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Good Question: Hydrogen Peroxide ... Is it Bad for the Environment?

4-16-2008hydro.jpg

Reader SFGail had this question yesterday. She was commenting on our medicine cabinet post:

I recently did the same purge, and came up with 5 bottles of hydrogen peroxide (?!) What to do with those?

Yeah ... what do you do with 5 bottle of hydrogen peroxide?

Well, according to reader pvett (and the EPA), hydrogen peroxide "breaks down rapidly in the environment to oxygen and water."

So -- you could leave the caps off for awhile and safely dump them. Orrr ... according to greenlivingtips.com, there are a lot of other things you could do with them -- use hydrogen peroxide to sterilize your toothbrush .... or kill mold in your bathroom.

Have you ever used hydrogen peroxide around the house for cleaning or anything other than first aid?


image via timsamoff; sxc.hu

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Good Questions, safe disposal, hydrogen peroxide

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Comments (8)

I would keep them around for cleaning out clogged drains. First, pour 1/2 cup of baking soda, follow with the hydrogen peroxide and then cover.

Also, it can be used as moutwash or for brushing teeth. It has a whitening effect and is not harsh.

There are so many uses it seems wasteful to throw it out.

posted by saradanger on 2008-04-16 12:09:52
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Oh, thank goodness. I did some research and decided it was ok to pour it down the drain, but was embarrassed to admit it. Glad to hear your research pointed in the same direction. We are moving, and so there was no way those bottles were coming with us!

posted by SFGail on 2008-04-16 13:15:32
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Maybe I'm a psycho-germophobe, but I keep my toothbrush (brush side down) in a cup of hydrogen peroxide, which I change every few days. Those bacteria that fly all around when you flush? They don't get on my toothbrush that way. You can also use it to flush out your ears if they get a little waxy.

posted by Jezebella on 2008-04-16 17:32:40
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My high school chemistry teacher also said that hydrogen peroxide that doesn't fizz when you pour it on a cut or down the drain should probably be tossed out, because the "cleaning" power is gone.

I use hydrogen peroxide for skin scrapes, rubbing alcohol to clean and disinfect bathroom fixtures, and baking soda/white vinegar for drains.

posted by gquaker on 2008-04-17 12:15:57
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Hydrogen peroxide is also great for lifting blood stains. It's gentle on most fabrics, even delicates. It also eats away at the scummy stuff that collects around the crevices of my shower drain. I've also used it to soak and whiten shoelaces.

posted by TexanNewYorker on 2008-04-17 16:25:59
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Many years ago we used it in a laundry to bleach out the scortch (from a too hot iron) when we were ironing white dress shirts. It saved washing them all over again

posted by Minervauk on 2008-04-18 08:14:58
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I use hydrogen peroxide to help keep my kitchen sink extra clean and hopefully just a little more germ-free. After scrubbing it down with baking soda and rinsing, I give it a final spritz with the hydrogen p. All natural and super-cheap kitchen cleaning and disinfecting!

I also did a wee bit of recycling by using a rinsed spray-top nozzle from a former bottle of natural cleaning spray on the hydrogen peroxide bottle. Since most bottle tops are a standard size, all I had to do was trim the spray-top tube so that it now fits perfectly in the bottle of hp.

posted by beelzabean on 2008-04-18 14:22:33
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Hydrogen peroxide also decomposes into water over time (even sealed in a bottle), so if they're well past the expiration date it's doubtful that there's much peroxide even left to use.

posted by ChristopherB on 2008-04-21 14:32:10
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