Electrolyzed water is gaining some credibility with today's L.A. Times report. It's still looked down upon in most circles like some sort of snake oil, but Japan and Russia have been using it as an alternative to toxic cleaning chemicals for decades.

It costs about a penny a gallon to produce with a machine that will run you anywhere from 600 to three thousand dollars. The device takes a small amount of electricity, normal tap water, and some dissolved salt and produces hydrogen gas and hydroxide ions. One of the resulting products is 10 times stronger than bleach without harming people or the environment.

The down side is that it can't be stored for very long and it needs to be measured to make sure it's at an effective level. The Japanese are making the most progress by testing its ability as an air filter and Sanyo is talking about a washing machine that promises to get your clothes clean without nasty detergents.

Maybe someday in the future we can all replace bleach and other toxic cleaners with this technology?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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