What Are the Ingredients in Clorox Bleach?

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Like most household bleach products, the active ingredient in Clorox bleach is sodium hypochlorite, a derivative of salt. Clorox bleach begins and ends its life as a mixture of salt and water.

The reason that the Clorox Company has its headquarters in Oakland, California, is because it got its start in the industry by running electricity through San Francisco Bay salt water. While chlorine is a gas at room temperature, when you take traditional table salt, which is half chlorine, and treat it slightly with electricity, you get bleach. Bleach is essentially a solution of sodium hypochlorite that is mixed with water to form a solution of 5.25 percent.

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