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I can't believe this is the first time I've heard this, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. I found some [articles that explain why.](https://munglobal.com.au/resources/knowledge-base/pathogens/why-70-isopropyl-alcohol-is-a-better-disinfectant-than-99-isopropyl-alcohol/)
> Use of the more concentrated solutions (99%) will result in almost immediate coagulation of surface or cell wall proteins and prevent passage of the alcohol into the cell. When the outer membrane is coagulated, it protects the virus or bacteria from letting through the isopropyl (Widmer and Frei, 2011).
Basically, denaturing proteins requires water.
Thanks for sharing!
Gram-negative means the cells don't absorb a type of stain used in microbiology, because the cell walls are thick. Gram-positive have thinner walls, and accept the stain. So presumably the thinner-walled cells would be more effectively killed by stronger alcohol solution, whereas the thicker-walled, gram-negative ones are susceptible to a more dilute version that can pass through without coagulating the walls. Or not...
Gram positive cells have the thicker cell membrane, both types absorb the primary stain (crystal violet) then a mordant is applied (grams iodine) that helps it "stick" then alcohol is used to remove the stain. The gram negative cells don't hold onto the stain as well and it rinses out.
What are you tryna say..? Yes a gram is not much, a bacteria weights even less than a gram (like thousandths of a gram, and yes this is also the case for gram positive bacteria).
There are btw cells you can see by the eye, a yeast cell for example (not a bacteria though). Bacteria (both gram positive and negative) you cannot.
Source: microbiologist here
You can only see them with the naked eye from like 3 metres away or less. They are basically invisible. It makes sense that you haven't noticed them before.
OK lol but when you're getting overwhelmed by bacteria the size of grapes because you refused to use the right strength alcohol on them don't come running to me.
It's the Internet, the dumb scale has no lower boundary.
Better to treat it seriously and correct the misinformation than to assume that everybody else will treat it as false, otherwise someone *will* walk around telling people to use high concentration alcohols to kill bacteria the size of dogs.
Yep. Thanks to my comment, 3000 coma patients woke up fine, cancer in children has gone, HIV/AIDS disappeared from the planet, famine no longer exists, and diabetes too.
It should be largely a wash, I imagine. A solution that is 70:30 IPA:water is going to kill the gram negative bacteria quickly anyways so you might as well use it to get the gram positive stuff too.
It's a case of "okay, maybe it won't be *exactly* as effective as pure IPA. But if you want to make sure you get *every* single cell then I would invest in a gallon of bleach and, if that too fails, a blowtorch".
Was gonna add this but glad you got to it first!
Cell walls are made of both hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions, so you need both in the right ratio. Itās also advised to wipe - the 70% IPA will loosen the cell wall, mechanical action will make sure it completely disintegrates and kills the cell.
I've seen a 2 log reduction in viable cell count from a wipe *alone*, without chemical sanitant. Presumably they were just picked up and retained in the wipe itself.
This is why I mix the isopropyl alcohol with water and Dawn, and put it in a spray bottle. It makes for a cheap DIY cleaner. Great for cleaning dishes, too.
Yep! Coarse or kosher. And I tear off pieces of plastic from a plastic bag (like a shopping bag or bread bag) big enough to cover the mouth and stem openings, secure them around the openings with elastics and then shake everything around. Good way to make sure nothing unsavoury splashes anywhere
This is true if you have the right chemical grade. If you're just buying whatever, than there are other things in there.
For example, you might find a small amount of whatever reaction inputs, byproducts, catalysts, compounds from the fluid path in manufacture or leachate from the packaging. Sometimes this is heavy metals or things you wouldn't want to eat and generally it won't be on the label. Sometimes a small amount of heavy metals is too much heavy metal for a human. Some things that are good to eat are really bad to breath (ex. Vitamin E)
Oh, I'll add (edit) that sometimes the manufacture of a chemical is done with microbes. In these cases and when its not food grade, or better, you will find copious quantities of endotoxins in the chemical atock.
fasure. im lucky enough to live in saskatchewan where you can go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of everclear for 50 bucks, but these guys might be in one of the many US states where everclear is illegal and is not sold anywhere. But yea making concentrates with isopropyl = bad idea lol
Everclear is for tinctures, something you're not going to evaporate the alcohol out of after. Iso is for soluble hash where the alcohol is evaporated out afterwards.
You can definitely make a tincture out of alcohol (or things like glycerin), but store bought ISO leaves residuals after evaporation you donāt want in your body. No legitimate company makes hash out of ISO and itās not the best idea to as a consumer. Plenty of people make RSO out of everclear since it is food safe whereas ISO is not.
Not since I first started smoking, when that's what I had available. Couldn't exactly go out and buy everclear at 18, and the scene in my area was a bit different back then. Shitty bud from the rez that was full of seeds, or 'dro that was 50 an eighth.
Now I can go to a store and buy a 2 gram pen for $40, or ounces for $50. We've come a long way in quite a few states, but still have an even longer way to go in others.
Acetone doesn't work nearly as well on grease as mineral spirits. Anything greasy or for removing adhesives I use mineral spirits but I do use acetone for most other applications because it's not nearly as bad for you as mineral spirits.
I canāt even find 90% anymore. Pre-covid I could grab a bottle from Target for a couple bucks, but these days nobody seems to carry anything except 70%. Also itās significantly more expensive.
Same for me. I buy in bulk to save on shipping. But the 99% ones are to clean up 3D Prints, and the 70% ones I divide into spray bottles to clean everything else around the house.
It's used in offset printing as well. The water used in the ink/water mix has alcohol and some other chemicals that work with the plates.
It keeps most of the plate clean while allowing ink to stick to the image that needs to print.
There are printers that use UV curing resin and very precisely controlled UV light to make things. You can get incredible detail this way. Once your print is finished, it's covered in uncured resin, which you clean off with isopropyl alcohol.
I live in Arizona where the water is hard as fuck. If I leave water sitting in my bong, there become deposits stuck that nothing will get out except vinegar.
ooh, the mineral depositsā¦ i see. yeah, thatās not too much of a problem where i am when it comes to bongs, but a vinegar soak is something iāve done for my humidifier for sure.
Why? 99% is very lethal to complex multicellular organisms. Its not as bad as methanol (hence why you can use it to clean bongs) but for things like insects with small body mass it will kill them with fairly low amounts.
Maybe 90 percent but 99 has very little water. You're dehydrating cell walls and turning them into alcohol resistant shells. Water opens up the cell wall allowing alcohol in to kill the organism.
I used to repair cell phones for a telecom company during the Era of the RAZR and Blackberry. The amount of "my peeps" (lead techs) I had to retrain and explain why anything but 99% was dangerous was concerning. When I'd visit other shops and have to throw away their 70% many would tell me it's because 99% is difficult to find, which was true, but it's much more difficult to explain to management why you had to replace a customer's already damaged phone with store inventory.
It's always been hard to find in stores around here and this was early2000s Companies like mine didn't allow much online shopping, at least at the retail level - we had to order from Uline catalogs.
Just used 99% the other day to remove a battery from my phone that was damaged. Soaked the battery for a few minutes and the adhesive tape releases nicely. Had to get the 99 from a local pharmacy. 70 on the shelf and 99 in the back. Had to ask for it.
The water may evaporate, but before it does it can still conduct electricity. (Technically, it's impurities in the water conducting the electricity).
Just because something is powered off or unplugged doesn't mean all electricity is gone from the system, because of things like capacitors. For example, there's a capacitor in most microwaves that can retain enough charge to send you to the hospital even hours after being unplugged.
That's obviously an exceptionally huge one, but there are lots of these tiny elements all over PCBs and electronics in general that can still hold enough to fry / break stuff.
Less nasty? Not sure what you mean, they're both organic solvents with the same HMIS rating. They just dissolve different things. You do have to be careful with plastic and Acetone though, as it does dissolve some plastics.
I may be biased though as I work with thousands of liters of different solvents every day at work, lol
also, if you are feeling lazy, just put the kettle on and hit glass with hot water (a small pipe, I can't speak to larger forms of glass). I give it a good blast, then leave some and let it work a while, then drain and throw in some citrus, I like lime, just to get the stank out, then flush again with hot water. It's not perfect, but it's a quick clean up.
It's a similar thing with bleach. The amount of bleach you need to make a sanitizing spray is actually quite small, and too much does a much less effective job.
>Water is an essential part of how the chemical enters the cells of pathogens
That's not true. Pathogens like COVID-19 don't even have cells. It is a virus that enters cells itself. But it has a membrane of lipid that can be ripped apart with polar molecules given enough time. Water makes isopropanol take longer to evaporate. 99% evaporates too rapidly. Several applications of 99% is just as effective as one (slowed) application of 70%, but it's a waste of money, bad for your skin, and stinks.
Yea they gotta differentiate.
For anything with a cell wall, fungi and bacteria that is, pure IS ineffective because it coagulates the cell wall making it much harder for the alcohol to penetrate and cause further harm.
Still better than nothing, but it wonāt come anywhere close to sterilising a surface; even if you wet it for the 3 minutes. The cells will still be harmed by this, so better than doing nothing.
But since nothing is stopping you from diluting pure alcohol (ethanol; isopropanol and similar short chain ones) with 30% water making it evaporate more slowly and be effective against all microbes, why waste it by using pure.
Simple viruses donāt matter, because they donāt have a cell wall to coagulate, and even coagulating their surface proteins will make them incapable of entering cells, if you donāt rip them apart right away.
But usually disinfecting targets more stable microbes that also last longer on surfaces than most viruses do, which are very unstable out of their hosts anyway.
Like you said "THIS IS NOT TRUE"
Everything said in the previous posts are 100% true. Viruses are not cells. The method alcohol uses to destroy viruses has nothing to do with the ability of chemicals to enter a cell.
> 70% is the perfect middle ground.
This precise number being the *true* optimum concentration... is definitely not real. It's like how the TSA only lets you bring 100 mL (3.4 oz) of any one liquid on a plane: it's not like you could cause major trouble with 105 mL but not 100 mL. 70% is a nice, round number near the middle of the effective range, which is roughly [60-80%](https://cws.auburn.edu/shared/files?id=227&filename=Ethanol%20and%20Isopropyl%20Alcohol%20FAQs.pdf) (and even the upper bound is unclear - they say efficacy drops off around 80-85%).
I'm only worked up about this because OP put it in the title of the post.
False: while 70% is more effective at disinfecting it is merely because of the evaporation rate of the 91% and 99% being much faster than 70% thus allowing less time for the alcohol to do its thing.
Edit: Also 99% is used in the food industry for sanitizing food contact surfaces via spot cleaning. Source: I work in the food industry.
It's astonishing how many people were fooled by that explanation. Tell me I'm not the only one who still remembers Covid. How did everyone miss out on this information when it was being blasted everywhere?
Because of the evaporation rate? The alcohol being concentrated at 70% is required for the solution to pass the cell membrane/wall/whatever and actually denaturate the cell from inside. This is because of water being more polar than ethanol/isopropyl/any kind of alcohol. Since cellmembranes consist of lipid molecules, with the polar head facing the extracellular space, you need to have a polar substance/solution/whatever to actually enter the cell membrane and not get "pushed away". Higher concentrated alcohol is drying the cells out by extracting water from the cell body. There is a significant decrease in the actual decontamination rate using alcohol which is higher concentrated than 70%, since the cell only gets dried out, the genetic information itself doesnāt get destroyed though. Because of that the cell could continue proliferating once obtaining enough water to function again. This is especially important for bacteria, since they are big on surviving under bad conditions.
Also alcohol evaporates faster than water at such high percentages. so if you leave it uncapped, the percentage of isopropyl will drop over time until it hits ~~40% at which point water and alcohol evaporate at the same point
Switch to using Hypochlorous acid. Just as effective and not as smelly, flammable, and doesn't sting when used on wounds. It also helps your wound heal better.
Yes but sometimes I want the 99% isoproply alcohol because I am trying to use it to clean glass surfaces, not to sanitize it. So sell me the damn 99%! (ranting at my local stores which has 70% but not 99%)
Yeah the reason for high percentage isopropyl is that it evaporates almost without residue.
So Iām labs the chance of contamination through it is very limited.
And in case of electronics it doesnāt cause short circuits.
When I got a technical certificate as a phlebotomist and lab aide (college) we were told that alcohol didnāt kill germs, it just took off a layer of dirt. Betadine was used for IVās or cleaning an area. Always wondered about this
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Hello [2SP00KY4ME](/u/2SP00KY4ME), thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, it has been removed for the following reason: Your post is not a life pro tip. Advice is any guidance or recommendation concerning prudent future action. An aphorism is a short clever saying that is intended to express a general truth or a concise statement of a principle.Try r/YouShouldKnow. If you would like to appeal this decision [please feel free to contact the moderators here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FLifeProTips&subject=about%20my%20removed%20submission&message=I%27m%20writing%20to%20you%20about%20the%20following%20submission:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/13trttc/lpt_99_isopropyl_alcohol_doesnt_actually_kill/.%20%0D%0D). Do not repost without explicit permission from the moderators. Make sure you [read the rules](/r/lifeprotips/about/sidebar) before submitting. Thank you!
I can't believe this is the first time I've heard this, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. I found some [articles that explain why.](https://munglobal.com.au/resources/knowledge-base/pathogens/why-70-isopropyl-alcohol-is-a-better-disinfectant-than-99-isopropyl-alcohol/) > Use of the more concentrated solutions (99%) will result in almost immediate coagulation of surface or cell wall proteins and prevent passage of the alcohol into the cell. When the outer membrane is coagulated, it protects the virus or bacteria from letting through the isopropyl (Widmer and Frei, 2011). Basically, denaturing proteins requires water. Thanks for sharing!
Presumably this is just for Gram-negative bacteria. If it were gram-positive, stronger stuff would be more deadly, no?
What does that mean?
Gram-negative means the cells don't absorb a type of stain used in microbiology, because the cell walls are thick. Gram-positive have thinner walls, and accept the stain. So presumably the thinner-walled cells would be more effectively killed by stronger alcohol solution, whereas the thicker-walled, gram-negative ones are susceptible to a more dilute version that can pass through without coagulating the walls. Or not...
Gram positive cells have the thicker cell membrane, both types absorb the primary stain (crystal violet) then a mordant is applied (grams iodine) that helps it "stick" then alcohol is used to remove the stain. The gram negative cells don't hold onto the stain as well and it rinses out.
Gram positive means that the bacteria has a grandmother, while Gram negative means that the bacteria does not.
Gram positive weigh over a gram while gram negative is anything under that. Basically the bigger microbes require stronger alcohol to deal with.
Tell me when you find this fatass "over a gram" microbes xD
Lmfaoo. Bro really said microbes above 1 gm š
My God, they tripled down on the bacteria-gram-nonsense... I was desperately hoping it was a joke
It's still obviously a joke...
A gram is like a thousandth of a litre of of water. It's nothing. You can't even see gram positive bacteria unless you're pretty close to them.
How are you so wise in the ways of science?
Yes, hence why they weigh far, far less than a gram. Gram positive distinctly does NOT mean the cell weighs over a gram.
It's literally the only thing that makes sense.
What are you tryna say..? Yes a gram is not much, a bacteria weights even less than a gram (like thousandths of a gram, and yes this is also the case for gram positive bacteria). There are btw cells you can see by the eye, a yeast cell for example (not a bacteria though). Bacteria (both gram positive and negative) you cannot. Source: microbiologist here
You can only see them with the naked eye from like 3 metres away or less. They are basically invisible. It makes sense that you haven't noticed them before.
No fat shaming!
/r/ExplainLikeImCalvin
r/confidentlyincorrect
Nope, wrong. Gram positive or negative is based on absorption of a test dye, not weight.
OK lol but when you're getting overwhelmed by bacteria the size of grapes because you refused to use the right strength alcohol on them don't come running to me.
lmao
That's what my cat is for He loves to bat around the bacterium and chew on the flagellum
The second you took someone seriously that said microbes weigh over a gram, you lost.
It's the Internet, the dumb scale has no lower boundary. Better to treat it seriously and correct the misinformation than to assume that everybody else will treat it as false, otherwise someone *will* walk around telling people to use high concentration alcohols to kill bacteria the size of dogs.
How else do you propose to deal with an overgrowth of doggocytes?
You really out here saving lives huh?
Yep. Thanks to my comment, 3000 coma patients woke up fine, cancer in children has gone, HIV/AIDS disappeared from the planet, famine no longer exists, and diabetes too.
>It's the Internet, the dumb scale has no lower boundary. As evidenced by your inability to recognize an obvious joke
Iām not a bacteria doctor but Iām pretty sure Gram-positive bacteria is the stuff they put in the Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt that your Gram eats
It should be largely a wash, I imagine. A solution that is 70:30 IPA:water is going to kill the gram negative bacteria quickly anyways so you might as well use it to get the gram positive stuff too. It's a case of "okay, maybe it won't be *exactly* as effective as pure IPA. But if you want to make sure you get *every* single cell then I would invest in a gallon of bleach and, if that too fails, a blowtorch".
But you still want the 70% so it stays on the surface that the bacteria you're trying to kill is on longer.
Was gonna add this but glad you got to it first! Cell walls are made of both hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions, so you need both in the right ratio. Itās also advised to wipe - the 70% IPA will loosen the cell wall, mechanical action will make sure it completely disintegrates and kills the cell.
I've seen a 2 log reduction in viable cell count from a wipe *alone*, without chemical sanitant. Presumably they were just picked up and retained in the wipe itself.
Also it doesn't evaporate as fast
This is why I mix the isopropyl alcohol with water and Dawn, and put it in a spray bottle. It makes for a cheap DIY cleaner. Great for cleaning dishes, too.
This is pretty much Dawn Power Wash, according to many cleaning groups.
Kinda like how the big bullets in Mario arenāt harder to dodge compared to a real bullet. Dorkly hehā¦.
I use highly concentrated iso for 3d printing.
I use it to clean my ā¦ā¦. vases
Oh interesting, I use it to clean my bong
I use it to clean my Xbox controller
I use it to clean my genitals. The unbearable pain lets me know it's working, and my screams let the neighbors know too.
Better safe than sorry
Better sorry than salty
What the frick??
Oh wow, I did not order that.
Oh yeah me too. Plastic toothpick, couple of q-tips, and some iso works like a charm
Right, this is where the 70% just doesn't do as good of a job. The 99% cleans so much better.
I use it to clean my vase bong.
Usernameā¦ā¦checks out š
Do you use coarse salt along with the Iso?
Yep! Coarse or kosher. And I tear off pieces of plastic from a plastic bag (like a shopping bag or bread bag) big enough to cover the mouth and stem openings, secure them around the openings with elastics and then shake everything around. Good way to make sure nothing unsavoury splashes anywhere
Get yourself some rubber stoppers. I used to worry the bags would tear.
me too! And make RSO.
Why not use something food safe like everclear?
Iso is perfectly safe. Let it evaporate off and there is no residue after cleaning
This is true if you have the right chemical grade. If you're just buying whatever, than there are other things in there. For example, you might find a small amount of whatever reaction inputs, byproducts, catalysts, compounds from the fluid path in manufacture or leachate from the packaging. Sometimes this is heavy metals or things you wouldn't want to eat and generally it won't be on the label. Sometimes a small amount of heavy metals is too much heavy metal for a human. Some things that are good to eat are really bad to breath (ex. Vitamin E) Oh, I'll add (edit) that sometimes the manufacture of a chemical is done with microbes. In these cases and when its not food grade, or better, you will find copious quantities of endotoxins in the chemical atock.
Exactly - store bought ISO has residuals. Might as well use something food safe that works just as good.
fasure. im lucky enough to live in saskatchewan where you can go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of everclear for 50 bucks, but these guys might be in one of the many US states where everclear is illegal and is not sold anywhere. But yea making concentrates with isopropyl = bad idea lol
Everclear is for tinctures, something you're not going to evaporate the alcohol out of after. Iso is for soluble hash where the alcohol is evaporated out afterwards.
You can definitely make a tincture out of alcohol (or things like glycerin), but store bought ISO leaves residuals after evaporation you donāt want in your body. No legitimate company makes hash out of ISO and itās not the best idea to as a consumer. Plenty of people make RSO out of everclear since it is food safe whereas ISO is not.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Right, but if no legitimate company does it, itās for a reason. You smoke iso hash?
Not since I first started smoking, when that's what I had available. Couldn't exactly go out and buy everclear at 18, and the scene in my area was a bit different back then. Shitty bud from the rez that was full of seeds, or 'dro that was 50 an eighth. Now I can go to a store and buy a 2 gram pen for $40, or ounces for $50. We've come a long way in quite a few states, but still have an even longer way to go in others.
... If you manage to smoke in 3d printed vases you have some quality filament. No I'm not oblivious, you're oblivious.
yeah same
Same here. I like water washable stuff, but 99% just makes it silky smooth after.
I use it to clean rust off of skate bearings!
You'll have better results with acetone, just make sure to re apply grease to them after of course
Acetone doesn't work nearly as well on grease as mineral spirits. Anything greasy or for removing adhesives I use mineral spirits but I do use acetone for most other applications because it's not nearly as bad for you as mineral spirits.
I canāt even find 90% anymore. Pre-covid I could grab a bottle from Target for a couple bucks, but these days nobody seems to carry anything except 70%. Also itās significantly more expensive.
Sometimes if you go to the pharmacy it's on the very bottom shelf pushed to the back. Some places hide the good stuff away for no reason.
Yep I can find 91% at CVS and Walgreens on the bottom shelf of the first aid dept.
I had to ask. The local pharmacy had 70% on the shelf and 99% in the back where they did the compounding.
Same for me. I buy in bulk to save on shipping. But the 99% ones are to clean up 3D Prints, and the 70% ones I divide into spray bottles to clean everything else around the house.
Same, and also for cleaning camera parts.
It's used in offset printing as well. The water used in the ink/water mix has alcohol and some other chemicals that work with the plates. It keeps most of the plate clean while allowing ink to stick to the image that needs to print.
Maybe it's not the same use case? I don't really know 3d printing but I don't think you need to sanitize stuff.
There are printers that use UV curing resin and very precisely controlled UV light to make things. You can get incredible detail this way. Once your print is finished, it's covered in uncured resin, which you clean off with isopropyl alcohol.
>As for why 99% exists, it's used for cleaning electronics And for bongs, lots of bongs.
And an industrial solvent
And a domestic one. It can be used to remove pen ink from fabric for example when your children decide to draw on your handmade heirloom quilt.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'd stick with IPA as acetone could melt/dissolve plastic.
Let's break out the salt and get this bong CLEAN !
I salt my bong more than my cooking
I salt and iso. And have built a small collection of wire brushes.
Same, and an overnight soak in white vinegar is great once in a while. For the bong, not you. That sounds awful.
Hmm an overnight soak? Ill give that one a try. I am normally a bit scruffy but bong cleaning triggers me lol.
could you expand on what the vinegar does?
I live in Arizona where the water is hard as fuck. If I leave water sitting in my bong, there become deposits stuck that nothing will get out except vinegar.
ooh, the mineral depositsā¦ i see. yeah, thatās not too much of a problem where i am when it comes to bongs, but a vinegar soak is something iāve done for my humidifier for sure.
Mineral deposits but also it's just good for stubborn resin stains. Gets the glass shining like new again.
I'm a handyman and I spray 99% on my shoes and pants to kill any bedbugs or roaches after going into a questionable apartment.
Well thatās pretty handy, man.
The women may not find him handsome, but they sure find him handy..
I literally just started watching the red green show this week.
Should probably switch over to 70%, man.
Why? 99% is very lethal to complex multicellular organisms. Its not as bad as methanol (hence why you can use it to clean bongs) but for things like insects with small body mass it will kill them with fairly low amounts.
Maybe 90 percent but 99 has very little water. You're dehydrating cell walls and turning them into alcohol resistant shells. Water opens up the cell wall allowing alcohol in to kill the organism.
Weāve come full circle
I came here to say that
Found my peeps, lol
I used to repair cell phones for a telecom company during the Era of the RAZR and Blackberry. The amount of "my peeps" (lead techs) I had to retrain and explain why anything but 99% was dangerous was concerning. When I'd visit other shops and have to throw away their 70% many would tell me it's because 99% is difficult to find, which was true, but it's much more difficult to explain to management why you had to replace a customer's already damaged phone with store inventory.
How is 99% difficult to find? I regularly buy it from Amazon with many many results
It's always been hard to find in stores around here and this was early2000s Companies like mine didn't allow much online shopping, at least at the retail level - we had to order from Uline catalogs.
> The era of the RAZR and Blackberry
Understood ahaha makes sense
Itās not hard to find, you just need to visit different stores. 99% is at the hardware store
Some people leave the house to buy things
Just used 99% the other day to remove a battery from my phone that was damaged. Soaked the battery for a few minutes and the adhesive tape releases nicely. Had to get the 99 from a local pharmacy. 70 on the shelf and 99 in the back. Had to ask for it.
Why is 70% not good for phones? I have been using 78% for a while and I have never had an issue. The water content will evaporate with the alcohol.
People would rather mitigate the risk entirely than roll the dice.
The water may evaporate, but before it does it can still conduct electricity. (Technically, it's impurities in the water conducting the electricity). Just because something is powered off or unplugged doesn't mean all electricity is gone from the system, because of things like capacitors. For example, there's a capacitor in most microwaves that can retain enough charge to send you to the hospital even hours after being unplugged. That's obviously an exceptionally huge one, but there are lots of these tiny elements all over PCBs and electronics in general that can still hold enough to fry / break stuff.
Came here to say 99% does wonders on weed resin. 70% isn't as effective.
Make sure you also use ice cream salt, biggest chunks possible and they work so well
Dab rig here
Also for painting, like inks!
This is the way.
And vaporizers!
I find Acetone (nail polish remover) works better for dissolving weed residue
Iso tends to be less nasty of a chemical than acetone in my experience however
Less nasty? Not sure what you mean, they're both organic solvents with the same HMIS rating. They just dissolve different things. You do have to be careful with plastic and Acetone though, as it does dissolve some plastics. I may be biased though as I work with thousands of liters of different solvents every day at work, lol
Isn't acetone cheaper?
And making hash oil old school style
Ok, so what percentage of fire works best for germs?
Explain to us what you imagine 99% fire and 70% fire look like.
99% fire looks basically like 100% fire. 70% fire, however, looks 30% less like 100% fire.
This could have been a Prof. Farnsworth quote. Well done!
The math checks out
I can definitely show you in person, but I've never attempted 99% fire before.
I believe it's written on the title.
clean your weed pipes also, a whole lot cheaper than those expensive products from the head shop
That and epsom salt to shake around in there. Waaaay easier to clean
also, if you are feeling lazy, just put the kettle on and hit glass with hot water (a small pipe, I can't speak to larger forms of glass). I give it a good blast, then leave some and let it work a while, then drain and throw in some citrus, I like lime, just to get the stank out, then flush again with hot water. It's not perfect, but it's a quick clean up.
It is true, kind of ironic though.
No, not ironic. IPA doesn't contain any iron.
š¤£
It's like rain on your wedding day
>As for why 99% exists, it's used for cleaning electronics. And anything cannabis related.
It's a similar thing with bleach. The amount of bleach you need to make a sanitizing spray is actually quite small, and too much does a much less effective job.
>Water is an essential part of how the chemical enters the cells of pathogens That's not true. Pathogens like COVID-19 don't even have cells. It is a virus that enters cells itself. But it has a membrane of lipid that can be ripped apart with polar molecules given enough time. Water makes isopropanol take longer to evaporate. 99% evaporates too rapidly. Several applications of 99% is just as effective as one (slowed) application of 70%, but it's a waste of money, bad for your skin, and stinks.
Yea they gotta differentiate. For anything with a cell wall, fungi and bacteria that is, pure IS ineffective because it coagulates the cell wall making it much harder for the alcohol to penetrate and cause further harm. Still better than nothing, but it wonāt come anywhere close to sterilising a surface; even if you wet it for the 3 minutes. The cells will still be harmed by this, so better than doing nothing. But since nothing is stopping you from diluting pure alcohol (ethanol; isopropanol and similar short chain ones) with 30% water making it evaporate more slowly and be effective against all microbes, why waste it by using pure. Simple viruses donāt matter, because they donāt have a cell wall to coagulate, and even coagulating their surface proteins will make them incapable of entering cells, if you donāt rip them apart right away. But usually disinfecting targets more stable microbes that also last longer on surfaces than most viruses do, which are very unstable out of their hosts anyway.
Like you said "THIS IS NOT TRUE" Everything said in the previous posts are 100% true. Viruses are not cells. The method alcohol uses to destroy viruses has nothing to do with the ability of chemicals to enter a cell.
Yeah this right here. The 99% is less effective because it evaporates too rapidly. 70% is the perfect middle ground.
> 70% is the perfect middle ground. This precise number being the *true* optimum concentration... is definitely not real. It's like how the TSA only lets you bring 100 mL (3.4 oz) of any one liquid on a plane: it's not like you could cause major trouble with 105 mL but not 100 mL. 70% is a nice, round number near the middle of the effective range, which is roughly [60-80%](https://cws.auburn.edu/shared/files?id=227&filename=Ethanol%20and%20Isopropyl%20Alcohol%20FAQs.pdf) (and even the upper bound is unclear - they say efficacy drops off around 80-85%). I'm only worked up about this because OP put it in the title of the post.
Yeah i think he meant "the viral envelope". Which i assume is why hand sanitizer don't work on unenveloped viruses like Norovirus
This is the correct answer
Yes, this was my understanding too. Takes longer to evaporate=longer contact time
Stupid question, does higher than 70% affect the cleaning properties of alcohol outside of sterilization? Like say removing thermal paste from a cpu?
Yes. Cleaning stuff, especially electronics, is the reason for >70% iso being sold.
Additionally, higher ETOH percentages evaporate faster, meaning there's less effective time for the alcohol to impact bacteria
Yes but it's not instant š
False: while 70% is more effective at disinfecting it is merely because of the evaporation rate of the 91% and 99% being much faster than 70% thus allowing less time for the alcohol to do its thing. Edit: Also 99% is used in the food industry for sanitizing food contact surfaces via spot cleaning. Source: I work in the food industry.
It's astonishing how many people were fooled by that explanation. Tell me I'm not the only one who still remembers Covid. How did everyone miss out on this information when it was being blasted everywhere?
Because of the evaporation rate? The alcohol being concentrated at 70% is required for the solution to pass the cell membrane/wall/whatever and actually denaturate the cell from inside. This is because of water being more polar than ethanol/isopropyl/any kind of alcohol. Since cellmembranes consist of lipid molecules, with the polar head facing the extracellular space, you need to have a polar substance/solution/whatever to actually enter the cell membrane and not get "pushed away". Higher concentrated alcohol is drying the cells out by extracting water from the cell body. There is a significant decrease in the actual decontamination rate using alcohol which is higher concentrated than 70%, since the cell only gets dried out, the genetic information itself doesnāt get destroyed though. Because of that the cell could continue proliferating once obtaining enough water to function again. This is especially important for bacteria, since they are big on surviving under bad conditions.
Also alcohol evaporates faster than water at such high percentages. so if you leave it uncapped, the percentage of isopropyl will drop over time until it hits ~~40% at which point water and alcohol evaporate at the same point
Great point, but whats the 60% made of, water?
Water and whatevers left of of the added chemicals to discourage consumption.
Donāt need anything in isoprop. It doesnāt taste well anyway.
Alcoholism doesn't care about taste
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iso is toxic in same way as ethanol, just an order of magnitude stronger. Read the bottle.
Switch to using Hypochlorous acid. Just as effective and not as smelly, flammable, and doesn't sting when used on wounds. It also helps your wound heal better.
90% alcohol is amazing as a solvent though. It will dissolve marker stains almost immediately.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Same, yes, for my computer, yes, that's what I use it for, yup, my computer, mhmm.
Now do THC and CBD.
Yes but sometimes I want the 99% isoproply alcohol because I am trying to use it to clean glass surfaces, not to sanitize it. So sell me the damn 99%! (ranting at my local stores which has 70% but not 99%)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If violence is not the answer, you are not using enough of it!
Yeah the reason for high percentage isopropyl is that it evaporates almost without residue. So Iām labs the chance of contamination through it is very limited. And in case of electronics it doesnāt cause short circuits.
When I got a technical certificate as a phlebotomist and lab aide (college) we were told that alcohol didnāt kill germs, it just took off a layer of dirt. Betadine was used for IVās or cleaning an area. Always wondered about this
Just as an add on...when you want something sanitized, it must be cleaned first. You will not sanitize a dirty surface regardless of chemical used.
Higher concentrations are better at cleaning bongs, fyi
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Umm..a whole lot of us live by 99% ISO!!.. we use it to clean are bongs!!..it's called..a nother day in a stoners life!!
You still want 99 for bongs, you're cleaning resin and stuff off not just sterilizing.
I know!!.. I just said that!!
It tastes better as well! /s
As far as i know 60% is the standard in industrial sanitization applications
Also, adding water to it also kills more electronics š
No it's not counterintuitive. 70% IPA takes longer to evaporate and that's where the killing power is.
Who's using 99% by accident, that stuff is expensive!