Natural Born Mold Killers Can Save You From Chemical Exposure

While there are a lot of different commercial chemicals that are used to kill mold, a lot of people do not like to use a lot of household chemicals in their homes. There is a belief that the more we use chemicals in our daily lives, the more harm they will end up doing us and since there may be some truth to this, some people have found other ways to kill mold besides the cleaners that we find in department and grocery stores.

Three natural ingredients have been found to kill mold quite effectively, but two of them are quite expensive and one is, well… kind of stinky.

The most widely available and inexpensive of the three natural ways to kill mold is vinegar. It is by far the cheapest natural method and the most simple to use. Distilled white vinegar is the best kind to use because it has no color to it and there is no risk of discoloring anything you might put it on. Vinegar will reportedly kill around 82 percent of molds in your home. While it will not kill all kinds of mold, it will kill most of the kind that you find indoors and if it does not kill it, you will most assuredly know. All you have to do is put the mold into a spray bottle, spray it on the area of mold and if you can stand the smell, let it stay on the surface without rinsing it. The smell should go away after a few hours and the mold should have died soon after.

Another way to kill mold, even if it is a bit expensive, is tea tree oil. You can find this at most health food stores and it has a little more broad of a spectrum of fungi that it will get rid of than vinegar. Combine 2 teaspoons of tea tree oil with 2 cups of water in a spray bottle. Shake it up to blend the two and spray on anything that has mold on it. Do not rinse it off. This should make about two cups and it should last indefinitely.

The last way to do this is by using grapefruit seed extract. The advantage of this is that grapefruit seed extract has no smell to it. 20 drops of the extract and two cups of water in a spray bottle should do the trick. Follow the same directions for the tea tree oil.

Bleach Is Not The Best Method To Kill Mold

People who run and maintain a household will probably contend that they use bleach to clean and disinfect just about anything that needs it, but what they might not be aware of is the fact that bleach is not the great purifier that we tend to think that it is. It has been used for years by dutiful housewives trying to get by without having to go to the store and buy another cleaner and it has come into light recently as being good for the removal of mold. Unfortunately, these claims are not true.

Bleach will do nothing to eliminate the mold that can occur on porous surfaces such as drywall. A study that was paid for recently by Clorox, the largest manufacturer of chlorine bleach in the world, states that trying to get rid of mold using bleach is to effective on nonporous surfaces only and that trying to use it on porous surfaces will only have a temporary effect. This would mean that if you see mold growing on your ceiling or on another part of your wall, then trying to use chlorine bleach to kill it will only work on a superficial and cosmetic level. The mold is likely to have contaminated the entire depth of the board and will only grow back later.

The EPA also does not classify chlorine bleach as a registered disinfectant that will terminate mold infections. Every bottle of disinfectant that kills mold is labeled with a registration number and there is no current brand of bleach in existence that has this label.

Also, in the effort to save the time of going to the store and buying more chemicals and in the interest of saving money, some people who attempt to get rid of mold themselves are often guilty of believing that mixing household chemicals can somehow “up the ante” and give them an advantage of some sort. It is a misconception that mixing household chemicals can somehow make them more effective and it is also dangerous. Chlorine bleach should not be mixed with any other household chemical, especially anything that contains ammonia. When chlorine bleach is mixed with ammonia, it can give off hazardous fumes and if your home is not properly ventilated at the time, these fumes can do serious harm to you. When attempting to remove mold from your home or business, it is always best to purchase chemicals that are reputable and advertised as able to kill mold.