Cleaning with Essential Oils and Norwex- Petri Dish Experiment

This post needs to be prefaced with a few facts. #1. I am a geek. I will fully admit it. #2. I am a total germaphobe. Grant's needs have created this in me. I now fully embrace the title and take it upon myself to do this crazy experiments, and then share my findings with all of you. You're welcome. :)

Ok, here is a little back story. I have been using essential oils for a few years now. It started as an attempt to help boost Grant's limited immune system and try to keep him out of the hospital. I started to use more and more when I saw the positive results that they had for our family. Over the last few years, I have developed a decent oils collection and am a total oils junkie. I have wanted to see if cleaning with essential oils would be a good option for our family, but I am INCREDIBLY hesitant to believe all the posts on Pinterest that give "recipes" for natural cleaners that use about 20 drops of oil to 8+ounces of water. I believe in the potency of oils, but that felt far too diluted for me. I attended an oils class through Butterfly Express (the company I purchase most of my oils from) and they suggested that it needed to be closer to 20-30 drops of oil per ounce of water (depending on the oil) for true disinfecting. That felt better to me, so I decided to test it out. I had also attended a Norwex party and while I liked the cleaning ability of the products, I was not sure that I bought that these rags magically picked up the bacteria and then allowed them to self destruct within the rag (which contains silver... a natural antibacterial agent). I decided to test out the Norwex claim, as well as some of my favorite cleaners (Clorox Anywhere, Lysol wipes, two cleaners from Melaleuca, and white vinegar). I called up a friend of mine at the lab, got some ready to go Petri dishes, sterile swabs, and designed my experiment (finally my research methods classes from undergrad and grad school come in handy!). I tested 20 surfaces and split them between 10 petri dishes. I was consistent between each experiment and followed the cleaner's instructions for true disinfecting. For each cleaner, I sprayed the cleaner, allowed the surface to remain wet for 10 minutes, wiped it with a paper towel, and then swabbed the surface.

I incubated all my petri dishes for 48 hours in an incubator at the lab set at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit . The lab tech told me not to incubate my bacteria at room temperature because my results would be misleading if I was looking for bacteria that would make the body sick.

Test #1: Remote Control : I wipe our remote control down weekly, but this is what grew. In almost all of me essential oils experiments, I decided to mix 25 drops of oil into 2 ounces of water and test it at half strength (to what I was told as a general guideline from the people at Butterfly Express). I decided to do it this way to see what I observed at a reduced potency because if it was possible to conserve oils and get the same effect, I wanted to know. I used Sunburst blend which is a general purifying blend (you can look up the ingredients list at butterflyexpress.net). As you can see, it got rid of most of the nasty bacteria (the larger spots on the petri dishes were the more dangerous types of strains according to my lab friend and her microscope). The smaller spots where related to bacteria that you would find on the surface of your skin and not something that would make you sick.

For #2-#4, I had rubbed raw chicken juices on my dual basin sink the night before. I made every person who had been at my house spit, sneeze, or cough in that sink prior to swabbing (I know... I am a geek with awesome friends). I wanted it to be DISGUSTING! :) I divided the sink into 4 quadrants, took a before culture, and then tried out the Norwex Envirocloth, a Lysol Wipe, Vinegar (mixed one part vinegar, one part water), and a Melaleuca cleaner, Sol U Guard. You can see the results below. I wasn't very impressed with the Norwex, it did take care of picking up some of the nasty bacteria, but it left a lot behind still. The Lysol wipe did what it said it would. I wiped it, allowed the surface to remain wet for 10 minutes, and there was practically no growth from it. I tested vinegar mainly because it gets hyped as the wonderful all purpose cleaner. I will continue to use vinegar to clean my walls, floors, and to de grease, but it was NOT antibacterial at all. Good to know! The Sol U Guard cleaner also did quite well against most of the nasty strains. As my friend at the lab reminded me, sometimes the best cleaners will also leave behind some of the good bacteria, so a totally clear petri dish is good to see, but one that makes a big difference in the amount of growth also indicates a good cleaner.

For #5, I mixed a blend of two different essential oils. I used Melaleuca oil (purchased directly from Melaleuca, although Butterfly also sells it as Tea Tree oil) and a Butterfly Express blend, Deliverance. Melaleuca and Deliverance are both known to have significant affects at killing bacteria, fungi, and even viral strains, so I was excited to see them as cleaners. I swabbed the floor right in front of our kitchen trash can in our trash closet. It was pretty gross and needed to be cleaned, but it was disgusting to me to see just how many different strains grew out of this culture. YUCK! I was also totally impressed with the oils mixtures (16 drops of Melaleuca and 14 drops of Deliverance to 2 oz of water). It reduced the bacteria growth a LOT, and that was mixed at half strength.

# 6 was a before and after swab of our baby's high chair. Miles is very much into learning to self feed and so despite getting wiped down every day, our wooden restaurant style high chair sees a lot of leftover food residue. Yuck. I tested out my beloved Clorox Anywhere Spray. I love this stuff. It claims to be 99.9% effective at destroying certain germs and is safe for food surfaces within 2 minutes. We spray down our toys with this all the time because it is ok to play with if the surface is still a little wet. It is a little hard to tell from the picture, but the type of bacteria growth on the petri dish is different in the smaller swabs. I didn't pre clean the high chair and so there were some food particles that were on the swab and made it into the petri dish. This skewed my results a little and I would like to repeat this test on a different surface. I won't stop using it anytime soon though because it was effective.  

#7 was one of my most interesting experiments. I wanted to recreate a situation just like I do things in my normal cleaning routine. I first swabbed a before on our Master Bathroom sink and then I sprinkled a few drops of Orange Sweet oil around the sink. I grabbed a dish scrubber that had been washed in the dishwasher the week before and had been sitting on the edge of the sink (but not actively used). I used the dish scrubber to move the oils around and then let it sit for ten minutes before wiping it out with a paper towel and testing again. You will notice in the picture that there is significant bacteria growth on the Orange Oil side, yet the structure of the colonies look very different from the before side. Obviously, my dish scrubber was contaminated with germs that had been splashed on to it over the last week (or still harboring within after coming out of the dishwasher). I learned my lesson... dish scrubbers are not going to get my sink clean! I often do this at the end of the day because I like how my kitchen smells, but now I will know to sanitize it in another way and then spray my orange oil from a spray bottle into my sink to further sanitize and leave me with that wonderful citrus smell.  

For #8, I split the kids bathroom sink in half and sprayed one with an essential oils blend made with 25 drops of SpiceC (similar to DoTerra's OnGuard) to 2 oz of water (half of the strength that the company recommended, but still far more than most online cleaning recipes). SpiceC is designed to boost immunity in the body and fight viral and bacterial infections, so I was curious how it would hold us as a disinfectant. I did not swab a before on the sink because I figured that the germs in it were very similar to our Master Bathroom sink. I sprayed the sink, let is sit for 10 minutes, then wiped out with a paper towel before swabbing. There was still some growth, but none of the large colonies were present which my friend at the lab told me was a good sign and that it was doing something, but probably needed to be stronger to fully eradicate the germs. 

The second side was cleaning the other half of the sink with a clean Norwex Envirocloth. I wet the cloth with hot water and then scrubbed the sink, even folding it in half and using a new side after going over the sink once. There was still a lot of growth in that side, but again no major colonies. 

Experiment #9 was cleaning the potty seat that fits on our normal toilet seat that Grant uses. I wipe it down with a clorox wipe a few times a week, but it had been a few days and so I wanted to test two products, one on each half. It probably would have been better to have a before for comparison, but based on how the seat looked a little dirty, I was confident that it was plenty germy. I applied a few drops of Lemon oil straight from the bottle on one side of the seat and rubbed it around with a paper towel until the whole surface was wet. I let it sit for ten minutes before wiping it off with another paper towel. I was totally impressed with the results. The undiluted oil did a fantastic job. For the other side, I used a Melaleuca product called SolUMel. It is a natural based cleaner and we use it frequently around the house. I sprayed it, waited ten minutes, wiped it with a paper towel and then swabbed the surface. It was also a great cleaner with hardly any bacteria growth.

My final petri dish (#10) was a swab of the rim of the toilet in the kids bathroom. I took a before sample and then used a new Norwex Envirocloth that had been wet with hot water to scrub. I scrubbed the best I could, rotating surfaces of the cloth and then let the water dry from the rim. I swabbed it again and according to the petri dish, it managed to pick up the large bacteria colonies, but actually just spread some other bacteria all around the surface. Yuck. I will not be buying into the Norwex claim that I can rub raw chicken on a counter top, wipe it with a cloth, and eat off the surface. I do like the Norwex cloth because it does seem to clean well and doesn't get as smelly as my other rags with repeated uses, but as for replacing my cleaning products with these, I think I will pass.

Wow. I congratulate you if you have actually read this post to the bottom! I am documenting this mainly for my friends and family who love my inner geek and wanted to see my results. I know my experiment is not perfect, but it was so gratifying for me to see if these products really do what they say they will do. Because of Grant's body, we are continually looking for ways to keep bacteria at bay and our home is our safe haven. We do not allow sick visitors. We have very few kids over to play and are very cautious in our home with shoes off, hand washing, lots of laundry, and steam cleaned floors. This just reassures me that the ways I have been cleaning our home are effective and hopefully it has been helpful for someone else. Since this experiment (which was actually 3 months ago and I am just now finishing the post. Oops!), I have increased the concentration of my essential oils cleaners and continue to buy lots of Lysol and Clorox wipes. I mix my natural cleaners to the highest recommended potency and feel good about my efforts. I already have a running list of the next Petri Dish experiments I want to complete and my friends at the lab either think I am crazy or the coolest mom ever (yeah... definitely crazy). I will have an entry ready to go if we ever decide to host a heart mom science fair! :)