What cleaners are really legal?

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   I know we've had quite a few little discussions
about certain cleaners here, but I thought I would be good to discuss
them in detail, and try and work out what we all feel is acceptable...

Firstly none of the ITTF rules mentions any cleaners specifically,
so we can't claim that any particular cleaner is definitely illegal.

Secondly the relevent ITTF rules are:

2.04.07 The covering material
should be used as it has been authorised by the ITTF without any
physical, chemical or other treatment, changing or modifying playing
properties, friction, outlook, colour, structure, surface, etc.
7/15/2003 

2.04.07.01 Slight deviations
from continuity of surface or uniformity of colour due to accidental
damage or wear may be allowed provided that they do not significantly
change the characteristics of the surface.

Now if we follow these litterally, NO cleaners are legal including water, as ALL of them modify the rubber in a small way.

However if we look at the intent of this rule, specifically 2.04.07
which was introduced recently, it was brought in stop people from
illegally modifying/treating rubbers, specifically pimpled rubber to make them more slippy and offer higher spin reversal.

From this I would interpret that as long as we don't modify the surface
significantly, ie. the rubber basically still plays very similarly, it
should be quite legal to play with.

The ITTF recently released a new document, which did recommend
people to only use water for cleaning. However the context of this
document was more or less how you could be sure your bat would be legal
in ITTF event... Since any cleaner COULD contain some VOCs, water was
recommended as this was the only way you could be sure it had no VOC
content.

SO if we look at the different cleaners:

Water: Obviously regarded as legal even though cleaning with water make a slight modification to the characteristics

Foam Cleaners: Some of these do
contain low contents of VOC, but on the surface these evaporate very
quickly, and pose little to no health issue. It mainly gives the rubber
a good clean and restores some of the grip that the rubber had
initially.
I would regard these as legal.

Bio Cleaners: These probably
don't contain any VOC but we cannot be sure, but even if they do, on
the surface these evaporate very quickly, and pose little to no health
issue. It also mainly gives the rubber a good clean and restores some
of the grip that the rubber had initially.
I would regard these as legal.

Spinmax Aqueous This product
contains no VOCs (water based) as was tested and approved by the ITTF
before these new rules came in. This product does seem to restore the
grip on a rubber more than other cleaners, but does not appear to
modify it's characteristics significantly beyond it's initial
condition when it first comes out of the packet. So I would regard it
as legal as well.

Spinmax Original (red&blue) This product has high VOC content, but although this is obviously an health
issue, the VOC are known to evaporate very quickly, and test on the
enez shortly after use, passed. As this obviously has an health issue,
the legality is more questionable. When used sparingly it does not
modify the surface significantly either, but when overused it can turn
a non-tacky rubber into a tacky one, which obviously changes the
characteristics too much to make it legal. I'd say this is probably not legal.

After you read what I said above, I'd really like to hear your opinion,
to see if you agree with me or not... 

Poll Question: What cleaners do you think are legal?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
Only Water	8	[50.00%]
Only Water & Bio-cleaners	0	[0.00%]
Only Water, Bio & Foam Cleaner	1	[6.25%]
Only Water, Bio, Foam Cleaner and Spinmax Aqueous	5	[31.25%]
All these cleaners are legal	2	[12.50%]
You can not vote in this poll