I read the other day that troops in africa during wwII used sand to get rid of the crusty gross sweat build up in their uniforms.any truth to that(shudder)

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), July 24, 1999

Answers

Zoobie:

It depends an awful lot on what you call clean.

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), July 24, 1999.

I know for a fact that you can (I have) use sand to clean cooking utensils. It's a pretty ling process but will work quite well in the shortage of water.

I'm not quite sure how one would go about cleaning clothes with sand. (Assuming, of coures, that the clothes are not make like cooking utensils.) And could you use a cement mixer as a washing machine? (Sorry, having a little fun there.)

-Greybear

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-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), July 24, 1999.

Greybear:

I agree. Sand [as a first step] works better on pots and pans, even if you have water. Particularly, a messy fry pan. But, the question was about sweat stains in clothes. I stand by my cryptic statement. I have smelled those that do this. Never come close to them, but smelled from afar

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), July 24, 1999.

If you have sand, do you have a beach? What kind of water?

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWAyne@aol.com), July 24, 1999.

I dunno how clean the clothes would get if scrubbed with sand, but I'm pretty sure the useful life of any fabric scrubbed with sand would be appreciably shortened.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), July 24, 1999.