Are Ionized Water Spray Bottles Really Effective for Cleaning?

[drpizza]

"Ionized water spray bottles"

I'm not sure if anyone has seen these products. But, there are several different products out there - you put plain tap water into a spray bottle that has a battery & some "fancy looking" electronic equipment inside, include little LED lights that apparently flash for dramatic effect so the user knows that something amazing is happening.

The claims:

Enter the Activeion ionator – it’s a cleaning product that transforms humble tap water into a super-powered, germ-destroying, dirt-removing dynamo – with absolutely no chemicals. That’s good news for your family, your pets and the environment.

How does a unit use plain tap water and create a powerful cleaning agent? It converts tap water into ionized water. Ionized water is a powerful cleaning product that has been used for a long time in four-star restaurants, food processing plants, and large hotels. The ionater products have simply been scaled down for domestic and semi-industrial use. They use a water cell to apply a slight electrical charge to tap water. The charged water then passes through an ion exchange membrane which creates an oxygen-rich mix of positive and negative nano-bubbles. That ionized water is capable of attracting dirt and bacteria and when sprayed carries a low-level electric field to the surface where the germs may be living. The manufacturer says this low-level electric field ruptures and kills germs which can then be easily wiped away – without leaving any chemical residue.

Am I being too skeptical in not believing a bit of this? Just plain water is often sufficient for cleaning surfaces. Is there anything believable about these claims that turns plain water into something better than plain water using... water as an ingredient?

 

[mfb]

Just ignore those claims, they are wrong. There are no "nano-bubbles" in water, and you cannot increase the fraction of oxygen without adding oxygen (or removing hydrogen, which is tricky). There is no point in additional oxygen anyway.

Ion exchangers have a real effect, but they remove one type of ions and replace them with another type of ions - they change the chemical structure.

 

[drpizza]

I should probably give the motivation for my question - how to I explain to a department where I work that the 1000's of dollars they're spending on these spray bottles is completely wasted - the claims are bogus. But, I never assume I know everything - I could be wrong (shhhh, don't tell my wife; as far as she knows, I'm never wrong), but I'd love to find a resource that demonstrates that these claims are bogus, or some sort of specific factual argument that really demonstrates it.

 

[mfb]

- The manufacturer fails to give a reasonable scientific explanation for the claims.
- The manufacturer was not able to publish those claims in a reasonable journal, or patent them
- Actually, no manufacturer was able to get repeatable results for similar claims.

There are too many quacks out there to test every possible product, but there are many studies of similar claims, all with a negative result.