Use With Caution

More than 20,000 substances have been added to the list of chemicals used in household cleaning products over the past 30 years, and the government is doing little to regulate them. Meanwhile, indoor air quality continues to degrade — possibly increasing rates of illnesses from nausea to childhood cancer. What's a consumer to do?

By jessica A. knoblauch

Photo courtesy of Stock.xchng

There’s something potentially harmful lurking under the kitchen sink.

It may contain ingredients like chlorinated phenols, diethylene glycol and butyl cellosolve, which, if used over a long period of time, may affect the health of those living near them and the objects they clean.

The worst part: The culprits are often products promising to make the home “sparkling clean” and smell like “a fresh summer breeze.”

Household cleaners contain some of the most toxic ingredients found in the home. And, depending on the household, the average home can contain anywhere from three to 25 gallons of this toxic material. With the average American cleaning his home about once a week, the question becomes: Is health sacrificed in the quest for cleanliness?

The Fine Print

Air monitoring tends to show much higher exposures to pollutants indoors than outdoors, said Margaret Sadoff, indoor air consultant at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. One cause is the way homes and offices are built.

“Everything is built super-tight,” Sadoff said. Better insulation helps keep homes warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. But well-insulated homes also keep more air pollutants trapped inside.

Indoor air pollution also increases by toxic chemicals released into homes through the use of household cleaning supplies, such as cleansers, disinfectants and air fresheners. These products often emit Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), gases which can cause eye, nose and throat irritation; headaches, loss of coordination and nausea; and damage to liver, kidney and the central nervous system. Some VOCs are known to cause cancer in both animals and humans, according to the EPA. In addition, concentrations of many VOCs are up to 10 times higher indoors than outdoors.

There are also many studies that suggest a link between cancer and the toxins found in cleaning supplies:

• A 15-year study in Oregon found a 54 percent higher death rate from cancer in women who stayed home than those who worked elsewhere, according to a presentation given at the National Center for Health Statistics conference.
  
• Many chronic diseases, such as cancer, asthma and diabetes — which play a part in seven out of every 10 U.S. deaths annually — are suspected to have environmental links, according to a 2003 article published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
  
• In “Living Downstream,” Sandra Steingraber writes that several studies show a link between the use of pesticides — which are often the active ingredient found in antibacterial cleaning products — and childhood cancer.

Poor Government Regulation

Thirty years ago, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which authorizes the EPA to regulate tens of thousands of chemicals in commercial use that may pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.

But John B. Stephenson, the director of natural resources and environment at the Government Accountability Office, testified that the EPA’s 2005 reviews of new chemicals provided “only limited assurance that health and environmental risks are identified.” The GAO came to this conclusion for several different reasons:

1. The Toxic Substances Control Act does not require companies to test chemicals before they notify the EPA of their intent to manufacture. The EPA estimates most pre-manufacture notices of chemicals do not include test data of any type, and only about 15 percent include health or safety test data. As a result, when a new chemical is created, often the costly and time-consuming burden of testing is shifted to the EPA, which then has to decide which chemicals it can afford to test. The EPA can’t afford to test all of them. According to the director’s testimony, the EPA has required testing of fewer than 200 of the 62,000 chemicals in use since TSCA was enacted in 1979.
   
2. The EPA’s ability to provide the public with information on chemical production and risk is hindered by strict confidential business provisions of the Toxic Control Substances Act. According to Ed Kratzer, assistant director of natural resources and environment at Michigan State University, the act’s provisions make it easy for companies to hide behind confidentiality. Though the EPA can challenge the claim, it rarely does because it lacks the resources. As a result, the EPA has to be “very selective” about which confidentiality claims it questions and investigates, according to Kratzer.
   
3. The EPA has had difficulty proving that chemicals pose unreasonable risks and, as a result, has regulated few existing chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act. EPA officials stated that the act’s legal standards for demonstrating unreasonable risk are so high that the EPA is generally discouraged from using its authority to ban or restrict the manufacture or use of existing chemicals. As a result, EPA has banned or limited only five of the 20,000 new chemicals added to the inventory since 1976.

Hazardous If Used As Directed?

Scientists simply don’t know a lot about most chemicals. But what they do know can be found in the National Library of Medicine’s Household Products Database — www.householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov — which catalogues chemicals found in household cleaning products.

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng

According to the database, a chemical that often shows up in household cleaners is 2-butoxyethanol. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry shows that many people are exposed to small amounts of 2-butoxyethanol every day. High doses of this chemical, or low doses over a long period of time, cause reproductive problems and minor birth defects in animals.

But more disturbing is what the agency has not been able to uncover in its report. The registry notes that it is not known whether 2-butoxyethanol can affect reproduction or cause birth defects in people and no carcinogenicity studies — which measure a chemical’s ability to cause cancer — are available in either people or animals.

A bottle of all-purpose cleaner, such as Formula 409’s All Purpose Cleaner Antibacterial Lemon Fresh, has what is called “precautionary labeling” on the back of the bottle. This labeling is required on all hazardous substances as a result of the Federal Hazardous Substances Labeling Act under the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Formula 409’s precautionary labeling contains the following guidelines:

CAUTION: Avoid contact with foods. Causes moderate eye irrita-
tion. If on skin or clothing, take off contaminated clothing. Rinse
skin immediately with plenty of water for 15-20 minutes. Call a
poison control center for treatment advice.

DIRECTIONS: (In bold on bottle) For surfaces that may come in
contact with food, a potable water rinse is required.

PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENTS: Hazardous to humans and
animals.

Sounds like a lot of worry over something that’s supposed to clean homes.
The list of ingredients found on the bottle’s front is just as disturbing as the information on the back: 97.7 percent of the product’s ingredients are listed simply as “Other Ingredients.” Could one of those ingredients be 2-butoxyethanol?
Green Means Business

As a result of increased concern that household cleaners may be harmful, several companies have begun making environmentally-friendly products they claim are non-toxic and safe for the home. A simple Internet search can provide consumers with an array of options that can be found in stores or online. Some of them include those listed in the sidebar.

But while there are plenty of companies making environmentally-friendly products, there are also companies guilty of greenwashing — the practice of using misleading propaganda to make a product or a company appear environmentally friendly when it is not.

One example of greenwashing showed up last February, when Nestlé was named “Greenwasher of the Month” by The Green Life, an online publication dedicated to helping environmentally aware citizens make informed lifestyle decisions. The Green Life said Nestlé claimed to have a long-term commitment to sustainable practices after launching Partner’s Blend Coffee, the company’s first (and only) product containing the “fair trade” label. According to The Green Life, 99.9 percent of Nestlé’s coffee is still not considered “fair trade,” but launching the one product allowed the company to associate itself with the fair trade movement.

But consumers can protect themselves from buying into these greenwashers. According to the Consumers Union Guide to Environmental Labels, since terms like “environmentally-friendly,” “non-toxic” and “natural” are not regulated by any government agency, the labels that make these claims are meaningless (a complete list of unregulated labels is on p. 32). Consumers can avoid buying products that make meaningless claims by doing two things: performing a search of the product label on the Consumers Union Web site (www.eco-labels.org) and/or checking to see if all the ingredients on a product are disclosed. If a fully-disclosed ingredient list is not available, it’s likely the product contains harmful ingredients, according to Consumers Union.

Many household products promise to make the home cleaner. But in a country where more than 20,000 new chemicals have been introduced over the last 30 years, cleaner does not always mean safer. With minimal government intervention, green businesses have taken the lead in creating products to lessen the presence of indoor air pollutants. But with greenwashing and unsubstantiated claims, consumers still need to do the dirty work to make their homes a safer kind of clean.

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Jessica A. Knoblauch is a first-year master's student in the environmental journalism program at MSU. This is her first appearance in EJ. Contact her at knoblau7@msu.edu.

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