Quote: (11-23-2013 06:01 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:
I know it'll get them clean, but does it actually knock out the bacteria too?
If baking soda had antiseptic properties, doctors would be sprinkling the stuff on their equipment to make it sterile, throwing it into patients abdomens to cure appendicitis, and cleaning septic wounds with it.
The only place baking soda has anti-bacterial properties is when it is used against bacteria that live in acidic environment - eg. urine. And then it's not really by a direct antibacterial action, rather that by changing the acidic environment into something more base, then the environment becomes hostile for acid loving bacteria and they may die off.
(In case you're wondering, you can self-medicate a urinary tract infection by drinking one teaspoon baking soda in a glass of water 3 times a day for about 5 days. If it doesn't work, you probably need something stronger. Never mix baking soda with antibiotics, because many antibiotics work better in acidic environments.)
So unless you are soaking your dishes in urine or some other acid, I'd say that baking soda is unlikely to knock out bacteria.
Running water is already a powerful antibacterial force, you're basically creating the microbial equivalent of a tsunami every time you put a dish under running water. For house level germs, this is probably more than enough for everything except cutting boards.
(In case you're wondering, you can dramatically reduce the chance of any wound getting infected simply by sticking it under running tap water for 15 minutes. 15 minutes of rinsing is estimated to reduce bacterial load by 99%, if I remember correctly.)
For cutting boards, or anything else that can have traces of food stuck in thin cracks along its surface, use any soap - most are all fairly powerful antibacterials, even the plainest ones (they destroy fat bonds in the bacterial walls or something like that). If you really don't want to use soap, soak these surfaces in a mixture of bleach and water for an hour.
