Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Depilatory cream hair clog dissolver

Hair today...
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Consider the clogged bathroom sink or shower (or tub, I suppose, if you are in the UK). Bathroom clogs are not comprised of onion skins and pork fat, even in the UK. These clogs are 99.44% hair, with some soap scum binder. Yet drain cleaners are all comprised of virulent caustics able to saponify and solubilize pork fat and dissolve onion skins. Sometimes they can dissolve metal pipes and do other damage. Certainly they can damage humans. Against hair, do we need such formidable chemical weaponry?

I propose for bathroom bezoars that the active ingredient in cream depilatories be adapted to a drain cleaner. Creams like Nair contain thioglycollate or related chemicals that break down the sulfhydryl bonds joining the keratin protein which comprises hair. These creams are gentle enough for your tender parts. At a stronger concentration you would need to keep your tender parts some distance from the action but still these would not be as potentially damaging and dangerous as current drain cleaners.

The hair dissolver would be applied as a thick gel or paste to the clog or allowed to settle down the water column until clog is reached, much as is done with current drain cleaner products. After breaking down the keratin, the hair will fall apart and so too the clog.

bungston, May 17 2017

Mutant 59 https://en.wikipedi...oomwatch#Series_One
Unfortunately effective... [8th of 7, May 26 2017]

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       Perhaps keratinase, or a carrier solution of a keratinase-secreting bacterium?
Loris, May 17 2017
  

       // Against hair, do we need such formidable chemical weaponry? //   

       Yes.   

       Next question ?
8th of 7, May 17 2017
  

       make a paste out of any reasonable biological washing powder, that works nicely. Because of the low temperature optimized non specific proteases. The other thing, don't use those shower sprays with the EDTA. There's quite a lot of bacteria that enjoy munching on waste skin/hair and do so with very little protest, but there's not much life that can live with totally chelated Ca2+/Mg2+.
bs0u0155, May 17 2017
  

       I don't want to pull apart why the opening two sentences of the idea work, but I do want to note that the opening two sentences of the idea are beautifully constructed. Well played, bungston!
calum, May 17 2017
  

       I don't want to pull apart why those two sentences above work, but I do want to note that those two sentences above are beautifully constructed. Well played, calum!
normzone, May 17 2017
  

       No croissants due to inadequate employment of flammable and/or explosive compounds in an unsafe, reckless and highly inadvisable way, but considerable kudos for deploying the word "bezoar", a noun notably lacking from almost all modern-day literature.
8th of 7, May 18 2017
  

       //No croissants due to inadequate employment of flammable and/or explosive compounds in an unsafe, reckless and highly inadvisable way//   

       For you, 8th, I propose an explosive expanding fast-setting foam, supplied in an aerosol can form-factor.
It's called "More big gaps".
Loris, May 19 2017
  

       Or maybe "Wall-B-Gone" ?
8th of 7, May 19 2017
  

       Oddly enough, I did once try taxidermy using expanding builders' foam. It did not end well.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 19 2017
  

       It did not. We warned you at the time. Yes, it was only a rabbit, but as we informed you, two of the essential steps in traditional taxidermy are considered to be emptying out the contents of the thorax and abdomen, and (inevitable, given the previous step) ensuring that the subject is definitely deceased.   

       Since you did neither, the resultant mess was inevitable.   

       That would have been bad enough, were it not for the fact that (presumably at the Intercalary's prompting) you added a uniquely refined element of sadistic cruelty by choosing to perform your experiment on the dinner table, immediately after the soup, using the pet albino rabbit of your niece, whose birthday party it was.
8th of 7, May 19 2017
  

       Well, it was the kindest thing to do after he'd been run over by that car..
bs0u0155, May 19 2017
  

       How Sturton got the keys is a mystery.   

       How he got the Veyron into the dining room is even more of a mystery ...
8th of 7, May 19 2017
  

       [8th], you are clearly raving. Who on earth holds a birthday party for a rabbit?   

       And you should know, by now, that Sturton doesn't drive - not since the "incident". And please don't say "the Veyron" - it makes it sound like we've only got one.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 19 2017
  

       If the hair dissolver is sufficiently harmless, one could create a clog preventative, which consists of a device which sits on the floor of a shower stall, and automatically dispenses a few drops of chemical after every shower.
goldbb, May 25 2017
  

       Well, hair's mostly chitin - as [Loris] suggested, no doubt Herr Doktor Professor Buchanan can engineer a bacterium to live in the plughole and break down clogging hair before it becomes problematic.   

       But be careful what you wish for ... <link>
8th of 7, May 26 2017
  

       //Well, hair's mostly chitin ...//   

       keratin!=chitin
Loris, May 26 2017
  

       Toenails are also made of keratin. I kind of like having toenails given the lack of a decent substitute.
Voice, May 26 2017
  

       //Doktor Professor Buchanan can engineer a bacterium to live in the plughole//   

       Best not. I tried it once - it worked a charm until it lured one of the dobermans down after it. All we got back was the studded collar. Sturton hasn't taken a bath since, though that's purely coincidental.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 26 2017
  

       Poor Otto, he was a lovely, gentle dog. Such a shame. The previous experience with the pigmy hedgehog should have been a warning, when it chewed through the brick wall and savaged that snow leopard before flying away ....
8th of 7, May 26 2017
  

       //Poor Otto, he was a lovely, gentle dog.//   

       Ah. [8th], I should mention that Otto is still very much extant, and as docile as ever. Statuary tends to be that way. Have you seen your optician lately? Can you, in fact, see your optician?   

       The canine that succumbed was Fagn who, being dyslexic, failed to understand the warning notice.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 26 2017
  

       I keep reading this as "Depilatory cream hair dog dissolver".
nineteenthly, May 27 2017
  

       I'm pretty sure that, in the future, plumbing will be implemented in software.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 27 2017
  


 

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