earth’s natural carbon cycle.” As a result, the EPA notes, only about one-third of the CO2 emissions associated with waste-to-energy can be ascribed to fossil fuels, i.e., burning the coal or natural gas necessary to incinerate the garbage. In other words, WTE really only produces 986 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. “So we’re roughly equivalent to natural gas, and half of coal,” Michaels says. “But coal and natural gas don’t manage solid waste.”
However not all good news….
The ashes are toxic and so need further treatment. As such they were cause for concern however “Ash from modern incinerators is vitrified at temperatures of 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) to 1,100 °C (2,010 °F), reducing the leachability and toxicity of residue. As a result, special landfills are generally no longer required for incinerator ash from municipal waste streams”
The gases too need to be “cleaned” of pollutants before they are dispersed into the atmosphere. proponents of the technology claim that the flue scrubbers are up to the job while many others feel there is cause for concern.
Waste To Energy Systems
The heat created when incinerating the waste is used to make electricity which seems like a good idea.
It is important to remember that waste to energy systems do not make money or even cover the cost of waste incineration but they do offset it.
The plants are very expensive to build and once built need a lot of fuel (waste) to run them. They need to be kept running. This means that alternatives forms of waste disposal like recycling are no longer promoted.
Mandatory service area: Spokane County / 430,000 ratepayers Type of contract: Full service/Operate Wheelabrator / Waste Management Ownership: City of Spokane Financing ($110 million): Revenue Bonds – Mandatory debt to entire County
Department of Ecology Grant ($60 million) Start-up: 1991 Expenses and Revenues for 2009: Cost of Operation $17.2 million ($62 per ton) Cost of Ash Disposal $4.1 million ($47 per ton) Cost of Debt $9 million TOTAL COSTS $30.3 million Electricity Revenue $11.4 million Materials Recovery $0.1 million NET COST OF OPERATIONS$18.8million ($68 per ton)
Refuse Combustion:
Operation: 24-hours per day, 7 days per week Process Lines: 2 @ 400 tons-per-day Plant maximum daily capacity: 800 tons Average thru-put: 720 tons per day (365 days per year) Feed system: 2 overhead refuse cranes with ram feeder Grate design: Von Roll reciprocating Combustion temperature: 2500° F Auxiliary fuel: Natural gas Waste weight reduction: 65% Annual Greenhouse Gas Production 600,000,000 Pounds CO2 CO2 per MWH 4480 pounds of total CO2 per Megawatt Hour:
1580 pounds of fossil CO2 / MWh plus,
2900 pounds of bio CO2 / MWh BTU values:
Garbage = 4,800/pound
Coal = 12,000/pound
Plastic = 14,000/pound
Tires = 16,000/pound
The Friends Of The Earth worries about the waste of resources. The Following was taken from the website
Resource efficiency: Incineration wastes valuable resources such as metals, plastics, wood or biodegradable materials that could otherwise be salvaged through recycling. Every tonne of incinerated materials has to be extracted and processed again, increasing environmental damage and the European economy’s dependence on expensive imports. More energy is saved through recycling than is extracted by burning most waste
Climate change: Incineration produces greenhouse gas emissions – a typical incinerator converting waste to electricity produces around 33 percent more fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide than a gas-fired power station. In contrast, recycling saves greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding the need to extract and process primary resources.
Jobs: Recycling creates jobs. Recycling 10,000 tonnes of waste creates up to 250 jobs, compared to 20 to 40 jobs if the waste is incinerated, and about 10 if it is landfilled.
Laura Haight, senior environmental associate at New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), says that if the petition passes, waste will take incentives away from more sustainable technologies like wind and solar. She also says that presenting the issue as though incineration offsets landfill emissions is the wrong approach.
“In framing this whole debate as incineration versus landfills, they’re pushing the needle back 20 years,” said Haight. “Twenty years ago, people used to say we need to do more recycling; now we’re talking about more burying or burning. No, we need to be doing more recycling.”
Haight points out that more energy is saved by reusing materials instead of destroying them. Also, rather than being burned, biomass could be composted and used for energy recovery, she said.
Dirt, stains and even rusts are all known as soils in the cleaning world. That is as in soiled rather than the brown stuff worms eat. Cleaning is the removal soil. Again forget about spades!
Soils fall into 2 categories, organic and inorganic
Organic soils such as fat, grease, protein like blood, and carbohydrate. I dont know what carbohydrate soil is – any one else? Mold, yeast and bacteria, motor oil, axle grease, cutting oils and other petroleum soils.
Inorganic soils such rust, scale, hard water deposits and minerals such as sand, silt and clay.
They require different cleaning solutions
Organic soils are usually best moved using alkaline cleaners.
Inorganic soils prefer an acid cleaner.
Minerals are often cleaned with general purpose cleaners.
Alkaline & Acid Solutions
Wether a solution is acid or alkaline is down to how much how much hydrogen is in a solution.
Acidity is measured in pH or the power of hydrogen.
It is shown in number form on the pH scale of 1 to 14.
Confusingly the lower the number the higher the hydrogen. The higher the hydrogen the more acidic the solution.
pH 1 = lots of hydrogen (H+) ions in solution
pH 14 = hydroxyl ions (OH–) in solution
If you know the nature of your soil you know how to clean it.
Alkaline cleaners
Alkaline cleaners work well because they emulsify grease. Fatty acids are normally insoluble which is why they cannot be cleaned using water alone. The alkaline breaks down fat making them dispersable in water.
They also coat the dirt with negatively charged hydroxide ions which means the dirt particles repel each other. So rather than massing together in a big greasy clump they remain suspended in solution so again can be rinsed off.
“Tthe alkali will break down the fats making the residue soluble or dispersible in water. It’s called saponification: alkalis turn fats into soap which is why a greasy floor gets as slippery as a bag of arseholes when you put an alkali on it. While we rely on thermal disinfection in dish washers the fact is the alkali in a proper machine wash turns microbial cell walls into soap.”
Acidic Cleaners
Do not cut through grease. Vinegar the acid much touted as a cleaning fluid will be no good on your greasy stains because Vinegar is polar, while oils are nonpolar, so they don’t interact well together. (You have seen how oil and vinegar in salad dressing separate from each other — this is because of their opposite polarity.)
Inorganic soils include grit, salt, rust and limescale.
They are best cleaned using acids
