I tried to clean a stubborn stain in a toilet once. I used a toilet bowl cleaner and it just wasn’t doing the job. In a fit of pique and stupidity (pique stupidity) I took a bottle of bleach and dumped it on the stain.
I knew something went wrong the moment I saw the bubbling. And the weird green stuff coming from the toilet in what looked for all the world like stranded smoke. But green.
So I hastily looked at the toiler bowl cleaner ingredients in the huge warning label that specifically said not to mix it with bleach. A quick formula translation in my head later:
NaClO+2HCl→Cl2+H2O+NaCl
Fuck.
I fled the bathroom and ran to the balcony as chlorine gas filled the apartment’s lower half, spilling out of windows as it filled to that height, following me out the balcony door and bathing my legs up to my knees in chlorine as it spilled over the edge, with me leaning as far as I could into fresh air so I wouldn’t breathe it in.
After what seemed like forever, I was able to hazard going back inside. I then opened the front door and set fans in each room to blow toward the hall where fans blew the air out the front door.
Two good things happened from this.
The toilet had never looked cleaner. It was like it had been freshly installed straight from the factory.
There were no living vermin in that apartment. From the smallest dust mite on up.
Ever since then, I don’t mix household chemicals. Ever. Even if I “know” it’s safe.
Mixing household cleaners.
I tried to clean a stubborn stain in a toilet once. I used a toilet bowl cleaner and it just wasn’t doing the job. In a fit of pique and stupidity (pique stupidity) I took a bottle of bleach and dumped it on the stain.
I knew something went wrong the moment I saw the bubbling. And the weird green stuff coming from the toilet in what looked for all the world like stranded smoke. But green.
So I hastily looked at the toiler bowl cleaner ingredients in the huge warning label that specifically said not to mix it with bleach. A quick formula translation in my head later:
NaClO+2HCl→Cl2+H2O+NaCl
Fuck.
I fled the bathroom and ran to the balcony as chlorine gas filled the apartment’s lower half, spilling out of windows as it filled to that height, following me out the balcony door and bathing my legs up to my knees in chlorine as it spilled over the edge, with me leaning as far as I could into fresh air so I wouldn’t breathe it in.
After what seemed like forever, I was able to hazard going back inside. I then opened the front door and set fans in each room to blow toward the hall where fans blew the air out the front door.
Two good things happened from this.
The toilet had never looked cleaner. It was like it had been freshly installed straight from the factory.
There were no living vermin in that apartment. From the smallest dust mite on up.
Ever since then, I don’t mix household chemicals. Ever. Even if I “know” it’s safe.