Miracle Water Scam

This is the consequence of scientific ignorance: "Miracle Water".

It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it.

Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job.

The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water -- hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso -- the miracle liquid.

But, ah... when you electrolyze saltwater you get-- well, it's actually spelled out in the article:

It turns out that zapping salt water with low-voltage electricity creates a couple of powerful yet nontoxic cleaning agents. Sodium ions are converted into sodium hydroxide, an alkaline liquid that cleans and degreases like detergent, but without the scrubbing bubbles. Chloride ions become hypochlorous acid, a potent disinfectant known as acid water.

Yeah, that's right: for the cost of a $10,000 machine, you get highly diluted drain cleaner and weak bleach. Woohoo! You could make many, many gallons of it with a $3.00 bottle of Chlorox or Drano and water from your kitchen tap.

To be fair, this may be viable on a large commercial scale. Maybe. Depending on maintenance and operating costs. But it's no "miracle water." It's not water at all, in fact. Sure, it's "approved by US regulators." Why shouldn't it be? There's no law against selling someone a Rube Goldberg machine if they're ignorant enough to buy it.

That a bunch of uneducated housekeepers at a hotel are calling it miracle water doesn't particularly surprise or bother me. What does bother me is stuff like this:

A number of companies sell so-called ionizers for home use that can range from about $600 to more than $3,000. The alkaline water, proponents say, provides health benefits.

...and this:

Patrick Lucci, Electrolyzer's vice president of marketing, likes to bombard prospects with scientific studies then give 'em the old razzle-dazzle. He'll swig the processed salt water before he mops the floor with it.

"Try that with bleach," he said.

That's good, Pat; you just keep chugging diluted Drano. Perhaps you'll eventually run across a concentrated batch that turns your innards to green mush. If so, rest assured I'll cheerfully applaud your demise, as one less VP of Marketing in the universe is a Very Good Thing indeed. (The only thing better would be one less VP of HR, but I'm having a difficult time contriving a way to convince those particular Carbuncles on the Ass of Eternity to take a swig of drain cleaner... Well, I'll keep working on it; I love a challenge.)

For everyone else, continue as you have been: buy your drain opener and bleach for pennies an ounce at the market and leave the 'miracle water' machines to the chumps. Oh, and continue not drinking it as well, please. Unless you're a VP of HR, in which case-- bottoms up!

____

P.S. - A plea to parents: If they're even minimally capable of passing the courses, please please PLEASE make your children take at least one full year of both elective chemistry and elective physics when they're in high school. They'll probably hate it, but they'll be much less likely to pick up every bottle of snake oil that rolls down the stairs later in life.