Eco balls

I spotted these for a fairly bargainous ~£5.50 last night and having been intruiged by them before, decided to take the plunge, thinking that it would be nice not to be shoving a load of detergent into the environment etc.

So, anyway, these blue ball things go in with your washing and the little balls of salt compounds contained in the blue plastic bit gradully dissolve in your wash and help the water clean your clothes more effectively. The salts do this by making the water more alkaline. However, reading the info sheet contained with the balls raised my scientific hackles sky high. According to the blurb:

"... Ecoballs exceed OH (I think they mean exude) which will react with stain under saponification (by creating a surfact-active agent which lifts the dirt away). The Activated water molecule filters easily into the inside of clothing fibre... ...Sodium and potassium oxides dissolve in the water, increasing its alkalinity i.e. the Ecoballs makes the molecule of the water smaller (!!) which returns the water to having its brilliant hydrating properties..."

OK. "making a water molecule smaller" is a bit like saying "splitting the atom"

A water molecule consists of one oxygen atom (the red bit) joined VERY TIGHTLY to two hydrogen atoms (the white ones). Yes, there are plenty of chemical circumstances under which one of the hydrogens can become detached, but I don't know of any chemical (or physical for that matter) way to shrink a water molecule!

I accept that someone somewhere has had to translate this from "foreign" into english and it can't have been an easy task, but...grr...

The next bit which raised my eyebrows slightly was the answer to "Why aren't my Ecoballs working?". In particular reference to whites, the comment was:
"If you find your whites are not as luminous, you may add a small amount of bleach etc... Ecoballs do not contain toxic enzymes, optimisers or other poisonous chemicals therefore the results of using ecoballs cannot be compared to those of laundry powders that do contain toxic chemicals..."

OK guys, so basically you're saying "they don't work as well as the more conventional, technologically advanced stuff, but we'll do our best to try to scare or guilt you out of using those..."

(mind you, I have to say I've done one - lightly soiled - wash with them today and was quite impressed. We'll see. I may not buy refills)