Chemistry behind your Chemicals: Part 1 - Acid or Base?

 Tile Cleaner, Granite Cleaner, Quartz Cleaner, Steel Cleaner, Glass Cleaner, Wood Cleaner, Leather Cleaner…All can be found in any Walmart cleaning aisle. Are ALL of these necessary? What chemicals are doing the work here, and how does it affect the different marketing of each product?

With so many different products to choose from, it can be hard to know what additional products are necessary to clean well and at what point you’re a victim of clever marketing. 

Most of the different names, categories, and strength of products can be broken down into groups. These groups can be broken down further and classified by potency of different chemicals. 

Typical cleaning products work by being basic or acidic. The more basic or acidic the chemical, the more potent it is. Both categories essentially work the same; breaking down compounds and amalgams that accumulate to become the dirt/grime we observe around an unclean home. The differences come in what materials and surfaces they can damage, or conversely, leave unclean. 

Acids work incredibly well on surfaces like porcelain, acrylic, and plastic. However, they can damage many different surfaces with finishes such as granite, certain tile, hardwood, and almost all types of fabrics. Not all acids are created the same though, and not every product has the same concentration of the same chemicals. An example of this is the retailers’ marketing discrepancies between commercial and industrial, many products use the same chemical profile, but the industrial variants are much more concentrated. Multiple bathroom products contain sulfuric acid, but most contain much lower concentrations than that found in a product line like drain cleaners. Rust remover also contains sulfuric acid, but not as much is needed in a cleaner not used in water. Drain cleaners are instantly diluted by the water in the drains so they need to be much more concentrated. Most products that are used where acidic products should not be, are basic. 

Many people use these different categories seamlessly. For example, the most used fabric spray in America, Lysol, is a base and is subsequently why it’s marketed as a fabric spray. Using Lysol to try and clean a bathtub would be wasteful and perform poorly.