Vinegar is a household essential known to many. Just having vinegar at home means you’re ready to cook or clean—it does it all.
Katharina Zimmer, the author of this story, shared how she had an ongoing battle with the toilet in her apartment. No matter how much she scrubbed and cleaned, she couldn’t remove the limescale buildup inside the bowl. So she turned to Google in search of a solution. Not long after, she found a website recommending vinegar for cleaning. She decided to try pouring two tablespoons of concentrated vinegar into the toilet and let it sit for about 30 minutes. After scrubbing again, the limescale came off in an instant.
Since then, she’s been using vinegar regularly to clean stubborn stains—not just in the toilet, but also in the sink, kettle, and faucet. Just two tablespoons of vinegar is enough to break down tough mineral deposits.
But she began to wonder: can vinegar actually kill bacteria and germs? More importantly, is this product better for the environment and our health than conventional cleaning products?
Looking online, she found many eco-friendly cleaning articles that promoted vinegar as a safer alternative to “toxic” cleaning agents. And that seems reasonable—after all, vinegar is just fermented alcohol, and it’s used in many foods. The reason it can break down limescale so effectively is because of its main ingredient: acetic acid, which dissolves stubborn stains and residues However, vinegar can’t remove every type of stain. Eric Beckman, a chemical engineer and emeritus professor at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, explained that his colleagues tested vinegar against various bacteria, viruses, and disease-causing fungi. The results showed that vinegar can only kill certain types of microbes. That’s because regular vinegar isn’t concentrated enough. To effectively disinfect, it would require a much higher concentration (such as a teaspoon of vinegar mixed into a cleaning solution).
Increasing the concentration of vinegar means increasing the level of acetic acid, which can cause skin irritation. High concentrations of acetic acid can be especially dangerous if it comes into contact with the eyes.
As for environmental impact, vinegar generally poses little harm directly. However, there are indirect effects based on the source of the sugar used to produce it—whether from grapes, apples, grains, potatoes, or rice—all of which require agricultural resources. In particular, synthetic vinegar made from fossil fuels can have a more noticeable environmental footprint.
Nonetheless, vinegar remains a relatively eco-friendly product because it’s a simple substance that breaks down quickly in nature.
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