Bathroom and Limescale Cleaner

Details

In most Indian bathrooms the problem is not dirt, it is hardness. The chalky white crust on a tap, the cloudy film that will not come off a shower panel, the blocked jets on a shower head and the dull patch on a tile are all calcium and magnesium carbonate, and an ordinary bathroom cleaner does nothing to any of them because it has no acid in it. This one does, and both acids are named with their percentages: citric acid 5 percent and lactic acid 2 percent, at a measured pH 2.6, giving a descaling capacity of 50 mg of calcium carbonate per millilitre of product, measured by weighing a marble chip before and after a 30 minute immersion. The most useful sentence on this page is not a claim, though. It is a warning. This dissolves calcium carbonate, and marble, kota stone, limestone and terrazzo are calcium carbonate. A splash on a marble sill or a kota floor etches it in seconds, the etch is permanent, and no polish or sealer brings the shine back. Granite is more resistant but many stones sold as granite in India are not, so the safe rule is that no natural stone in a bathroom gets this.

• Acids named and quantified: citric acid 5 percent, lactic acid 2 percent. No hydrochloric acid, no sulphuric acid, no sulphamic acid
• Measured pH 2.6 at 27 C. Descaling capacity 50 mg calcium carbonate per ml, which is a little below our toilet cleaner's 57 because this one is a spray meant for a chrome tap rather than a ceramic pan
• Surfactants 2.5 percent, both named: sodium C12-14 alkyl polyglucoside 1.8 percent and decyl glucoside 0.7 percent, which carry away the soap scum and body oil the acid has released
• Preserved with potassium sorbate 0.2 percent, correct below pH 6, because acid-tolerant yeasts and moulds grow perfectly well at pH 2.6 and an unpreserved acid spray is not a cleaner claim, it is an oversight
• Fragrance-free. Nothing from the EU list of 26 declarable allergens is present to declare
• No chlorine bleach, no phosphate, no quats, no synthetic dye, no MIT or CMIT
• Spray, wait 5 minutes, wipe and rinse. For a furred shower head, unscrew it and soak it in a mug of the spray for 30 minutes, and 30 minutes is the limit rather than a suggestion, because on any chip in the chrome plating the acid will work its way underneath
• Also clears the grey soap film in a wash basin and on a floor tile, and the fog on a shower glass panel, which is scale rather than dirt and is why scrubbing it never worked
• Never mix it with bleach. Acid plus hypochlorite releases chlorine gas. Never mix it with anything else
• Gloves for a long session, and open the window. It is a pH 2.6 acid on your hands for as long as you are working
• No germ-kill claim. A claim needs a named organism, a stated contact time and a test such as EN 13697 at an accredited laboratory, and we have run none
• At about 10 ml a bathroom it is 50 uses from the trigger bottle at Rs 4.18, and 100 from the 1 litre refill at Rs 3.39. The refill fills the 500 ml bottle twice