Cleaning is not for everyone. Even when it comes to the bathroom, the rush to volunteers is limited. If you still reach for the cleaner, you should at least be rewarded with a clean result. Öko-Test knows which means are suitable.
Many people see the resident’s business card in a clean bathroom. In order for this to work, not only must the wet cell be cleaned regularly, but the bathroom cleaner must also be used so that the effort is not wasted and one or the other visitor does not turn up his nose.
Öko-Test examined 20 bathroom cleaners without chlorine. These include well-known brands as well as own brands from supermarkets and discounters. There were 18 liquid products in spray bottles and two in tablet or powder form, which consumers dilute themselves with water to make bathroom cleaners. Based on a liter of cleaner, the cleaners cost between 0.95 cents and 7.98 euros.
In practice, the cleaners have to deal with stubborn dirt. Not only with the lime deposits that hard water leaves on sinks and fittings or the residues of skin fat, but also “lime soap” that forms when soap residues combine with hard water must be removed. At the same time, the cleaning agents should leave as little damage as possible on sensitive bathroom ceramics, glass or plastic. A bathroom cleaner differs from an all-purpose cleaning agent primarily due to its higher proportion of acids (e.g. lactic, formic or citric acid), which are needed to remove the aforementioned sources of dirt.
In order to check whether the cleaners keep what they promise, a specialist laboratory carried out an extensive practical test based on the recommendations for quality assessment by the German Association for Personal Care and Detergents (IKW). Marble slabs had to be used to check the lime-dissolving capacity. These were soiled with colored dirt solution and immersed in the cleaners.
Result? So-so. After all, not too many problematic ingredients could be detected. 13 bathroom cleaners were rated “good”, 6 “satisfactory”. The worst grade is “sufficient”. She gets, of all things, a cleaning agent with an ecological claim. The “Eco2pur bathroom
The test winners do it better. Among other things, the “Ajax Bad Spray” (2.78 euros per liter), the “Alma Win bathroom cleaner fresh mint, concentrate” (6.98 euros), the “DM Denk with bathroom cleaner fresh scent” (0.95 euros), the “Blink Eco Bathroom Cleaner” from the Müller drugstore (1.53 euros), the “Fit Bathroom Cleaner Fresh Fragrance” (3.58 euros) and the “Gut
Tip from the Öko-Test editors: use bathroom cleaners with the windows open and try not to inhale the spray mist. Asthmatics are better off using non-spray cleaning products.
(This article was first published on Thursday, June 23, 2022.)
