Ecotru or false?

I recently pulled this out of my briefcase. It had been sitting there for a month or so. I picked it up on a Jet Blue flight, along with an air sickness bag where I wrote down a message that appeared on the video screen in front of me:

"Tray table need a wipe? Ask your inflight crew for help with an Ecotru cleansing wipe."

I'm always thinking of my readers, so I asked my inflight crew for a sample. I remembered that Envirosystems, the company that makes Ecotru, is promoting it as a nanotech product.

My local NBC affiliate, Local 4 in Detroit, was on the story recently with a report on whether Ecotru is squeaky clean. Here's what Lila's Good Health says:

The company credits something called nano-emulsive particles. They are particles so small they can wiggle their way through the walls of a germ and kill it from within.

Envirosystems said the particles target tiny bacteria and viruses, and leave larger human and animal cells alone.

... Lila's Good Health wondered if Ecotru was too good to be true?

So Local 4 took the bottle to Dr. Michael Harbut, the chief of occupational and environmental medicine at Providence Hospital.

... He believes it will kill what it says it will, but so will a lot of other products.

"A 10 percent bleach solution will kill the HIV virus," said Harbut.

The price is $19.95 for a 22-ounce bottle. That's far more than other household cleaners.

"I think for most household uses, it's probably pretty expensive and doesn't offer a lot of advantages over things which are already available," said Harbut.

Despite the cost, major companies are snapping it up. Boeing now recommends Ecotru to clean the inside of its planes and 30 airlines have placed orders. More here

Jet Blue seems to like the stuff, anyway.

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