What Does Hydrogen Peroxide Do To Electronics?

U.S. Air Force Add SlashGear on Google: Preferred Source Google Discover The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an era of rigorous cleaning everywhere, with people pretty much disinfecting everything they owned, from washing bags of chips to scrubbing phones and laptops clean. Besides alcohol, the second holy grail of cleaning was seen as hydrogen peroxide. And if alcohol is safe to clean electronics with, plenty of people wonder if that brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the bathroom cabinet is safe as well.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case — or at least the companies think so. In July 2021, during the height of the pandemic, Apple quietly added hydrogen peroxide to its list of products to avoid for cleaning Apple devices. The problem with this particular product — especially that brown bottle on your shelf — is that neither chemical in the compound is particularly beneficial for electronics. The average household compound is mostly a 3% solution, with the rest simply being water. So if you wipe down a laptop with it, it means you’re dabbing it with mostly water, which can be damaging.

Meanwhile, the remaining 3% is what the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) calls a powerful oxidizer. An oxidizer readily pulls electrons away from other materials, leading to corrosion in many metals.

That said, research has suggested that actual gadgets hold up better than what the chemistry suggests. In a 2010 study, the EPA filled sealed chambers with hydrogen peroxide gas and exposed cell phones, PDAs, fax machines, and Dell desktop computers to it. Over the following year, researchers found no visual or functional changes in any of that equipment.

U.S. Air Force However, device makers themselves are unconvinced, and as we established earlier, hydrogen peroxide solutions do contain water. Moreover, companies like Apple and HP warn that such cleaners might damage the finish on their products’ outer surfaces. None of these companies argue about the strength and percentage of peroxide. Instead, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Google all point owners toward isopropyl alcohol — better known as rubbing alcohol — in their official support pages. Apple’s own instructions for cleaning a Mac laptop suggest 70% isopropyl alcohol for stubborn smudges on the screen or body. Meanwhile, Dell recommends dampening a microfiber cloth with a mix of 70% alcohol and 30% water.

Now, you might argue that water is involved here as well — something that made that brown bottle risky in the first place. However, that’s still far less water than what drugstore peroxide carries. A mostly-alcohol mix also evaporates pretty rapidly, unlike a mostly-water peroxide solution that probably lingers a lot longer.

There are exceptions, though. Lenovo has laptops and tablets that are used in hospitals between patients. For this specific case, the company has a cleaning guide that covers medical-grade disinfecting wipes. For those, it says that no more than 0.5% hydrogen peroxide is a lower-risk option. That’s one-sixth the strength of the bottle from the drugstore. Even then, the company warns that medical wipes can cause corrosion and outright failure of electrical parts. Apple, for one, doesn’t cover liquid damage under its limited warranty, among other things.