[pct-l] Aqua Mira on airrplanes

[Eric Lee]

Verdick wrote:
>
Aqua Mira should be fine to check aboard airline.  The person on the phone
probably heard the "chlorine" in chlorine dioxide and stopped it at that.
According the the Aqua Mira website, even the chlorine dioxide is safe (the
A bottle), as it doesn't have a free chlorine atom.  It's all bound by the
oxygen.
"Any concentration of chlorine" sounds a bit too all encompassing, as it
could include salt in that description.
>

Verdick is right - chlorine dioxide is NOT chlorine, just like salt (NaCl,
or sodium chloride) is not chlorine.

Actually, technically speaking, the contents of the Part A bottle of the
Aqua Mira is "stabilized chlorine dioxide" which is a misnomer because it's
not really chlorine dioxide yet.  It's actually chlorite (ClO2-) which isn't
chlorine either.  The Part B solution is a food-grade acid which converts
chlorite into chlorine dioxide, which is a gas.  When you mix the two, a bit
of chlorine dioxide escapes but most of it stays dissolved in the liquid,
turning it yellow.  When you pour that solution into your water container,
the chlorine dioxide reacts with organic compounds by transferring the
oxygen atoms to the organics, thus oxidizing them, and results in chloride
(Cl-).  At no point in this entire chain of events do you ever get free
chlorine (Cl2).

As far as I understand the rules, you should be absolutely fine to fly with
Aqua Mira.  Convincing uneducated TSA employees of that fact might be a
different matter, however.  <sigh>

Eric