vinegar in electric kettle

Bottled water is *not* mineral free. If you want water with no minerals, you need to buy distilled.

Personally, I'm still struggling with lime scale on our electric tea kettle. Unfortunately, it's around the rim, and it's in a very difficult place to soak in vinegar.

Derek:

Or deionized, which you can also make at home with a cartridge gadget. Or rainwater.

Sodium salts of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) - for those not afraid of "chemicals" - are a universal descaling agent that rapidly chelates polyvalent ions like those in lime deposits. It's cheap at hardware stores, but wear gloves and keep out of eyes. A spongeload may remove deposits very quickly, or make a "poultice" in a rag or paper towel and leave it for a while. Some dishwasher detergents are loaded with that, zeolites, phosphates and other hard-water ion eaters. When I have crusted old cookware, I usually just soak it for a few hours in hot water with a cupful or so of the stuff. Watch out - can eat aluminum and some other metals.

-DM

gross huh? Nothing you can do about it unless you heat your water via the stove. Drinking distilled water is not supposed to be good for you.

Keep cleaning.

Dog Ma 1Vcifd.772299$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net10/25/04

Dog Ma,

Is this stuff you're describing environmentally sound? After all, that acid has 11 syllables, if I've counted correctly; a bad omen.

Michael

EDTA is a skin, eye and respiratory irritant. When I worked in a research lab, we used it for a lot of different things. But it was always treated as an irritant.

But it's not considered particularly toxic. Even so, it's not something I personally want around my tea water. I've seen what it can do.

snipped-for-privacy@gwinn.us/26/04 09: snipped-for-privacy@gwinn.us

Thanks Derek. I knew eleven syllables couldn't be trusted.

Michael

Dog Ma is right - wear gloves. However, the warning about eating metals is also accurate. EDTA is a no-no for:

copper, copper alloys, nickel, aluminium

It also reacts with strong oxidizing agents or strong bases.

"Falky foo" wrote in news:VFmfd.302$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com:

While I take the whole distilled water thing with a grain of salt[0] (no pun intended), there's little doubt that minerals matter. Here's an interesting (although coffee-centric) link on the issue:

The IUPAC name for table sugar is half a page long. Of course, people argue about the safety of sugar. Arsenic is technically called arsenic. Draw your own conclusion.

EDTA is pretty OK environmentally, and the grams you'd add to the kilotons already dumped daily wouldn't matter anyway. It's also been used in common foods for many years.

-But not quickly except with aluminum. What it will do is remove a thin passivating layer of oxides, dirt, soap scum and scale to allow fresh corrosion, as someone else here reported happening in a cleaned kettle.

DM

Derek Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:08:38 -0500 wrote ...

It is used often in reagents for sweet water aquariums that prepare fresh tap water usable for fish. (chelating metals like copper, iron, lead etc. )

True, but then, many things we use to prepare our aquariums for fish are labeled "Do Not Use On Fish For Human Consumption."

Derek Sat, 30 Oct 2004 08:48:15 -0500 wrote ...

I have not read it on things for my fish... And on fish FOR human consumption they are often used in higher concentrations ( like methylene blue is(was?) used ) as for aquarium fish.

Almost everything I have upstairs in my "tool box" for our small aquarium is marked with the warning.