I grew up in a house where my mom bragged you could eat off the floors. I, at one point, seemed to have inherited those same traits, once demonstrating to a boyfriend that my floors were clean enough to eat off of by licking them. Now, I find dust bunnies that rival the size of real ones and have acquired a pesky habit of holding on to stuff I no longer want or need. I'm determined to do things differently in 2010.
We do not strictly control Google ad content. If you believe any Google ad is inappropriate, please email us directly here.
We've been somewhat indoctrinated to think that the acrid smell of bleach is the smell of "clean," but the chemical found in bleach (sodium hypochlorite) and other household products, including mildew remover and toilet cleaner, can burn our skin, cause a host of respiratory and gastrointestinal problems and may even be fatal.
My father, the most brilliant of scientists, will tell you that what matters are the amount, strength and method of exposure to household chemicals. He's right. Sodium hypochlorite is used to purify our drinking water (which, to me, seems dreadful, and I wonder why we can't just keep our water cleaner to begin with—but that's for another post) and is a mighty powerful disinfectant. But what we must also consider are the toxic cocktails we're whipping up when we mix different chemical compounds in our indoor environment. That is part of the reason the Environmental Protection Agency has found indoor air to be twice as polluted as outdoor air (a stat I have repeatedly recited).
Furthermore, we all have different tolerance levels. My sister is violently allergic to cats and pollen, while I can't even really conceive of what an allergy looks or feels like. The federal government doesn't require companies to divulge many proprietary ingredients of their products or the concentrations with which they are used. This means the most vulnerable among us are exposed to substances that sit on our floors and countertops, cling in our air and wash down our drains and toilets into our water supplies that might be really harmful. Just think about your pets or babies crawling around on floors cleaned with contents you aren't sure of, then sticking their little hands and feet in their mouths.
The Household Product Labeling Act, introduced into the House of Representatives in summer 2009, would require that household cleaning products and similar products bear full and accurate ingredient labels so we can finally know everything in the products we use in our homes. Please contact your reps and let them know you support this effort.
This legislation is even more urgent now that a 2008 study published in Environmental Science & Technology by Dr. Mustafa Odabasi indicated for the first time that sodium hypochlorite and the cleaning agents (known as surfactants) and fragrances contained in several household cleaning products react within the product to create chlorinated volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which I detailed in an earlier post. The study says these chlorinated compounds are released when we clean, that most of them are toxic and probable carcinogens and that the indoor air concentrations increase anywhere from eight to 1,170 times during the use of products that contain bleach. The increase in chlorinated VOCs was lowest for plain bleach and highest for thick liquids and gels.
It's absurd to think that our efforts to be clean are actually making things dirty. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way. I challenge you to redefine clean and seek out eco-friendly, nontoxic, phosphate-free cleaning products that reduce your exposure to toxins and limit the amount of poison released into our air, soil and water. The Environmental Working Group tested the umbilical cord blood of a random sampling of American babies and found an average of 200 chemicals transmitted in utero. You can just imagine what the chemical body burden of an average adult might be if babies start off so compromised.
Personally? I am a Seventh Generation junkie. They are a good company constantly trying to do better. They treat their staff well, care about where and how their materials are sourced (check out their new palm oil initiative), want their consumers to be informed and, most importantly, have products that work. Who wants to clean twice as hard to get half the results just to win a green star on behalf of the planet? Not many.
Seventh Generation paid me to moderate their chemical body burden and palm oil panels, but I would never accept money to endorse their products. I've used them for much longer than I've been in the public eye, and I am sharing their name here because I think the information is useful. I celebrate the companies that think about all aspects of their business. Seventh Generation embodies that for me. But they are not perfect. The last time I saw the CEO, I went on a mini-tirade about the chlorine-free feminine hygiene products that they mysteriously shroud in plastic!
Look at what you're buying. Look at what your dollars are supporting. For me, it's a disconnect to buy slightly cheaper green products from a company that makes most of its money making toxic ones. No one I know, except my mother and sister, cleans as well as I do. I hope one day to become one of those über-eco angels who whips up her own cleaning products out of baking soda, lemon juice and vinegar —because they are so much cheaper than anything on the market and really do make the whole house feel so much healthier.
I'll make brewing my own cleaning products my resolution for 2011. In the interim, find my clean, green musings on Twitter— @simransethi —and check out incredibly comprehensive information on household cleaning products in the book Home Safe Home by Debra Lynn Dadd.
HHI Error Correction Policy
HHI is committed to accuracy of content and correcting information that is incomplete or inaccurate. With our broad scope of coverage of healthful indoor environments, and desire to rapidly publish info to benefit the community, mistakes are inevitable. HHI has established an error correction policy to welcome corrections or enhancements to our information. Please help us improve the quality of our content by contacting allen@healthyhouseinstitute.com with corrections or suggestions for improvement. Each contact will receive a respectful reply.
The Healthy House Institute (HHI), a for-profit educational LLC, provides the information on HealthyHouseInstitute.com as a free service to the public. The intent is to disseminate accurate, verified and science-based information on creating healthy home environments.
While an effort is made to ensure the quality of the content and credibility of sources listed on this site, HHI provides no warranty - expressed or implied - and assumes no legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, product or process disclosed on or in conjunction with the site. The views and opinions of the authors or originators expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of HHI: its principals, executives, Board members, advisors or affiliates.
(Note: The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of The Healthy House Institute, LLC.)
