Toilet Bowl Cleaners

Why do toilet bowl cleaners advertise how much bacteria they are able to kill?

Who cares if their toilet bowl cleaner kills Staph? What were you planning to do anyway, drink soup from your toilet bowl?

Is it just marketing or is there a legitimate reason for killing bacteria in your toilet bowl? To me, it seems like a pointless exercise; I’m not going to be in direct contact with the surface - ever.

Splash! Oops.

These ads are intended to exploit peoples’ fear of germs. There doesn’t have to be a practical reason for the claim. All they care about is selling product, and they’re not above appealing to phobias in order to do it.

Algae likes to grow in toilet bowls. I sometimes get a fury ring around the water line. Then its time to get the brush and cleaner. Whatever is in the cleaner kills the algae for awhile.

There is a study which revealed that the cleanest area in the house is the toilet lid. Because we obsessively clean it. The most contaminated is the kitchen cloth - and bench. Bacteria heaven.

There is also a study (by some clever high school girls) that revealed toilet water is pristine and restaurant ice is pretty dirty stuff. Counter-intuitive but there it is.

Not in my bathroom, I assure you…

Cecil discusses.

Interesting…a few years back, a local bacteriologist did some testing of commonly-touched surfaces…it turned out that kitchens (faucet handles, sponges, towels) were unbelievably filthy. Also, it seems that making doorknobs and latches out of nice shiny stainless steel was a mistake-the old brass knobs were much cleaner (the copper in the brass kills bacteria).

Mythbusters also did an episode about this. The toilet bowl rim came out as relatively clean. The worst was the kitchen sponge.