Well? Assuming I dilute the bleach properly before using it, and rinse the toothbrush before using it again, is it safe, or will I melt my teeth out of my head or something?
There should be no danger of harming yourself with bleach. It rinses off easily, and I’ve known of dishes being washed with it with no ill effect.
The bleach might weaken the bristles. Since toothbrushes do wear out (the bristles get weak from use) and they’re cheap, I would think that normally it makes more sense to replace one rather than to bleach it clean.
You might be able to, and hydrogen peroxide might even be safer than actual bleach. But why? Toothbrushes go for as little as two per dollar.
Perfectly safe.
Unscented household bleach can be used at 2 drop to a quart of water for disinfection of drinking water, so any residue on the toothbrush is not going to be an issue.
Because I really like this particular type (I’m oddly picky about toothbrushes), and it costs five bucks. I have bleach and a two-week old toothbrush that I have used while in the throes of a nasty cold. A couple minutes soaking in bleach is much easier than finding a ride off-campus to a store and putting down another five bucks for a toothbrush (I don’t have a car, and it’s about thirty degree too cold to be bicycling/walking weather here).
Thanks - I had no idea you could make water drinkable with bleach. Learn something new every day.
I am not being smarmy, but if you are drinking water, odds are it was sanitized with bleach at some point (stuff out of the tap).
I pop mine in the dishwasher every couple of weeks.
Y’know, about twenty minutes after I posted, I had one of those ‘click’ moments, where I remembered a high school science unit we did on water filtration, both the outgoing and incoming stuff. I distinctly recall reading something about there being trace amounts of good ol’ sodium hypochlorate added to water. I’m digging deep into my 11th-grade chem class here, but IIRC, by the time the water gets to you, if you were to measure for bleach you probably wouldn’t find any (easily) measurable amount, but it is added at some point.
Where I live, they add chloramine-T to the water. It used to be bleach, but it does evaporate out in a couple of days, and they found that cryptosporidium & giardiara were breeding in water in the long pipes which lead from the source to the city. So now they add chloramine, which is, yes, chlorine and ammonia somehow bonded together, much more stable than bleach. You have to boil it out. If I’m not mistaken, the “T” stands for toluene. * Bon apetit!*