It’s a fair question. How can a biocide kill bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses and yet be safe for people, plants and pets?
SNiPER, PopUP CleanUP’s disinfectant chemical of choice, uses chlorine dioxide as its main agent. According to chemicalsafetyfacts.org, chlorine dioxide has many uses. It’s added to drinking water to prevent people from getting sick (and is especially effective in combatting Giardia); it’s used as an antimicrobial agent to wash fruits and vegetables; paper processing plants employ it to bleach paper; most notably to us, it sterilizes medical equipment in hospitals and laboratories.
It also kills pathogens.
How does it work?
Chlorine dioxide attacks and penetrates the cell wall of the microorganism, and prevents protein synthesis, interrupting the metabolic processes of the bacteria, virus, or parasite. It essentially mechanically disrupts the cell.
But humans and animals have cells too, don’t they?
Yes, but herein lies the rub: “the selectivity between humans or animals and microbes is not based on their different biochemistry, but on their different size.”
In other words, chlorine dioxide is size selective. It only takes a few milliseconds to kill a microbe, but because it’s a volatile compound, chlorine dioxide does not stay together and active long enough to penetrate deeply into the surface of the human or animal’s skin and do any significant damage. In other words, before the human or animal can absorb the chlorine dioxide, the chemical tends to evaporate.
That said, it’s not a beverage. Please don’t go out for the Darwin awards and decide to drink it. Ingested, it’s toxic and definitely not good for your internal organs.
If your home or work space needs disinfection to prevent surface spreading of Covid or any other pathogens during this flu season, PopUP CleanUP has the cleaning solutions and expertise to serve you.
