Advertisement
Lemons have enzymes and phytochemicals, and when they break down naturally in the environment, there are worms and maggots and such, which help. The pH may be balanced out at that point. Not enough research has gone into this yet. But you are talking about the very acidic elements in the environment, and some of them are human-made. Yes, we have had acid rain for many years, and that is a very serious problem. A healthy waterbody has a pH of 7.4. At 3.7, that is still 10,000 times more acidic than is healthy (the pH scale is trignometric).
That is why we need to use only alkalinic cleaning products. Baking soda is very alkaline, but the highest level I’ve found for it so far is 8.4, so it is 10 times more alkaline than a healthy environment. It should be used only when absolutely necessary. If people would think of themselves as living in a biodome and the effect of their individual actions, I really believe we could get more interest in healing our acidic environment.
When information is given out over the Internet, in books or even by word of mouth, it increases the ripple effect. One person’s idea can grow to 10,000 persons’ actions in a very short time. That is why we need to be cautious with what we pass forward and that it will not cause more harm to our environment.
There are several alkalinic cleaning products available that are made from vegetable sources. These we know are much more compatible with the environment that vinegar or baking soda. — CHERI, Longwood, Fla.
DEAR CHERI: I think you have been misinformed about the strength of consumer-grade white distilled vinegar. It does not have a pH of 1.7. My chemistry book informs me that gastric juice has an acidity of 1.6 to 1.8. Consumer-grade white distilled vinegar has a pH of between 2.5 and 3.5. For comparison: lemons have a pH of 2.1; soft drinks have a pH of 2 to 4, rainwater from a thunderstorm has a pH of 3.5 to 4.2.
The amount of vinegar you’d be sending into the environment by cleaning with it is fairly minimal. Also, vinegar is the natural result of fermentation, which happens in nature all the time — for instance, in my compost buckets. I suppose if you were using hundreds of gallons of vinegar and dumping them straight into a small pond, it might cause problems.
One of my technical advisers for “Organic Housekeeping” is a chemist who runs the sewage treatment plant for the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District. He hates chlorinated products such as toilet bowl cleaners and drain cleaners because they decimate his little microbial friends at the plant. He loves vinegar though, and if it’s good enough for Al, it’s good enough for me. Al’s mission in life is to protect Lake Superior, and he pursues his mission with his entire being: heart, soul and skinny, overworked body.
And vinegar is actually being used to bioremediate contaminated groundwater. (Using living organisms to clean up pollution is called bioremediation):
collected precipitate. Researchers with the Department of Energy have used G. sulfurreducens to remove 90 percent of the dissolved uranium from the groundwater around the nuclear weapons production site in Rifle Mill, Colo. G. sulferreducens occurs naturally in the soil — the researchers simply stimulated its growth by injecting vinegar into the groundwater.
The word vinegar comes from the French word that means “sour wine.” Vive le Vinaigre!
Many, many all-purpose household cleaners contain surfactants that are not entirely biodegradeable. The lowest impact cleaner, as far as discharge goes, is steam cleaning, but that, of course, uses electricity.
We are imperfect beings who live in an imperfect world. We all just have to do the best we can.
Send questions to ellen.sandbeck@gmail.com or Ask Ellen, 4781 Emerson Road, Duluth, MN 55803.
