Green Clean. Jill Potvin Schoff
and enjoy Green Clean. Don’t forget that switching to green cleaning is a process and that it doesn’t have to happen all at once. Take it at your own pace and just focus on making steady progress. Your family and the earth will be better off with every small step you take.
Many items you already have at home can make eco-friendly cleaning products.
Part I: The Basics
Chapter 1
Why Go Green?
My journey down the road to green cleaning started in 2005. Before that, I was like everyone else, buying the same cleaners that my mom had used off the supermarket shelves. I have always been a big supporter of the environmental movement, but somehow cleaning products just seemed so incidental that I had never gotten around to changing my habits.
All of that started to change when I got pregnant. I started focusing on articles about “body burden” and skyrocketing asthma and autism rates. The articles convinced me that my baby needed a home as chemical-free as possible. I started slowly, getting rid of what I knew to be toxic and looking for products at the store that said “nontoxic” and “all-natural.” We chose low-VOC paint and natural wood furniture for the nursery along with an organic mattress.
The author became a green-cleaning expert after seeing the negative effects that commercial cleaning products had on her son, pictured here as a toddler.
Making Changes
I was pretty satisfied with the state of our home when my son was born. But, when he was about two months old, he got eczema. His skin was itchy and red and bleeding wherever he scratched it. We searched for months, trying to figure out what was causing it. We finally stumbled onto a website called Solve Eczema (www.solveeczema.org). Information on the site suggested that our son might have a sensitivity to detergents—not just laundry detergents but all detergent products—including shampoo, dish soap, hand soap, and, of course, most cleaning products—and that we should try switching to traditional soap products. We made the switch, and it was really a miracle: my son’s rash disappeared.
Labels are frightening, but they don’t tell the whole story.
What I never realized is that the cleaning products we use now are almost all based on a relatively new type of surfactant (cleaning agent) that was developed during World War II. For simplicity’s sake, throughout the book I will refer to these new surfactants as detergents, and I will refer to the old-fashioned surfactants used for centuries prior as soaps. Detergents work better in cold water, produce much less soap scum, and are cheaper to manufacture. For these reasons, traditional soap-based cleaners have almost disappeared from the marketplace.
Unfortunately, detergents are not as wonderful as we originally thought. The main issue is that they compromise skin-barrier function. In other words, they make your skin more permeable, which allows more chemicals from the environment to make it through your skin and into your body. This is what caused my son’s eczema, and it may account for increased asthma rates.
Why Make the Switch?
If you’ve picked up this book, you probably have a general idea of the reasons behind green cleaning. In a nutshell, green means better for you and better for the planet. It sounds good, but change is hard—especially today, when so many of us are so busy. It’s easy to fall back on what is familiar because it’s one less thing to think about.
Nevertheless, there are some strong reasons for switching to nontoxic cleaning methods, and I’m going to explain why making changes can do a tremendous amount of good for your family and for the earth. The most compelling of these reasons is that there is almost no government regulation of the chemicals used in cleaning products in the United States.
In this chapter, you will read about the harm that some of these chemicals are already doing. When you’re done reading, I think you’ll feel as I do: this change is essential for your family’s health. The good news is that there is no hardship or sacrifice involved. Nontoxic cleaners really work. They clean better, they smell better, and they save you money.
It was my search for detergent substitutes that forced me to truly become a green-cleaning expert. When pregnant, I had heard about cleaning with things such as baking soda and vinegar, but I had discounted them, figuring that there was no way something that simple could really clean. But when I realized that even plant oil-based detergents could affect my son, I was forced to reconsider homemade recipes. (While far better for the environment, plant-based detergents function like any detergent and can open the door to health problems for some individuals.) And that’s when my eyes were truly opened. You really can clean your home with simple ingredients. I’ve been cleaning my house without detergents for more than thirteen years, and I don’t miss them.
Baking soda and vinegar make a powerful, nontoxic combination.
The Health Effect
In this book, you’ll see the word toxic a lot. It’s a strong word, conjuring images of hazardous waste and poisons. I feel it’s the right word to use. Merriam-Webster defines toxic as “containing or being poisonous material, especially when causing death or serious debilitation.” It’s shocking to think about it, but many of the ingredients in cleaning products are capable of this level of harm.
Where Are the Laws?
Up until 2016, the main law regulating household chemicals in the United States was the Toxic Substances Control Act. It was notorious for its protection of manufacturers. It prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from requesting any data or health studies for a chemical unless the EPA could already demonstrate that a substance posed a significant risk. And it was almost impossible to assess risk without having this data, so the EPA had pretty much given up on trying to force testing. The end result was that almost none of the chemicals in American households had undergone any meaningful safety testing.
In 2016, the law was finally updated when Congress passed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. This regulation is a step in the right direction because it finally gave the EPA the authority to ban new and existing chemicals that pose a threat to human health, and it prevents new chemicals from entering the marketplace without EPA approval. However, several organizations, like the Environmental Working Group, worry that the EPA isn’t receiving enough funding to actually fulfill its duties and that the chemical industry still has excessive influence over EPA policies. More than two years after the act was passed, the EPA’s progress on chemical regulation was still depressingly minimal.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission plays a role in how cleaning products are labeled. It requires that cleaning product labels warn people of immediate dangers as well as of any toxic ingredients. These warnings are given by signal words on labels, such as danger or warning. Unfortunately, there are a lot of loopholes to this law. Manufacturers don’t need to state what kind of danger a substance poses—only what not to do, e.g., “do not take internally.”And they don’t need to list warnings about certain substances at all if they have determined (by their own research) that exposure would not trigger toxic effects. And if there is no data one way or another on whether a particular substance is toxic (which, remember, is the case for thousands of chemicals in use), then they don’t have to give any warning, either.
I know you’re thinking that if certain products were harmful, you would have heard about them by now. People would be suing the companies that made the cleaning products that damaged their health. Congress would