The Japanese Chlorine Dioxide Study: What it Really Means

As you probably already know, chlorine dioxide (Cl02) is used all over the world as a disinfectant in the medical industry and food industry. I often recommend this documentary to anyone interested in understanding the history and benefits of chlorine dioxide, particularly anyone who is worried that it is damaging, like bleach, at low concentrations.

Yet in this article I want to take a look at an exciting study that came out in December, 2021, and what it means for you.

The study was performed to try to find out how well a product containing Cl02 (called Cleverin) could disinfect SARS-CoV-2, and how Cleverin’s disinfectant power compared to sodium hypochlorite, commonly known as bleach when diluted. We’ll call it bleach here for simplicity. And let’s call SARS-CoV-2 simply SARS, too. We know which one we’re talking about here!

The researchers concentrated SARS viruses, then treated them with a range of Cl02 and bleach concentrations. They added cow fetus cells so the SARS virus could infect them and they’d be able to measure how the virus reacted to the disinfectants. They used a measurement called viral titre, which shows the number of formed plaques, foci or individually-infected cells when you look through a microscope. The measurement of parts per million measures how many disinfectant molecules per million molecules of another inactive liquid (such as water).

What they found was that at 0.8 parts per million (ppm), both the Cl02 and the bleach decreased the viral titre by only 1 log10 TCID50/mL in 3 minutes. 

That wasn’t very impressive, so they increased the concentration to 24 ppm. That strength of Cl02 inactivated more than 99.99% of the SARS within 10 seconds when there weren’t any cow cells present and 99.99% SARS in 1 minute when the cow cells were added at 0.5% and 1.0%.

But the bleach didn’t do as well. At 24 ppm of bleach, it took the substance 3 minutes to wipe out 90% of the SARS with cow cells. When there weren’t any cow cells, it also took 3 minutes for it to destroy 99% of the SARS.

But when they increased the concentration of the disinfectants to 80 ppm for 10 seconds, the viral titre was decreased by more than 4 log10 TCID50/mL no matter whether or not the cow fetus cells were present. 

This means that chlorine dioxide performed better than bleach at killing SARS-CoV-2 in the shortest amount of time.

And what it means for you is that in order to cleanse your world of this specific virus, chlorine dioxide could be a very good choice.You can find out more about related products here.