In 1785, in the Paris neighborhood of Javel, chemist Claude Louis Berthollet discovered a substance with incredible bleaching properties. Thanks to it any cloth or paper could be discolored to previously impossible levels. I call her eau de javel (javel water), in honor of the place where it had been discovered. Today we know it as bleach or sodium chlorite.
There are few international agencies that place bleach as one of the keys to modern society and that has contributed to reducing mortality. It is still curious that those who discovered a process to create one of the most important compounds of humanity used it exclusively to bleach tissues.
Bleach as a disinfectant
Like most discoveries by accident, Claude Louis Berthollet was not looking for a bactericide when he found the process to obtain bleach. In his investigation he passed chlorine through caustic potash (now we use electrolysis, but the first voltaic battery dates back to 1800). After this fact he discovered a substance with an unprecedented bleaching power.
But this doctor and chemist could not appreciate the hygienic and antibacterial power of bleach , unlike his fellow Pierre-François Percy.
Pierre did know how to see the potential of bleach, and introduced a cleaning procedure at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris with this new invention. It was a risk for his professional career that the hospital gave him permission to experiment in this way, especially with a product that according to reports of the time "smelled strange."
The result was incredible, and it was seen a few months after applying diluted bleach in water on metal floors and beds. Cleaning with bleach reduced infection mortality by 54% between 1801 and 1851, the year after which many French, Swiss, German and Italian institutions and hospitals used this baptized as l'eau de javel.
The Hotel-Dieu in Paris became the forerunner of the use of bleach in sanitation and hygiene. Photograph of 1867. Source: BHDV Of course, at that time I was not aware of how the bleach attacked the bacterial, viruses and fungi. It was only known that washing clothes and floors with that product, lives were saved. What they did, without knowing it, was to disinfect.
The use as a disinfectant was widespread at the end of the 19th century, when Luis Pasteur discovered that infections and disease transmission are due to the existence of microorganisms and showed that the javel water It was him most effective antiseptic for the eradication of disease-transmitting germs.
Bleach in water chlorination
Although the success in disinfecting medical environments (and many homes) in the late 19th century indicated that bleach had come to stay, it had not yet been done the most important discovery with this compound. That happened during a typhus epidemic in 1897 that swept through Kent County (southeast London).
Lye, used as a last resort so that the disease did not spread, proved to be a powerful, cheap and safe antiseptic. That year thousands of lives were saved in Kent, and since then billions around the world, thanks to the chlorination of water, which is what is called to dilute a few drops of bleach to make it drinkable.
Chlorination tank or contact tank with a capacity of 140 l / s for cleaning domestic wastewater. Source: simapag Potable or sanitized for the environment , since these types of treatments are also carried out for irrigation water or to return wastewater from our cities to nature.
Three years after this discovery, Drysdale Dakin began to investigate what happened when bleach was diluted in water and applied to the wounds of the soldiers. The success as an antiseptic was such that in World War I it was the most used, and even after a mass production there was a shortage. Today this is often used a lot by dentists.
What the bleach is doing for you without you knowing
Even if you don't use bleach on the floors of your house or to wash your clothes, bleach is helping you maintain health. Nowadays bleach is used in all hospitals, restaurants and swimming pools. 98% of drinking water in Western Europe depends on chlorination and allows us to safely drink about 400 million glasses of water every day.
WHO recommends its use throughout the planet , and not only in those places where drinking water is difficult to access or non-existent. Today it is known that drinking water has played a great role in our health, our quality of life and, therefore, in our life expectancy, doubling it in less than two centuries, and giving us about five more years of life expectancy for decade.
Evolution of life expectancy in Spain since 1910. Source: EL PAÍS In Spain, the Conejo bleach began to be commercialized in 1889 in the north, extending in less than a decade to the entire peninsula. Until then, life expectancy was around 40 years for women and 35 for men. Since the beginning of the century, and due to an increase in hygiene, life expectancy has tended to increase, without experts knowing what the limit is.
This bleach was originally represented by the drawing of a rabbit in its bottle, something that allowed to identify the product to a mostly illiterate population. This symbol has remained to this day.
Imagine today a world without bleach is inconceivable, and a setback in the face of disease and contagion. That is why WHO recommends maintaining hygiene throughout the day with bleach, either using it to disinfect our kitchen or in extreme cases of epidemic, to wash our hands.
Images | Lye rabbit on arrival in Spain, Colada
