--- topic: "DIY Natural Cleaners" title: "Do Vinegar and Baking Soda Actually Clean?" order: 1 description: "Lab tests show vinegar and baking soda are weak disinfectants. Here is what soap, hydrogen peroxide, lemon, and essential oils really do." question: "Do vinegar, baking soda, and lemon actually clean and disinfect?" answer: "Vinegar and baking soda are unlikely to disinfect reliably; soap and water clean well, and 3% hydrogen peroxide disinfects given enough contact time." actions: - "Clean first with dish soap, warm water, and a fresh cloth; a 1% dish-soap dilution inactivated SARS-CoV-2 in the lab, and wiping removed most bacteria [1][2]." - "Treat vinegar and baking soda as cleaners, not disinfectants; for raw-meat juices or illness, clean first, then keep 3% hydrogen peroxide or labelled disinfectant wet for its contact time [3][4][5]." - "Never mix vinegar with bleach, or bleach with ammonia. The mix can release chlorine or chloramine gas, so use one product at a time with a window open [6][7]." cautions: - "If you or your child has asthma, skip aerosol sprays, scented products, and disinfecting wipes. Even green and homemade products showed some link to asthma in large surveys [8][9]." - "Store every cleaner, including vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, in its original labelled container, out of reach of children and pets [7]." confidence: 3 confidenceNote: "Lab studies agree that vinegar and baking soda are weak disinfectants, but no trial has tested home infection rates, and the asthma data are observational." evidenceSummary: rctCount: 0 observationalCount: 5 metaAnalysisCount: 0 totalParticipants: "45,000+ (observational studies; the rest are lab tests)" replicated: true newestStudyYear: 2025 references: - id: "1" pmid: "35458445" title: "The Efficacy of Common Household Cleaning Agents for SARS-CoV-2 Infection Control" authors: "Almeida CF, Purcell DFJ, Godfrey DI, et al." year: 2022 journal: "Viruses" - id: "2" pmid: "14672226" title: "Tolerance of Salmonella Enteritidis and Staphylococcus aureus to surface cleaning and household bleach" authors: "Kusumaningrum HD, Paltinaite R, Koomen AJ, et al." year: 2003 journal: "J Food Prot" - id: "3" pmid: "10656352" title: "Antimicrobial activity of home disinfectants and natural products against potential human pathogens" authors: "Rutala WA, Barbee SL, Aguiar NC, et al." year: 2000 journal: "Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol" - id: "4" pmid: "32035997" title: "Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents" authors: "Kampf G, Todt D, Pfaender S, et al." year: 2020 journal: "J Hosp Infect" - id: "5" pmid: "40746631" title: "3% hydrogen peroxide to disinfect urine-contaminated surfaces" authors: "Tsuyuki B, Shahriari D" year: 2025 journal: "Infect Prev Pract" - id: "6" pmid: "39263698" title: "Trends in chlorine and chloramine gas exposures reported to United States poison centers" authors: "Atalla A, Shulman J, Rose J, et al." year: 2024 journal: "Clin Toxicol (Phila)" - id: "7" pmid: "32525852" title: "Knowledge and Practices Regarding Safe Household Cleaning and Disinfection for COVID-19 Prevention - United States, May 2020" authors: "Gharpure R, Hunter CM, Schnall AH, et al." year: 2020 journal: "MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep" - id: "8" pmid: "17585104" title: "The use of household cleaning sprays and adult asthma: an international longitudinal study" authors: "Zock JP, Plana E, Jarvis D, et al." year: 2007 journal: "Am J Respir Crit Care Med" - id: "9" pmid: "35904383" title: "Household use of green and homemade cleaning products, wipe application mode, and asthma among French adults from the CONSTANCES cohort" authors: "Pacheco Da Silva E, Sit G, Goldberg M, et al." year: 2022 journal: "Indoor Air" - id: "10" pmid: "32847510" title: "Did granny know best? Evaluating the antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral efficacy of acetic acid for home care procedures" authors: "Zinn MK, Bockmühl D" year: 2020 journal: "BMC Microbiol" - id: "11" pmid: "32162221" title: "Does the ubiquitous use of essential oil-based products promote indoor air quality? A critical literature review" authors: "Angulo Milhem S, Verriele M, Nicolas M, et al." year: 2020 journal: "Environ Sci Pollut Res Int" - id: "12" pmid: "33868951" title: "Altered toxicological endpoints in humans from common quaternary ammonium compound disinfectant exposure" authors: "Hrubec TC, Seguin RP, Xu L, et al." year: 2021 journal: "Toxicol Rep" --- Not reliably. In lab tests, household vinegar and baking soda cut common bacteria by less than 99.9%, and vinegar did not inactivate SARS-CoV-2 even at near-full strength [1][3]. Dish soap did, at a 1% dilution, and 3% hydrogen peroxide works if it stays wet long enough [1][4][5]. For most home cleaning, soap, water, and a clean cloth are enough. Never mix vinegar with bleach [6][7]. ## How it works **Cleaning and disinfecting are different jobs.** Cleaning lifts soil and germs off a surface with soap, water, and friction [1][2]. Disinfecting kills what is left, but the product has to stay wet for a set contact time, from one minute to several hours in the tests below [4][5]. The studies below measure germ-killing, not stain or limescale removal, so they cannot say whether vinegar shifts soap scum. **Soap, water, and a cloth come first.** Wiping cut *Staphylococcus aureus* on a test surface from about 100,000 colonies per 100 cm² to between fewer than 4 and 100, depending on the cloth [2]. Most used cloths then carried 10,000 to 100,000 colonies, so rinse or swap them often [2]. Dish detergent diluted 100-fold inactivated SARS-CoV-2 in a lab test [1]. **Vinegar and baking soda are weak disinfectants.** In liquid tests, vinegar cut *S. aureus* and *E. coli* by less than 1,000-fold, and baking soda did the same to every microbe tested, while bleach and several commercial products cut them roughly 400,000-fold or more [3]. In European standard tests, 5 to 7.5% acetic acid (about kitchen-vinegar strength) cut those two bacteria by only 1 to 4 logs (a log is a tenfold drop) in liquid, though it did better on dried surfaces [10]. It took 10% plus 1.5% citric acid to pass for most bacteria in liquid [10]. A 50:50 vinegar-and-water spray halves the acid. Vinegar did not inactivate SARS-CoV-2 even at near-full strength [1]. **Hydrogen peroxide works, but not instantly.** At 0.5% it inactivated coronaviruses on surfaces within a minute in lab studies, so the 3% drugstore bottle is ample for that job [4]. Against bacteria in a soiled test, it took a one-hour soak for flat plastic and three hours for narrow tubing [5]. Spray, keep the surface wet, and keep it in a separate bottle from vinegar. **Lemon and essential oils.** No household-surface tests of lemon juice turned up in our search, and citric acid appears in the acetic-acid study only as a booster [10]. Treat essential oils as scent. Oil-based household products are significant sources of terpenes in indoor air, and these react with ozone to form formaldehyde and fine particles [11]. **What you breathe matters as much as the label.** Weekly cleaning sprays were linked to new asthma, and green and homemade products showed a weaker link [8][9]. Stronger chemistries bring their own issues. "Antibacterial" quaternary ammonium compounds ("quats") were found in the blood of 80% of 43 volunteers [12], yet benzalkonium chloride was less effective than peroxide, ethanol, or bleach on coronaviruses [4]. Only 35% of 502 surveyed US adults knew that bleach should not be mixed with vinegar [7]. For conventional cleaners, see [Common Cleaning Products and Their Hidden Risks](/household-chemicals/cleaning-products) and [Bleach, Quats, and Lung Health](/bleach-and-disinfectants/bleach-quats-and-lung-health). ## The evidence in detail **Vinegar and baking soda against bacteria.** Rutala and colleagues compared vinegar and baking soda with seven disinfectants (one of them ethanol) using quantitative suspension tests, with 30-second and 5-minute exposures, against *S. aureus*, *Salmonella choleraesuis*, *E. coli* O157:H7, and *Pseudomonas aeruginosa* [3]. Vinegar eliminated under 3 log10 (under 99.9%) of *S. aureus* and *E. coli*, and baking soda under 3 log10 of every organism. Five of the disinfectants, including Clorox and Lysol Antibacterial Kitchen Cleaner, reached 5.6 to 8.2 log10. Only Clorox and Lysol Disinfectant worked against poliovirus [3]. These were tube tests, not soiled counters, and they are more than two decades old. **Acetic acid at higher strength.** Zinn and Bockmühl ran European standard tests with an albumin soil load, 5 minutes of contact for bacteria and 15 for yeasts [10]. In liquid, 5 to 7.5% acetic acid managed only about 1 to 4 logs against *E. coli* and *S. aureus*, while 10% plus 1.5% citric acid cut seven organisms by more than 5 logs (methicillin-resistant *S. aureus*, or MRSA, by only 3.19). On dried surfaces, 5% acetic acid gave complete reductions of six organisms, and against an enveloped vaccinia virus it achieved at least a 4-log reduction in one minute [10]. Even so, the authors concluded that acetic acid at the dose commonly used for cleaning does not disinfect [10]. **Viruses.** Almeida and colleagues exposed live SARS-CoV-2 to household products at 18 to 20 °C for 30 seconds or 5 minutes [1]. Vinegar and lab-grade acetic acid were completely ineffective even at 90% by volume (3.6% acetic acid) [1]. Dish detergent worked at 1%, bleach at 0.21 g/L sodium hypochlorite after 30 seconds, and ethanol at 40% [1]. Kampf and colleagues reviewed 22 studies: coronaviruses persisted up to 9 days on metal, glass, or plastic, and 62 to 71% ethanol, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide, or 0.1% sodium hypochlorite inactivated them within a minute, while 0.05 to 0.2% benzalkonium chloride (a quat) was less effective [4]. **Peroxide and friction.** In a small bench test, soap-and-water washing left urine-contaminated plastic contaminated, while a 3% hydrogen peroxide soak cleared bacteria after one hour on flat plastic and three hours inside narrow lumens [5]. In the cloth experiments, wiping cut *S. aureus* from about 100,000 to under 4 to 100 colonies per 100 cm², but most cloths held 10,000 to 100,000 colonies afterward [2]. **Asthma in people who clean.** The European Community Respiratory Health Survey followed 3,503 adults who cleaned their own homes and were asthma-free at the start [8]. Weekly spray use (42% of people) went with a relative risk of 1.49 (95% CI 1.12 to 1.99) for new asthma symptoms or medication use, and spraying four or more days a week with 2.11 (1.15 to 3.89) for physician-diagnosed asthma [8]. Glass-cleaning, furniture, and air-freshening sprays drove the risk; products not applied as sprays were not associated [8]. The French CONSTANCES cross-sectional study (41,570 adults) linked weekly use of irritants (odds ratio 1.23), scented products (1.15), sprays (1.18), disinfecting wipes (1.21), homemade products (1.19), and green products (1.09, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.20) with current asthma [9]. **Null and conflicting results.** In liquid tests, Rutala and Zinn agree that vinegar-strength acid is weak [3][10]. The conflict is Zinn's dried-surface test, where 5% acetic acid gave complete reductions [10]. Differences in organisms, soil, drying, and contact time probably explain this, but the studies did not test each other's conditions. A cautious reading is that full-strength vinegar left wet for minutes may reduce some bacteria on a clean surface, while a diluted spritz on a dirty one cannot be relied on. In CONSTANCES, the green and homemade links were small, and when those products were not combined with irritants or sprays, only the wipe association remained [9]. Cross-sectional data cannot show cause, since people with asthma may clean differently. No study we found tested whether DIY or commercial cleaners change infection rates at home. **Chemicals in the body and the air.** Quats were detected in the blood of 80% of 43 volunteers, and higher levels went with more inflammatory markers, lower mitochondrial function, and disturbed cholesterol handling [12]. The study was small and cross-sectional, so it shows exposure, not harm. US poison centers logged 85,104 chlorine and chloramine gas exposures from 2015 to 2022, up 61% over that period; 84.9% were at home and 26 were fatal [6]. A critical review concluded that essential-oil-based products can worsen indoor air quality [11]. **Bottom line (confidence 3 of 5).** Several independent lab studies agree that vinegar and baking soda are poor disinfectants, and that soap, water, friction, bleach, and peroxide at label strength and contact time work. Whether that changes illness at home is untested, and the asthma links are observational.