Tom's answers to your questions

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Here are the answers Tom gave to the 3 questions of why does C activate sodium chlorite, what did he mean by 'cleaning the ears' and the use of HCI.

Hello ,

In order to activate sodium chlorite, the PH has to be lowered. Ascorbic acid has a low PH and is capable of activating sodium chlorite. The trade off is that ascorbic acid is also an antioxidant, so some of the chlorine dioxide is used up in the process. You end up with a weaker, but still usable, solution. I used pharmaceutical grade ascorbic acid powder and I believe Humco was the brand.

Chlorine dioxide is a disinfectant. It is not a detergent. To properly disinfect you must first clean, then disinfect. I wouldn't recommend using H2O2 in an infected ear, but was referring to making an effort to clean the crud out of the ear before applying the acidified sodium chlorite solution. This allows the chlorine dioxide to go to work on the infection and not be used up by the crud in the ear.

Your third question involves chlorine dioxide technology. HCl is used when you are interested in releasing all of the available chlorine dioxide from the sodium chlorite. It is much different than acidified sodium chlorite technology. When using HCl to activate, you would use a concentration of HCl that is 1.2 times the concentration of the sodium chlorite you are activating. For example, if you are using 5% sodium chlorite, you would use 6% HCl. The ratio of HCl to sodium chlorite is 1:1. If you have 10% HCl, you would use that with 8.3% sodium chlorite and still use it in a 1:1 ratio.

I might also point out that in a properly activated solution neither sodium chlorite nor the activation acid remain in their pure forms. They are combined to form chlorous acid and some chlorine dioxide. It is only when you add too much activator that you end up with contaminated chlorous acid.

Chlorine dioxide technology is used for water purification, odor elimination, and immediate disinfection. Acidified sodium chlorite involves chlorous acid and, more or less, a timed release form of chlorine dioxide. A residual is left after application and this residual can continue to disinfect for some time after the application. Sodium chlorite in water is kind of a special case of acidified sodium chlorite. The PH remains neutral, but at that PH the sodium chlorite is unstable and trace amounts of chlorine dioxide are released. The process speeds up in the presence of acids. This is the principle behind the mouthwash application.

Tom