It has been long established that your coke drink can double up as toilet cleaner that can leave your toilet spotless and stainless but is it really enough to clean your bathroom?
The trick behind this life hack is the acidity of the drink. Small amounts of phosphoric acid are added to the soda drinks to give it its tangy flavour.
To touch more on phosphoric acid, it is an important chemical that is used in industries, agriculture and home products. More common are their uses in the removal of rust, their use in processed food and in medical uses.
However, while this can be used as a quick fix for your bathroom, it should not permanently replace any toilet cleaners you are currently using.
A response by Coca Cola in their frequently asked question states that coke isn’t the most effective at killing germs and that it would be better to use a toilet cleaner as it is more targeted at removing stains while keeping germs away from our bathrooms.
Therefore, while reaching for your coke can seem like a convenient and effective fix for your bathroom, you should also be considering if it is doing enough to target the germs that we can’t see with our naked eye.
It has been found that the toilet bowl thrives with bacterial activity with 3.2 million bacteria found per square inch deep inside the toilet bowl. The average toilet seat has 295 bacteria per square inch and the flush handle or button has up to 93 bacteria per square inch.
Among these bacteria lives harmful germs that can have adverse effects on your health such as gastrointestinal viruses that can cause stomach ailments and enteric pathogens that can cause diarrhoea.
But all these can be avoided if you engage with good household hygiene practices. Cleaning with toilet cleaners would be one of them where the higher concentrations of active cleaning ingredients such as chlorine bleach are able to help in germ-killing.
The other active ingredients in the toilet cleaners would also be effective in getting rid of stains and grime, which is what coke is known to achieve with its use in the toilet.
To cut the story short, yes coke is a quick effective fix in cleaning your bathroom but it might not be the best permanent solution because of the high amounts of germs that lurk on the toilet bowl. Using a toilet cleaner would be best for upholding hygiene standards.
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