There's a company called 2San that has gotten some press recently for selling a "chemical-free" cleaner, which is "created by re-engineering water in a seven-stage filtration process". It's called Clean Zero.
The marketing materials state:
Clean Zero is produced through microfiltration of water,...
The relevant buzzword (found somewhere on their site) seems to be "re-engineered water", though it's not clear which type they're using (except it's probably not steam).
Electrolysis may well explain it, though as your site states @Laurel - it's hardly "chemical-free" once the process is complete! It's interesting though, their site doesn't imply you need to add salt to the machines that they sell.. Unless that's what's hidden in the "filters". Is there actually enough sodium in tap water to do this without needing additional salt?
@AdamWilliams "it's hardly "chemical-free" once the process is complete!" I think that's the heart of the question. From the link I posted above: "Electrolyzing regular tap water produces a solution of hypochlorous acid and sodium hydroxide" Those sure sound like chemicals to me but earlier in that same page they claim it is "chemical-free". It doesn't seem to make sense from a literal perspective so I'm assuming they mean no chemicals are added.
A reminder to the linguistic prescriptivists: Scientists don't own words, and the battle over the term "chemical-free" was, perhaps sadly, lost by them a couple of decades ago. When used in marketing, the marketing definition (approximately: "no artificial additives produced in lab conditions by chemical reactions") can be inferred.
Water is H2O, i.e. oxygen and hydrogen, depending on the last steps applied to the 'hydro-embellished' water a whole host of chemically active (and thus potentially cleaning) substances could be produced,H2O2, H2O3, HO, HO3, O2, O3, ... depending on the letter of the law, this might not have to be disclosed, as no material is added - to make those stable would require changing the 2:1 ratio of H:O, which would afaik severly affect pH, and also the drinkability...
@Oddthinking Marketroids don’t own words either. And demanding that I accept the marketing definition is a linguistic prescription. The so-called “descriptivists” are hypocrites.
@Oddthinking It's not linguistic prescriptivism to argue that scientific terminology from a scientific field - which chemical is - be used accurately. There's no such thing as a marketing definition, it's the pseudoscience definition. Chemical is a scientific word with a specific meaning, scientists rolling over to allow marketers to appropriate it over the last few decades is what's contributed so heavily to pseudoscience and the natural-unnatural false dichotomy in that time. It's ironic that skeptics.SE is somehow less skeptical than some anti-misinformation Facebook pages I follow.
@HashimAziz That's literally what linguistic prescriptivism means! (Assuming you aren't playing some game where you are secretly using a different definition.)
@user3840170 Starting out with a derogatory word, and finishing with an empty claim of hypocrisy isn't helping your case look rational. When we assess a claim, we must use the meaning the claimants intend. If those are unclear, unconventional or likely to mislead, it is great to mention that in an answer that also addresses the claim. You don't have to use the words the same way others do, but you can't argue that they are wrong on that basis alone.
@Prometheus: I didn't delete the comments. I moved them to chat because repeating an age-old debate from people who don't understand linguistics isn't the purpose of comments.
By deleting the comments so that only your opinion on "linguistics" remains visible on the question. I will be posting a Meta question on this when I get the time and see what the community thinks of this weird moderator overreach.
@Oddthinking You neglected to remove your comment beginning with "A reminder to the linguistic prescriptivists" from the main comment thread after you copied it to this chat. I assume this was an oversight. Please remove it now.
Discussion on question by Adam Willia…
Discussion on question by Adam Willia…