There are related compounds that people regularly expose themselves to in <i>much</i> higher concentrations: behentrimonium chloride, cetrimonium chloride, and the same cations paired with other anions. They’re used in hair products, apparently in concentrations above 5%.<p>For those who, as the article describes, think they’re maybe harmless unless inhaled, you can buy hair detangling sprays. Maybe you’re supposed to only use them outdoors while hearing a very well-fitting mask?
I was thinking yesterday how 70% ethanol is like the perfect disinfectant and we don’t use it. It’s what we used when working in sterile conditions when I was a scientist. You certainly wouldn’t use quat disinfectants to spray your gloves before working in a hood. You’d know it would probably get in your experiment and mess it up. Ethanol is perfect, it evaporates and leaves nothing. I assume we don’t use ethanol because people would drink it, or it costs too much. Both aren’t great reasons when safety is what you are throwing out.
Why do so many people need so many disinfectants? I get by with chlorine bleach for the toilet once in a while. Just ordinary cleanliness and some detergent seems sufficient to me.<p>I never use fabric softeners either.
I really want to see stuff like this tested in massive cohorts (ie. 1 billion+ participants) via variable dosing.<p>Here's how it would work:<p>* Companies that make products would randomly increase by 5% or decrease by 5% the dosage of each ingredient in a product headed to a specific town.<p>* The government would publish A/B groupings for every town in the US and every chemical they track.<p>* Average health data would be collected, and whenever a specific chemicals A/B group difference exceeds some threshold, investigation is done.<p>The main downside is production costs of products goes up, since every product will now have a final step of adding all the A/B adjustment doses to the bottle before sealing. But I believe this is worth it for rooting out chemicals that have low level yet very widespread negative effects.