Bleach Is Toxic, but Plenty of Americans Are Still Drinking It | Hacker News Reader

Bleach Is Toxic, but Plenty of Americans Are Still Drinking It

bloomberg.com

> In 2020, 4% of Americans reported drinking or gargling diluted bleach, according to a CDC poll conducted of about 500 online participants.

which is more likely:

- 1/25 people are knowingly, willingly drinking bleach

- 1/25 people answering online polls are trolls

Especially since drinking bleach is a somewhat common meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bleach-drinking

I hate to bring this information to the table but I have been recommended by two different people that live in Ohio that drinking a small amount of bleach in a tall glass of milk is a good way to pass a drug test you wouldn't otherwise pass.

There are absolutely people out there drinking bleach.

What the heck? No way that works is my fist assumption but guess can see how folks would try it.

It doesn't work.

My guess on why it spreads is the fact that false negatives are pretty common with cannabis tests, so someone that tried this method passed a test they shouldn't have and they attribute this to the bleach.

According to Wikipedia this is actually already ongoing since 2006.

I will second this too but in my case it was from a source in the military. The fact that they had a long career and used it to pass UAs repeatedly made me believe there may be some truth to it.

Isn't 4% the usual guess at the Lizardman Constant?

yes

Google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Nwr_jp...

A lot of ultralight hikers purify water with bleach in the field. I have a tiny bottle as a backup water purification method. So, I haven't yet but I have bleach put aside for drinking in the future.

https://americanhiking.org/resources/water-purification/

Why not just use iodine tablets?

Have to buy iodine tablets, bleach I have laying around.

Fair enough. Also does bleach stain your bottles/bladders?

You only need about a drop per liter or so, it's basically the same as city tap water, it doesn't appear to have a effect on Nalgene or smart water bottles, I don't own a bladder but it would probably be fine. It's only good for bacteria (and viruses but if you are worried about those id pack all your water in), parasites can survive bleach so you have to be careful what water source you use. I prefer the Sawyer filter but it's fine for a backup. The old school ultralight guys use it as a primary, you don't need a secondary because you can't really break bleach.

We keep bleach in our emergency supplies for the same reason. You need a high degree of dilution, which also implies a single gallon bottle of bleach can purify a very large amount of water (something like 10k galleons).

Sigh.

> One part sodium chlorite, a chemical disinfectant, and one part acid

This is not bleach. Bleach is sodium hypochlorite. Sodium chlorite can react with acids (under appropriate conditions, and as a non-chemist, finding a coherent description of those conditions is surprisingly difficult) to form chlorine dioxide.

Chlorine dioxide is a very useful chemical. You can put small amounts of it in water to kill microorganisms, and it is, in many respects, a dramatically better disinfectant than bleach. Here’s some for sale at an entirely legitimate store:

https://www.rei.com/product/736898/potable-aqua-chlorine-dio...

You can use it to make “elemental chlorine free” paper.

You can use it in the gas phase to deodorize or disinfect rooms! (But don’t breathe it!)

Drinking it in anything more than a tiny concentration left over from water disinfection seems like a mistake to me. Also, AIUI, the chemicals involved in making it can also form chlorate, which is not something you want to be drinking.

Sodium hypochlorite is a specific bleach, but there are numerous other compounds that are also in the class of "bleaches".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com