About six months ago I got interested in glycol vapors for reducing infections in crowded indoor spaces. I decided to give it a try, but it went poorly.

I was going to order some propylene glycol, but noticed that I already had some polyethylene glycol on hand. I figured that since people recommend propylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, and triethylene glycol for infection control, since "polyethylene" is just "propylene" with more syllables (how different could it be?) that it would work even better. In retrospect this was a very bad idea.

I had heard that you could use a regular fog machine, but these are designed to vaporize a liquid, and the polyethylene glycol I had ("Miralax") is a powder. Instead I decided to enlist one of my kids to slowly pour it into a box fan. This didn't work at all: instead of making a pathogen-reducing vapor it made a mess. To my surprise the powder settled quickly, and it was clear this hadn't worked. It really got everywhere (I can feel some under my feet right now) and it has been a pain to clean up. Worse, our cats seem to have eaten some, which has been an even larger pain to clean up.

While I still think glycol vapors are potentially a valuable tool for limiting the spread of disease, I'm going to wait for official recommendations before experimenting more. And avoid substitutions.