My new kittens have a parasite infection, and we’ve been instructed to sanitize their litter box between litter changes. Was bopping along on my Sunday evening doing chores. I clean the litter boxes in the bathroom. Usually I’ve been cleaning the litter box by making the litter pan soapy with hot water and a pinch of bleach, but this litter pan had a couple clumps of litter stuck to the bottom of the pan and I was feeling lazy so before adding the hot water, I gave a liberal pour of bleach directly from the bottle onto the clumps stuck at the bottom of the empty litter box. A weird white fizzing was occurring in the bottom of the litter box between the gray litter clump and the clear bleach, and I’m thinking “why is it white?” but like a dumbass go on to the next step and add hot water anyway. My older cat alerts to the danger by coming up and stared with wide eyes and a huge tail. At that point I could smell and feel that the air in the room was stinging and painful to breath, and it smelled weird, so I put on the bathroom fan, scooped her up, and shut the door. That was when it crossed my brain that I created a caustic chemical. Googled it and determined it was chloramine gas, and, we’d be ok. Turns out that cat urine contains ammonia, and ammonia and bleach makes chloramine gas. Hot water is the worst idea because it strengthens the reaction. This bathroom has no windows so I’m just wondering like how will we get this out of there? Scooped up the curious kittens and put them in a well ventilated room far away with open windows and stuffed cloth under the door. Opened all the windows in the house and turned on all the fans. Decided to keep the bathroom door closed and the shower fan on and see if 10 minutes would dissipate it. Had to tell my husband the bathroom was a hazard zone. Eventually the shower fan did dissipate all the gas (I wasn’t sure it actually would, apparently it does have an exhaust ). I was a tiny bit (barely) lightheaded and my airway was a bit hoarse but nothing warranting medical care. The kittens and big cat and my husband were all fine. Now you’d have no idea. Thank heavens for shower exhaust fans. Worst part is that I teach science. Don’t be like me.
TL;DR: Poured bleach into a litter box in my bathroom creating a cloud of noxious gas that took hours to dissipate.
Comments
You made mustard gas, good job. NEVER USE BLEACH for bathroom or potty cleanups.
Edited: how did you forget basic science? I’m really curious lol
…I like to change my kitty litter and clean out the litter box in the back yard, just saying.
My coworker was a chemistry major just about to graduate when he made chloramine gas while trying to clean a toilet of the apartment we were clearing out. He and I started coughing then looked at each other like “oh shit” and bolted out of the bathroom and proceeded to cough for the next 30 minutes while our boss yelled at us to get back to work.