Everything Matters: Chlorine

Corrosive chlorine is an element of extremes: a deadly poisonous gas with powerfully disinfectant properties. Learn how lethal chlorine leads to lifesaving sanitation. Hear chlorine’s complicated history, from bleaching agent to antiseptic to weapon of war, and discover its essential role in our biology. Pauli Gray and Emily Newman of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation will share the science behind using chlorine bleach to clean needles and syringes, and discuss the larger landscape of needle exchange and distribution in San Francisco and across the United States.

People who use injection drugs are best able to reduce their risk for contracting infectious diseases, like HIV and Hepatitis C, by using a new, sterile needle and syringe every time they inject. This isn’t always possibleâ€"especially when syringe distribution programs are forced to operate underground, against the law, and against public opinion. Public health organizations recommend that, if people need to re-use needles, they first clean them with full-strength chlorine bleach. 

Pauli Gray has been a harm reduction worker and activist since 1997. He has worked full-time at San Francisco AIDS Foundation since 1998 and part-time for the DOPE Project/Harm Reduction Coalition since 2004, focusing on Hepatitis C counseling and treatment access, needle exchanges, and overdose prevention. Gray runs harm reduction groups and Hepatitis C groups and gives individual counseling as well.

Emily Newman, MA, is a social scientist, writer, and editor of BETA, an HIV and AIDS treatment, prevention and care publication established in 1988. She has worked at San Francisco AIDS Foundation for the past two years, is a regular volunteer for a women’s healthcare organization, and has worked in clinical research, HIV prevention, and social science research for over ten years.