Bleach

[blackbroom]

Just been cleaning a shower with bleach and keep having obsessive thought that I have accidentally got bleach on my hair/face/mouth and it's going to cause serious damage.

Because I'm scared of bleach, I used goggles, which meant I couldn't see what I was doing and I have no idea how much bleach I used - probably WAY too much. At one point I thought I accidentally touched my hair and/or face with my bleachy rubber gloves. Had a shower immediately afterwards and my eyes feel fine, but the skin above my mouth is stinging a bit - if I'd got bleach in my mouth, I'd know about it, right?

[countrygirl]

You would need to actually drink bleach for it to harm you. I assume you weren't glugging it from the bottle!
Splashing your skin with bleach if you don't then wash it off can cause irritation to develop but its not life threatening and you obviously cannot get any in your eyes.
So if you take the obsessional thoughts away you have nothing to worry about at all.

[blackbroom]

Thanks, countrygirl. That's very reassuring and helped a lot.

[countrygirl]

Glad to be of help. Trying not to sound as if I am dismissing your fears because I am not but wanting to make you realise how unrealistic they are

[blackbroom]

Now I'm stressing that I've damaged my lungs with the fumes (they're feeling a bit irritated, but I'm asthmatic, and it's not as though I've got a hacking cough)

[Fishmanpa]

Humming that "Let it Go" song from Frozen

Positive thoughts

[Magic]

I use bleach.a lot, unless you have drunk any you will be ok .
country girl has got it right xxx have some fresh air too, and open the windows for a while
xx

[blackbroom]

Thanks, everybody. Still feeling a bit worried this morning - my upper lip stings a bit and seems paler than normal (but that might be partly imagination), but I know I'm probably worrying about nothing.

Am being assessed for CBT next week.

[tp821634]

Hey, you'll be fine washing it off will be more than enough to stop any possible problems.

To put some perspective on it, i come from the water industry so have had dealings with some mega strong disinfection chemicals including chlorine, which is the chemical in bleach that is the nasty bit. Publicly available bleach is very weak by comparison (roughly 5%) to what I'm used to dealing with (which was roughly 18% at delivery).

In your case rinsing off with water is all that will be needed, its a low enough concentration that it will have little affect.

Chlorine is one of the type of chemicals that we, as humans, are very very good at detecting. We can smell it at such low concentrations that we can detect it tap water at times. bleach is about 5% chlorine, tap water is normaly 0.1-0.5mg/L and we can detect it, shows just how sensitive to it we are.

Another thing to bear in mind is bleach goes off, over time the chlorine level drops off over time, so although it may have been 5% at production, could be down to 2 or 3% or even lower.

Tis all interesting stuff, well to some people haha

[blackbroom]

Thanks for the reassurance. It has really helped.

I didn't rinse it off straightaway, because I didn't realise I'd done it until it started stinging about half an hour later (I think I must have accidentally touched my face with a rubber glove covered in neat bleach foam, probably when pushing my goggles back up because I was worried about getting bleach in my eyes, which is ironic!) I keep finding scary sites on Google that say you should immediately run it under cold water for at least 20 minutes and it will keep eating away at your face if you don't - but we all know what a rubbish idea looking on Google is and you know what you're talking about. I gave it a quick rinse under the tap when it started to sting, but didn't really irrigate it until several hours later. Will that be all right?

But the skin's not even red, so logically I know it can't be that bad. And I don't even know for sure it is the bleach - I will feel even more of an idiot if it comes up in a cold sore in a couple of days.

I'm going to shut up now, as I've been too much of a baby about this already and I know I'm starting to find something slightly different to worry about every time someone reassures me about one thing.