Story By: Jonathan Macias, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash

A Colombian man had his shoes melted when he put them in a washtub with hypochlorite to disinfect them before going to the dentist,

Local media reported that Edgar Castellanos, whose age was not given, noticed the soles of his shoes were melting when he had just left the dentist room after he went for an emergency in the Colombian capital of Bogota in the Capital District in the centre of the country.

Castellanos told local media: “The porters asked me to stand with my shoes in a bowl containing a liquid. They told me it was for biosecurity reasons, so I did it.”

He added: “When I left the dentist I noticed I was walking badly, I felt I was losing my equilibrium and I was going to fall. I looked at the shoes and saw that they were melting.”

The building administrator Nilson Olmos reportedly showed surprised when he was told and he said that it had not happened to anybody else in the building before.

Olmos said to local media: “We have only just started doing things this way, but we are following all the prescribed guidelines.”

Local authorities are looking into the possibility the shoes were made of a material that caused the reaction when they mixed with the hypochlorite, or whether the liquid itself might have been altered with another chemical.

The hypochlorite used to disinfect surfaces should not be altered to enhance its efficiency, according to local sanitary authorities.

Hypochlorite is widely used as a disinfectant, usually after being mixed with water, as it is unstable in its pure form.

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