Active substances in cleaning and disinfecting products from Thailand's online market in 2023

Abstract

Cleaning and disinfecting products contain active ingredients such as acid, active oxygen, and hypochlorite that are chemical products are easily accessible to the public and widely used. Although the quality of these products has been registered by responsible Thailand government agency before placing on market for sale, post-market surveillance is still important; especially checking the amount of active ingredients mixed in these products. It is because the amount of substances that do not match the product label may affect cleaning and disinfecting effectiveness. Therefore this research focused on randomly sampling of 59 products, which divided into 3 groups according to active ingredients such as acid, active oxygen, and hypochlorite for 21, 21, and 17 samples, respectively. Acid-base titration method was used to quantify amount of hydrochloric acid in acid cleaning products and redox titration method was used to determine amount of active oxygen (calculated as H₂O₂) and available chlorine in the latter two groups of products, respectively. The survey results found that only 42% of hydrochloric acid products and 29% of active oxygen products among the sampled items were detected with hazardous substance registration numbers and had active ingredient levels that matched those specified on their labels and met the criteria set by Thai industrial standards. However, none of the hypochlorite products had available chlorine levels that matched those stated on their labels.