Sani-Flush

Sani-Flush was a brand of crystal toilet bowl cleaner formerly produced by Reckitt Benckiser. Its main ingredient was sodium bisulfate; it also contained sodium carbonate as well as sodium lauryl sulfate, talc, sodium chloride, fragrance and dye.

When sodium bisulfate is mixed with water, a highly-corrosive sulphuric acid is produced, which dissolves accumulated minerals such as iron, magnesium and calcium from the bowl.

Due to environmental concerns, the product has been discontinued; by 2013 its last original US trademark was cancelled or allowed to expire.

Sani-Flush was introduced by the Hygenic Products Company of Chicago, Illinois in 1911 as a toilet bowl cleaner; since 1922 it had also been promoted for flushing "rust, scale and sludge" from automobile radiators. Advertisements from the 1920s onward depicted a housewife in an apron using the product to disinfect the bowl and remove odours; it "cleans closet bowls without scouring" with "no drudgery whatsovever".

The brand was sold to American Home Products; that company's subsidiary Boyle-Midway was sold to Reckitt & Colman (now Reckitt Benckiser) in 1990. The primary direct competitor to Sani-Flush was Vanish, a brand of toilet cleaning crystals marketed in the US by the SC Johnson Company.

Widely stocked in grocery and hardware stores, the product was a well-known household name and occasionally mentioned in children's jokes like "If Santa gets stuck in your chimney, use Santa Flush" and the apocryphal advertising slogan "Sani-Flush, Sani-Flush, cleans your teeth without a brush. All you do is pour it on; one, two, three, your teeth are gone." A strongly corrosive product, Sani-Flush was kept out of the reach of children as sodium bisulfate mixed with water produces sulphuric acid. Mixing Sani-Flush (as acid) with a caustic alkaline drain cleaner (such as Drāno or Liquid-Plumr) can be deadly. Likewise, mixing Sani-Flush with bleach releases poisonous gas; on April 8, 1964 a Winn-Dixie food store in St. Petersburg, Florida was evacuated and eleven people hospitalised.

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