It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it. The elixir is real. U.S. regulators have approved it. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job. The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water. Some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso," the miracle liquid. That's as good a name as any for a substance that scientists said is powerful enough to kill anthrax spores without harming people or the environment. Used as a sanitizer for decades in Russia and Japan, it's slowly winning acceptance in the United States. For more than 200 years, scientists have tinkered with electrolysis, the use of an electric current to bring about a chemical reaction. That's how we got metal electroplating and large-scale production of chlorine, used to bleach and sanitize. It turns out that zapping saltwater with low-voltage electricity creates a couple of powerful, nontoxic cleaning agents. Sodium ions are converted into sodium hydroxide, an alkaline liquid that cleans and degreases like detergent, but without the scrubbing bubbles. Chloride ions become hypochlorous acid, a potent disinfectant known as acid water. "It's 10 times more effective than bleach in killing bacteria," said Yen-Con Hung, a professor of food science at the University of Georgia, Griffin, who has been researching electrolyzed water for more than a decade. "And it's safe."