Bleach and hot water

[wickham]

Apologies for probably a very obvious and ignorant question, but I am no scientist! I am working on a TV drama and need to check something, ideally without having to do any science experiments!

 

I need to know what would happen if you poured bleach (just normal, household bleach) into a very hot bath? And whether a person would be able to get into this bath - or if the effect of the bleach would be too strong / too harmful to be withstood?

 

I'd be very grateful for any answers offered.

 

many thanks

 

 

[Suxamethonium]

Um... With or without the bleach, a very hot bath is likely to be avoided by anyone with thermoreceptors.

 

Assuming they were not burning hot, household bleach diluted in a bathtub of water is probably just going to be like swimming in a pool with too higher chlorine added. Sting the eyes a bit kinda of thing- it would taste and smell bad, particularly as the heat will speed up decomposition into chlorine gas. It might pain any open cuts/wounds and possibly might cause some skin irritation after a few minutes. It really depends on the concentration- but I don't recomend any one actually does this.... Haha, though they would be nice and bacteria free...

 

Finally I am intrigued as to how this fits into a TV drama plot... I've heard of the whole digesting a body in NaOH/NaClO (and usually to which they mistakedly add HCl or similar acids which would actually counter-act the base, de-stablise the hypochlorite and liberate toxic chlorine gas...) but that needs to be very concentrated to be effective (and is easily detectable- plus its harder to dissolve bones in alkaline solutions). That or they use HF- which sure would work except it would be hard not to kill yourself in the process of dissolving the body- and would easily dissolve the bath. But a hot bath with some bleach in it seems fairly benign.

 

Edit: Oh, and something I just thought of- it takes a lot of sodium hydroxide and hypochlorite to fill a bath- a lot more than required to raise suspicion lol. Haha, and any amount of HF would probably warrant the same attention.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Suxamethonium

[John Cuthber]

I have, on occasions, used straight bleach to remove ink stains from my fingers.

It's not big and it's not clever, but it works.

Most skin will stand up to bleach for a short while.

 

Having said that it would be a bloody stupid experiment to do.

Much of the skin on the body is less resilient than the hands. There are, shall we say, some rather sensitive bits.

It would be very easy to splash the stuff in your eyes which would be very bad news.

The stuff is alkaline and alkaline solutions make skin very slippery.