Are you looking for the uses of boric acid? Boric acid has 10,000 different uses ranging from industrial to residential uses. First and foremost, I have to tell you about the best source of boric acid: 20 Mule Team Borax. This is the original source of boric acid that your grandmother used and it is, by far, the cheapest source today, still. Other companies sell boric acid under the marketing as a roch killer or laundry booster, but they inflate their prices a lot. The Amazon link I sent you has 5.5lbs of boric acid for $10.
Use 20 Mule Team Borax since all borax/boric acid are the same and 20 Mule Team is the cheapest.
If you are gonna use boric acid for anything, use the 20 Mule Team brand. It is the best.
What is the difference between boric acid and borax? Borax is a naturally occurring salt that you can use to derive boric acid out of. Boric acid is B3HO3 whereas borax is Na2B4O7. By mixing borax with water, you will have boric acid. Buying boric acid at the store is more expensive then buy borax since boric acid needs to be made at a lab whereas borax can be dug up from the ground.
Boric Acid Laundry Use
Boric Acid is great for the laundry
Boric Acid is a great laundry booster to get your whites whiter. It is also one of the main ingredients in natural laundry detergents as well. You can either buy those natural laundry detergents at the store or you can just use straight up boric acid and mix it at home. Here is a very easy at home recipe for borax laundry detergent:
Ingredients
- 1 bar of soap, I like to use Dial. It is for the grease remover as well as the smell.
- 1 cup of washing soda.
- 1 cup of baking soda.
- 1 cup of borax, preferably the 20 Mule Team brand since it is the cheapest.
Put all the ingredients into the food process or mix it together. Add to your laundry and you are done. You can also add white vinegar to your laundry in addition to this to soften the fabric.
Boric Acid as an Antiseptic
By mixing one table spoon of borax with one cup of water, you will have a great boric acid based antiseptic you can use for cuts, burns, eye wash, yeast infections, ear infections, and athlete’s foot.
Boric Acid for Eyes
Take the 1 cup of water & 1 table spoon of borax mixture and use an eye drop to drop some in your eyes. Many medical companies use boric acid in their eye washes. In fact, Bausch and Lomb use it in one of their leading eye washes. However, a few ounces of their solution costs as much as the whole 5.5lb box of 20 Mule Team borax I showed you earlier.
Boric Acid for Yeast Infections
Use our boric acid solution with a douche and do it once a day for 3 days. You should feel much better. I have also read that some people take veggie capsules and fill it with borax and insert it in overnight. By the next morning, the yeast infection is over with as well.
Boric Acid for Cuts and Burns
Pour the boric acid solution over the cuts or burn. You can also soak a towel in the solution and apply it directly over the wound as well. This works because boric acid is acidic and germs can’t live in acidic environments.
Boric Acid used in Ear Infections
Swimmers often use boric acid solutions to wash out their ears. You can do the same thing by taking an eye drop of our boric acid solution and dropping it in your ear as well.
Boric Acid for Athlete’s Foot
If you are suffering from Athlete’s foot, you can apply boric acid directly to your feet as well as in your socks. This will kill the fungus that causes athlete’s foot.
Boric Acid for Acne
Boric Acid is a natural acne treatment
Boric acid kills bacteria and is a great way to kill the bacteria that causes acne. You can use boric acid for acne by applying this simple home remedy:
Ingredients:
- 1 tea spoon Glycerin
- 1 cup water
- 1 tea spoon Borax
Mix the three together until it is a paste. Add more water or glycerin if needed.
Once you have the paste, apply it to your face, chest, back, anywhere you have acne. Let it dry and remove it once the layer of boric acid is flaking. You can remove it by just taking a shower.
Boric Acid as an Insecticide
Use boric acid to kill ants
Got some cockroaches, termites, fire ants, fleas, silverfish, and other insects you want to kill using boric acid? This is one of the best boric acid uses since it is way cheaper then any other insecticide out there.
It is really simple to do this. Take borax and mix it with butter. Make little balls of borax/butter and insert in into a straw. Cut the straw into one inch segments. Then, place those insect killing bait anywhere that ants, termites, cockroaches, or whatever frequent such as behind the counters, in corners, and in the back of the fridge.
The bugs will be attracted to the butter and eat it up. Then they will be covered in borax as well as have ingested the borax. The borax that has been ingested will kill the bugs but, if the bugs returned to the hive, the borax on their body will spread to other bugs and kill them as well. The ingested borax kills the bugs by messing up its metabolism. The borax that covers their body will kill the bugs by dehydrating it.
Borax is used for dry rot
You can mix 1 pound of borax with 3 quarts of water to treat wood to prevent it from rotting. The Navy uses this to treat wood.
Boric acid uses in Industrial environments
Boric acid has a lot of industrial uses that a normal user would never think of.
- Boric acid is used to make fireworks green. Next time you see fireworks, you will know where the green color comes from.
- One of the boric acid uses in nuclear power plants is as a neutron poison. Boric acid can absorb rogue neutrons and stop a nuclear meltdown from happening.
- Borax is used in welding flux.
- Boric acid is used to preserve cattle hide and make leather.
- Boric acid is sometimes used to preserve food, but it is not supposed to be used in food.
Boric Acid is Safe as Salt?
It has been widely accepted that boric acid is as safe as salt but the European Commission has placed it in the potentially harmful category of chemicals. They found that boric acid, in high doses, caused birth defects in mice babies. It is also believed that, if children are exposed to high amounts of boric acid, they might have reproductive defects.
The Best Source of Boric Acid/Borax
If you wanna buy boric acid, as I told you earlier, you should get it from 20 Mule Team. It is the best because it is the cheapest and boric acid is boric acid. Think about it, do you really care about the brand of your table salt? No, NaCL is NaCL. Same thing with boric acid/borax–another type of natural salt.