There are four chemicals that you can use to kill Covid-19 when you are cleaning your house. The first is hypochlorite, the main ingredient in bleach. Bleach is a chemical that kills bacteria and viruses, but it can also take the colour out of your clothes, so you have to be careful with it.
Another chemical that kills Covid-19 is quaternary ammonium, for example, benzalkonium chloride. This is common in many disinfectants. The nice thing about this chemical is that it doesn’t take the color out of cloth. However, it is less effective than the other chemicals.
Another chemical is activated hydrogen peroxide. This is often used for soaking laundry.
You could also use ethanol, a form of alcohol. In New Zealand you can buy this easily from the hardware store, it is called methylated spirits. You can dilute the methylated spirits so that it is 30% water.
Temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius can also kill the virus.
Vocabulary:
ingredient: the different things that combine to make something. For example, rice is an ingredient of sushi.
disinfectant: a cleaning solution that kills bacteria and some viruses.
effective: successful
soaking laundry: putting dirty clothes in a cleaning solution for several hours.
a form of: a kind of, a type of
dilute: mix with water
Celcius: C, a system of measuring temperature
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