KDKA.com Consumer Web Extras
Aug 7, 2008 5:45 pm US/Eastern
Consumer Reports Rates Best Shower Cleaners
(KDKA)
When it comes to cleaning your shower, there are lots of products to choose from.
They promise to remove tough soap scum and fight mildew. Consumer Reports put 12 of the most popular cleaners to the test to find out which ones live up to their promises.
Consumer Reports Pat Slaven says the testers deliberately created their own rust to coat one set of tiles, covered a second set with mildew and a third set with soap scum.
"We took our soap-scum solution, and we sprayed our tiles daily for 14 days, letting it dry in between until we had a thick layer of soap-scum buildup," says Slaven.
Then they pitted each cleaner against the dirty tiles.
The results? None of the aerosol foams did well. Pump sprays did OK, including their top pick, Kaboom Shower Tub and Tile ($4.00), which seems to keep scum and mildew from forming in the first place when used on a daily basis.
Second best in the category was an environmentally-friendly product, Green Works Natural Bathroom Cleaner ($3.50), which testers found prevented scum and mildew from building up, removed rust and left no streaks, but was poor at removing established mildew.
The best performers were powdered cleansers.
Consumer Reports top picks in this category are Comet Scratch Free Disinfectant with Bleach, which retails for $1.25, making it a Best Buy. Also, a Best Buy is their second choice, Ajax with Bleach Scratch Free, at $1.20.
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