Multi-Surface Spray

Details

The one bottle that lives on the kitchen counter, for the daily film on a dining table, a fridge door, a switchboard, a study desk, a chair back and the outside of an appliance. Spray, wipe, done, with no rinse on most surfaces. It is also the right place in this range to deal with the sentence that defines the whole category. Kills 99.9 percent of germs is the most repeated claim in household cleaning and it is unfalsifiable as written, because it names no organism and states no contact time, and without both there is nothing to test and nothing to disprove. A real claim has four parts. It names the organisms, for instance Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538 and Escherichia coli ATCC 10536. It states the contact time, say five minutes at 20 C. It names the test method and the soiling load, such as EN 1276 in suspension or EN 13697 on a hard non-porous surface. And it names the accredited laboratory that ran it. In India there is a fifth part: a household product claiming to destroy bacteria is making a disinfectant claim, and the mainstream ones are quaternary ammonium formulations to IS 14364 or phenolics to IS 1061, which BIS grades by germicidal strength. We have run no such test and hold no such registration, so this spray makes no such claim, and it is a good deal more useful to say that plainly than to print a percentage nobody can check.

• Actives 3.2 percent, all three named: sodium C12-14 alkyl polyglucoside 2.0 percent, decyl glucoside 0.8 percent, C12-15 alcohol ethoxylate 7 EO at 0.4 percent
• Measured pH 7.6 at 27 C, so it will not etch a marble dining top, cloud acrylic, or strip a wax or oil finish off wood
• No quaternary ammonium compounds, and the absence has a cost worth naming. A quat leaves a residual antimicrobial film on the surface, which is precisely why the market uses them and precisely why we do not want one on a table where food is served and a child eats
• No chlorine bleach, no phosphate, no synthetic dye, no MIT or CMIT, no triclosan
• Preserved with phenoxyethanol at 0.5 percent, named rather than left as the word preservative
• Fragrance is sweet orange oil at 0.25 percent, and its one declarable allergen is quantified: limonene 0.23 percent. Orange oil is about ninety-five percent limonene, so a natural fragrance at this level carries a real allergen figure, and natural has never meant hypoallergenic
• Safe on laminate, glass, marble, steel, plastic, painted wall, sealed wood and acrylic, and suitable on a high-chair tray or a dining table followed by a damp cloth
• Keep the trigger head. The 1 litre refill pouch fills the 500 ml bottle twice
• At about 2 ml a wipe-down it is 250 uses from the trigger bottle at Rs 0.80, and 500 from the refill at Rs 0.64