Everything I Never Learned in Chemistry

The drain in my bathroom sink is in an almost constant state of being slow. Periodically I dump a bunch of Drano down there and it clears up for a week or two, but then it starts backing up again, draining slowly and leaving behind an ever so charming layer of toothpaste scum behind.

This happens regularly. I live alone and people almost never come over, so I’m pretty okay with leaving the toothpaste scum in the sink for a few days, only cleaning it out when I start to get pissed off about how gross I am as a person. This doesn’t happen too often, so when I do clean out the sink I have to go after it with some powerful cleaners. The one that does the best job is the powdered bleach cleaner. I sprinkle that stuff in the sink like parmesan cheese - the more, the better - and get to scrubbing. Within moments the sink is back to looking like it is maintained by a civilized human who cares about cleaning.

One time the slow drain and the disgusting scum coating had both pissed me off enough to take action at the same time. First, I used the Drano, dumping a healthy amount down the drain, letting it do it’s thing, and then flushing it out with hot water. With the drain back to operational status, I then cleaned the sink with the trusty bleach powder.

Using Drano is always a stinky, chemical-y smelling affair, but this particular time adding the bleach powder into the mix created an alarmingly pungent odor. It was strong enough that I looked at the back of the Drano bottle and the bleach can to see if I had made a fatal mistake combining the two products. Luckily it was fine, but I was quite alarmed to see, in teeny tiny print on both containers, warnings about mixing each product with other cleaning products, specifically ammonia.

I took to Google to find out why. Turns out that combining bleach and ammonia creates toxic gases called chloramines. Ammonia is a cleaning product itself, but is also found in some glass cleaners, paint, and, of course, urine. So using bleach to clean up urine is not a good idea. This alarmed me. If confronted with a puddle of urine I would likely attack it with something containing bleach, hoping to kill the smell. Turns out doing so could produce a smell that would kill, or at least incapacitate, me.

Scrolling further I also learned that one should not mix bleach with products containing acid. Doing so gives off chlorine gas; high enough levels of chlorine gas will kill you. Many regular household products include acid such as vinegar, toilet bowl cleaners, drain cleaners, dishwasher detergent, et cetera.

So it seems I lucked out that the combination of cleaners I was using didn’t turn out to be toxic. One thing if for sure: I never gave the possibility of a chemical reaction a second’s thought until after I had used both products and my apartment started to smell funny. I certainly didn’t waste time reading the tiny printed warnings on the back of the containers before flinging chemicals about my home. That part is obviously my fault - if something comes with a warning, you should probably read the warning before you use it. But even so I choose to blame my chemistry class for not preparing me for the dangers of household cleaning.

I took chemistry in my sophomore year of high school. My high school labeled the different levels of classes in the following way: “CP” meant College Prep and this was the first level of any given subject, intended for those who needed to take the class, but maybe needed less of a challenge. “Honors” was the second level of difficulty and while they covered the same material as the CP classes, Honors classes were more in depth, more work, more challenging. The highest level of class you would take was “AP” or Advanced Placement. These classes were not available for all subjects and typically AP courses were for only juniors and seniors.

I do not remember if I was in CP or Honors Chemistry, but I think it was Honors because I definitely struggled through that class. Biology and physics made more sense to me: I could see physics happening and I was walking biology. But chemistry was just different. Even when I could actually see a chemical reaction happening, I couldn’t understand why it was happening or what the details were on the atomic level that made the reaction happen. It was just beyond me. The primary thing I remember from chemistry is the kid behind me in class making fun of our teacher, who was the quintessential science nerd and was clearly not made for dealing with rude and entitled high school students.

If at any point during chemistry my teacher had started a class by saying, “Today I am going to teach you the things that you shouldn’t do because you might die,” he would have had my rapt attention immediately. But no, we never did that. Instead it was all “draw this molecule” and “light this Bunsen burner” and “stare at the periodic table for hours on end.” Nothing stuck about the periodic table, mind you. Not too long ago I asked my stepdad if there was anything that existed on earth that wasn’t made up of elements from the periodic table. Clearly trying not to laugh too hard at me, he looked at me with a kind of pity and simply said, “No.” I mean, that’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Because while my chemistry teacher probably mentioned that, it did not stick in my brain.

Of course it is possible that my teacher did mention that certain household products should never be combined. He almost certainly taught us to be careful with chemicals and always read warning labels. But I was 15 and…well, that’s it. I was 15 and therefore couldn’t be bothered to care about the world on a chemical level. That’s not my teacher’s fault.

Still it concerns me that it is so easy to make one little mistake and essentially poison yourself in your own home and nobody is talking about it. Shouldn’t it be common knowledge to not mix bleach and ammonia, common enough that we make little references to it? Something like, “You’re going to go into a lion’s enclosure at the zoo wearing a meat dress? That sounds about as smart as combining bleach and ammonia in a small enclosed space!”

At the very least they could have mentioned it in Breaking Bad. The amount of times Walter White goes off on some intricate detail about chemistry it certainly would not have felt out of place for him to mention potential household poisonings. What a missed opportunity to educate the audience on something other than meth, cartels, and money laundering.

The moral of the story is a two-parter. First, maybe do not rely on high school chemistry (or television shows) as your lone source of chemical knowledge, especially not when it’s been twenty-two years since you set foot in a chemistry classroom. Second, and most assuredly more important, READ THE DAMN LABEL.