Mountain wrote:
I got a very brief email from the company stating it is not suitable for sterilisation only for sanitisation. I think the biggest problem here is most people would not immediately distinguish between the terms sanitise and sterilise. I don't know if this is deliberate marketing or not.
The term sanitise does not seem to mean anything legally; so it is a bit of an arse-covering statement because so many people believe the term
sanitise to mean much more than it really does. You cannot blame the manufacturers / suppliers of percarbonate for using the term sanitise, because it does that - it cleans - which is all that sanitise really means in British usage at least.
I have always been nervous about the term "sanitation" because it means nothing more than cleanliness and does not, or should not, convey any bug-killing meaning to a British reader. Home brewers seem to be particularly bad at using inappropriately terminology; the sanitise thing seems to have begun in America and taken root over here. Perhaps American usage is different. British Home brewers, before the American influence, probably went too far the other way, and used the term
sterilisation, which is probably a bit over the top, but does at least convey something more than just cleaning.
I thought quite a lot about it some time back, and in the end I decided to use the term
disinfection as the most appropriate term in my latest book because it conveys something more than mere cleanliness, but is not as paranoid as sterilisation.
According to the Chambers Dictionary, which, in my view, is the most reliable dictionary when it comes to
proper British-English usage, sanitisation pertains to public health issues. There is not one single mention of killing bugs in the lengthy paragraph. Taking your refuse and sewage away (and putting it somewhere else) is sanitation. Washing up your crockery in a bowl of Fairy Liquid solution is sanitisation. Surface cleaning is sanitation. Personal hygiene is sanitation. It means producing an environment, usually by moving the environment somewhere else, where vermin and bugs cannot thrive to dangerous levels because there is no food for them (basically). Not a lot of bactericidal power in a Tampax, I would think.
Mountain wrote:
I must admit I just though 1kg...8 quid..no rinse...I'll have some.
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Lesson learned.
Next stop Star San and sterile purified water.
Oxi is an excellent and magical cleaner, I wouldn't do without it now that I have discovered it. You paid expensively for it, but it will not go to waste.
Your bottled beer will be fine. There are people that get way without proper disinfection for years.
!)