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Get your house clean with citrus, soy and wheat When you use a conventional cleaning product, you expect it to do what the label promises: degrease your dishes, clean your counters or make your windows shine. What you don’t anticipate is that the product may be harmful if touched, poisonous if ingested or inhaled, contribute to air pollution or raise your risk of getting cancer. Unfortunately, commercial cleaning products were responsible for nearly 10 percent of all toxic exposures reported to United States poison control centers in 2002. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the average household contains anywhere from 3 to 25 gallons of toxic materials, mostly in cleaners. “Most people think that the government will protect them; they assume that household cleaning ingredients have been well tested,” says Annie Berthold-Bond, the author of Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living and Clean and Green: The Complete Guide to Non-Toxic and Environmentally Safe Housekeeping. “This simply isn’t the case.” Although the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) regulates chemicals used in the workplace, no comparable rules exist for chemicals used in the home—even if their labeling and packaging is subject to regulation. “The burden is on the companies to do a toxicological analysis to determine if any ingredients in their products are present at sufficient [quantities] to meet the definitions of hazard,” says Ken Giles, spokesman for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Federal law requires that cleaning agents carry warning labels if a product contains a hazardous ingredient. The CPSC requires that manufacturers label such products with warnings such as toxic, flammable or carcinogen. However, the law doesn’t require a full list of ingredients. Go for the Green “While you shouldn’t necessarily avoid certain cleaning products simply because they’re made by a large company, you should be aware of what they contain, and [you should] avoid certain ingredients,” says Philip Dickey, staff scientist for the nonprofit Washington Toxics Coalition (WTC) in Seattle. Fortunately, consumers can greatly lower their risk of exposure to harmful chemicals by purchasing environmentally friendly cleaners. The best products are effective cleansers as well as being safe for you and safe for the environment. Some ingredients in conventional cleansers are acutely toxic and can do immediate harm, burning your skin or irritating your lungs and eyes. Others are chronically toxic, meaning that their effects are gradual and occur through repeated exposure over an extended period of time. Two particularly harmful ingredients are sodium hypochlorite—found in bleach—and ammonia. When used in high concentrations, these chemicals produce poisonous fumes. Bleach and ammonia pack an additional and serious toxic punch when combined with each other: They can form chlorine gas, which, when inhaled, causes massive damage to your nose, throat and lungs and may result in death. Cleaning solvents, such as those used in spray cleaners, dissolve dirt but also pose a very high health risk. This is particularly the case for children who are often attracted to the sweet-smelling but highly poisonous liquids. Mountain Green, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company founded in 1990, uses only naturally derived ingredients, primarily from fruits and vegetables, in its line of household cleaning products. The company’s All-Purpose Cleaner, for example, relies on vinegar to cut through grease and grime. If an ingredient “is not something we’d want to expose our family to,” says co-owner Ione Cottrell, Mountain Green won’t include it in its products. Dangerous Fragrances Artificial fragrances abound in common cleansers, such as in dishwashing detergent. The synthetic chemicals used to make such fragrances can be acutely toxic and can trigger migraine headaches, asthma and allergies. Though listed simply as “fragrance” on a product’s ingredient list, each compound can contain tens or hundreds of individual components, making the individual offending ingredient nearly impossible to isolate. “The reality about [synthetic] fragrances is that we don’t know what they are or what they do,” says Martin Wolf, director of product quality and technology for Seventh Generation in Burlington, Vermont. Seventh Generation’s cleaning products contain natural fragrances (such as citrus or green apple) only, or, in the case of its recently launched Free & Clear line, no added fragrances at all. Effects on the Environment Chronically toxic ingredients accumulate in the environment and can affect future generations of animals and humans. Many inexpensive cleansers and detergents contain compounds called alkylphenol ethoxylates, or APEs. These compounds break down into environmental chemicals known as hormone disrupters that can mimic and confuse the body’s own endocrine system, says A. Michael Warhurst, who is an environmental chemist with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Brussels, Belgium. Organizations such as Friends of the Earth, WWF and the WTC believe APEs are responsible for human and wildlife diseases and abnormalities such as increased infertility, increased cancer rates and decreased sperm counts. The chemical called triclosan is an antimicrobial agent found in antibacterial cleansers. Classified by the EPA as a pesticide, triclosan indiscriminately wipes out good and bad bacteria. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is concerned that bacteria eventually become resistant to such antimicrobial agents, becoming harmful “super-bugs” that are resistant to antibiotics. Stuart Levy, MD, director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, calls this resistance “a global health crisis.” For this reason, several major United Kingdom supermarkets banned the sale of cleaning products containing triclosan in late 2003. Many well-known laundry detergent brands list the sunny-sounding “optical brightener” (OB), a compound used to make clothes appear whiter. OBs can cause allergic reactions in people and are toxic to aquatic life when laundry detergents enter the waterways. Moreover, OBs are almost always petroleum-based. Many industry and government officials consider petroleum-based cleaning ingredients hazardous. The US Department of Health & Human Services has classified one such ingredient, benzene (found in many laundry detergents), as a human carcinogen. In addition to petroleum, the other P-word to watch out for is phosphates. Once widely added to cleaning products to soften water and aid in dirt removal, phosphates have been banned from laundry detergents by many states but are still used in many automatic dishwasher detergents to get glasses spot-free. Though phosphorus, the basis for phosphates, is essential to living organisms, its overuse and entry into waterways can spawn the overgrowth of algae. This excess aquatic plant life eventually depletes the water’s oxygen supply, killing off fish and other organisms. Steps to Take If you tried “green” cleansers years ago and were disappointed, it’s time to try again. “The early products were overpriced and ineffective,” says John Vlahakis, founder and president of Earth Friendly Products in Winnetka, Illinois. Today’s products use surfactants—the ingredients that cut dirt and grease and generate suds—made from plants and vegetables such as corn instead of from petroleum. “In the past decade, there has been exponential growth in the availability of [plant-based] raw materials, which has led to lower prices for the manufacturer,” says Peter Malaise, concept manager for Ecover, a Belgium-based company that has manufactured environmentally friendly cleaning products since 1979. The company’s dishwashing liquid, for example, contains surfactants made from vegetable oil, as well as ingredients such as aloe vera gel and wheat protein. Although these changes mean increased product availability for consumers, they’ve also led to confusion at the checkout counter. Some commercial companies, in an attempt to jump on the eco-bandwagon, have introduced household cleansers labeled “natural” and “eco-friendly.” Although the Federal Trade Commission has published “green guidelines” for businesses, compliance is voluntary. “It’s very frustrating to consumers when they realize that these claims are often unsubstantiated,” says Dickey of WTC. Toxin-Free & Cruelty-Free To cut through what author Berthold-Bond calls “greenwashing,” many smaller companies have written their own cleaning manifestos. Earth Friendly Products created a “Freedom Code” that lists more than 50 ingredients—including alkylphenol, amyl acetate, phosphates and triclosan—that the company refuses to use in its products. (The Freedom Code is available in full on the company’s Web site: ecos.com.) On its Web site, seventhgeneration.com, Seventh Generation says it uses “renewable, nontoxic, phosphate-free and biodegradable ingredients,” which are “never tested on animals.” Dickey urges consumers to read the labels of all cleaning products, no matter who manufactures them. “Since there’s no legal requirement for companies to list every ingredient, the companies that provide the most information about their products are usually the ones you can trust,” he advises. When purchasing cleansers, look for products that contain non-petroleum-based surfactants and don’t contain chlorine and phosphates. Choose products whose labels say “nontoxic” and products that are biodegradable. If you don’t find out what you need to know, contact the company directly and ask. “Be skeptical of claims,” Dickey warns. “If something looks too good to be true, it just might be.” Green at Home Some of the safest, most effective household cleaners are everyday ingredients, and they are found in your kitchen—such as vinegar, baking soda, citrus oils, even parsley. Try these recipes from Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living. * Basic Soft Scrubber Formula: Combine 1/2 cup baking soda with enough vegetable-based liquid soap or detergent to make a frosting-like consistency. Add 5–10 drops of fragrant essential oil such as rose or lavender (optional). Scoop the mixture onto a sponge, wash the surface and rinse. * Antiseptic All-Purpose Cleanser: Combine up to 1 teaspoon antiseptic essential oil (thyme, sweet orange, rosemary, tea tree), 1 teaspoon washing soda, 2 teaspoons borax, 1/2 teaspoon vegetable-based soap or detergent and 2 cups hot water in a spray bottle. Shake to dissolve and blend. Spray cleanser onto a surface, then leave it for 15 minutes to give the oil’s antiseptic qualities time to work. Article written by Jennifer Pirtle. Reprinted with permission from Vegetarian Times magazine |
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