>- chemistry in high school and college
My minor in chemistry disagrees with a lot of what you say.
Some of your claims can be true however.
>- The color, of course, comes from electrolytic corrosion of the metal electrodes.
In some cases, this may be true but not in all cases. I have used pure copper electrodes which will impart a slight green tint to the water after a long period of time without having the feet in the bath.
However, placing the feet into the bath, the water can take on other colors that can not come from the electrodes.
Also, you may not be aware, but not all detox foot baths use a current. Many of the newer ones use vibrational energy and reactive clays such as
Bentonite and zeolite.
You can even run an AA spectrograph on the material before and after to quantify the mercury, arsenic, lead, aluminum, etc that has been absorbed.
>- By-products of the electrolysis process are bubbles of hydrogen and chlorine gases (both of which are dangerous in confined spaces) and sodium hydroxide, commonly known as "lye"
You would not produce enough to be noticible in several hours at these low currents.
>- soften skin, allowing it to flake off, pick up
Yes, this does happen some but what you fail to realize is that the body naturally tries to eliminate metals through the pores in the soft skin of the feet and even just an
Epsom Salt bath helps carry this away but the clays work even better. The softer the skin the better the results.
Try this your self....
Wash and scrub your feet several times, rinse several times more, then put them into a tub of very warm
Epsom Salt water (2 tablespoons in a gallon of water) and see what you get in 15-20 minutes.
Humans used to do this naturally by walking barefoot through the mud.
Do the same experiment and add some hydrogen peroxide.
The free oxygen ions from either will help pull additional heavy metals from the pores of the feet.
Third, use a zapper with the positive electrode on the hands (wrap the electrod with a paper towel wet with salt water to keep the coppper off of your skin) and the negative in the foot bath. This will not color the water green with copper but you can definitely see other stuff after a while.