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It's the stuff in the brown bottles, found in most bathrooms - hydrogen peroxide - and like vinegar and baking soda, a neat and environmentally good solution for many problems. It is hydrogen and oxygen, and when it effervesces, it is reacting to something by breaking down into oxygen and water. Industrial strength hydrogen peroxide is used for rendering some toxins harmless. The paper industry has responded to the alarm over dangerous dioxins from chlorine bleach and is now using it more. We buy 3% peroxide (a much safer dilution because the stuff is so powerful) in the store, and even at that strength it is great as a bleach, antiseptic, antifungal, antibacterial.

Barbara Hirsch

You can kill germs all over the place with it. In fact, keeping a spray bottle with peroxide and another with white vinegar would free your home of chemical disinfectants, killing things like e. coli and salmonella with a spray of one and then a spray of the other (in any order). Besides making things cleaner, it can even make you more attractive if you want to be blonder, have better breath or whiter teeth. (Don't drink it though, it won't make you healthier.) Stains like blood and chocolate are easily removed, and you can put off buying toothbrushes for a long time by simply dunking them for a while in the stuff. And in your garden, plants like it too.

We manufacture H2O2 but nature does too. Hydrogen peroxide is formed by a reaction of sunlight on water, one of nature's purifiers, and also--are you ready for this?—by honey when administered to a wound!

Introduction to Hydrogen Peroxide: Environmental Applications Overview

Using Hydrogen Peroxide: Ways to Use Hydrogen Peroxide in the Garden

News in Science: Honey’s healing secret

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