I understand that bleach kills bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes because it is extremely toxic to the cell. But how does bleach neutralize a virus? Or does bleach only kill the reservoirs of viruses (cells) and leave viruses intact in the environment?
Thank you.
Bleach is oxidant of organic molecules. Therefore it can kill practically any organic life form if concentration is high enough. However capacity of bleach to kill organic life forms depend heavily on concentration of other organic substances in solution as those substances deplete bleach concentration due to their oxidation. So it can kill viruses but it is unclear about what concentration range are you talking about and in what environment.
Bleach is oxidant of organic molecules. Therefore it can kill practically any organic life form if concentration is high enough. However capacity of bleach to kill organic life forms depend heavily on concentration of other organic substances in solution as those substances deplete bleach concentration due to their oxidation. So it can kill viruses but it is unclear about what concentration range are you talking about and in what environment.
Let me add their is a some difference between action of UV and action of chlorine, since chlorine start by oxidizing the capside of virus, and destroying proteic envellope but UV start to induce genom destruction. Like indicated before presence of other substance can lead to depletion of active chlorine. But other mecanisms can be observed since interaction between virus and organic compound is just starting to be described (see our last paper : Waldmann and al, EST 2017)
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