Green Clean. Jill Potvin Schoff
bad, right? The problem is the amount of harmful ingredients in any given cleaning product. It is tiny, so ill effects don’t usually appear immediately.
But here’s the kicker: the effects are cumulative. Toxins build up in your body over time. This is what scientists are now calling body burden. We Americans today have hundreds of synthetic chemicals running through our bodies. They are stored in our cells. In fact, now our babies are born with these chemicals in their systems, passed from mothers to children in the womb. The EPA estimates that every American has more than 700 pollutants in his or her body. And we have no way of knowing how this kind of chronic low-dose exposure will affect people over the course of their lives.
Chlorine bleach can be irritating to the skin and eyes.
Green Fact
A study by the Environmental Working Group tested the umbilical-cord blood of ten American babies born in 2004 and found an average of two hundred industrial chemicals and pollutants in each baby’s blood.
Deciding What’s Safe
Most products undergo some testing before they are put on the shelves and sold to consumers. It’s mainly done out of sheer self-preservation—companies don’t want to deal with costly lawsuits if their products end up being harmful.
The problem is that these products are tested individually. Testing attempts to determine whether regular use of one particular product causes any ill effects. But no one uses just one product. You probably have dozens in your home right now. So, if you combine two or more products that each contain the same “safe” level of one particular ingredient, you will create a mixture that now has an unsafe level of that ingredient.
On top of that, chemicals from different products mix together in unpredictable ways. They may mix in your body—or in a stream—and create something much more toxic. For instance, scientists have found that, in some cases, triclosan (a common antibacterial added to everything from hand soaps to countertops) can be converted by sunlight into a type of dioxin, which is one of the deadliest pollutants ever made. The sum can indeed be greater (or more harmful) than its parts.
Green Fact
According to the American Cancer Society, the probability that a resident of the United States will develop cancer at some point in his or her lifetime is one in three. Close to 1,750,000 new cancer cases were expected to be diagnosed in 2018.
Spray bottles can send a mist of toxins into the air.
How They Get In
You may think that as long as you’re not foolish enough to eat or drink a cleaning product, it’s not getting into your body. Unfortunately, you can absorb chemicals in all sorts of ways. First, of course, is your skin. Any time you touch a cleaning solution, a small amount is absorbed by your skin and enters your bloodstream. Spray cleaners are particularly problematic because, even if you wear gloves, sprays suspend particles of cleaning solution in the air, where they can settle on any unprotected areas, such as your face and arms.
And many cleaning products don’t rinse away completely. They leave a residue that can be picked up on the skin of any family member merely by touching a surface that has been cleaned. This happens to my son with detergent residue all the time when he’s visiting other people’s homes. And this residue can turn into a dust that gets into the air and circulates throughout your home. Which brings me to your lungs. You breathe chemicals into your lungs when you spray while cleaning. And even if you’re not spraying a product, most cleaning products contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These chemical compounds give off gases that are easily absorbed by your lungs. From your lungs, they enter your bloodstream. These particles and gases can stay suspended in the air for a long period of time, so even if you wait to clean until your kids are at school, they can still inhale this stuff when they get home. So, to put a new twist on the phrase “you are what you eat,” you are what you breathe. For a rundown of the diseases that are associated with the toxic ingredients found in many cleaners, see the appendix.
“Children are really the heart of the green-clean movement. When we talk about clean air and clean water, it really comes down to what is best for our kids.”
Many children are afflicted with asthma, and it’s a good bet that cleaning products are one culprit.
Why Kids Are More Vulnerable
Children are much more sensitive than adults to chemicals in the environment. Exposure to a chemical that causes no discernible effect in an adult can cause significant harm to an infant. Here are some reasons for this:
Children frequently have their hands in their mouths, making it more likely that they will ingest toxins with which they come in contact.
Children have faster metabolisms—pound for pound, children eat more food and breathe more air than adults.
Children play on the floor, where many toxins in the home settle.
Children’s metabolic pathways are immature, and they are less able to detoxify and excrete toxins that get into their systems.
Children are undergoing rapid development, and organ systems that are disrupted while growing may fail to form correctly.
Children have more years for toxins to accumulate in their bodies and reach unsafe levels.
The Environmental Impact
The thousands of product choices on our grocery-store shelves put a heavy burden on our environment.
Depletion of Nonrenewable Resources
Fuel is used to farm crops, run mining equipment, refine raw materials, power factories, and ship products to stores. Crude oil is converted into hundreds of different chemicals as well as the plastics used to package those chemicals. Water, while technically a renewable resource, is used at a faster rate than it is replenished in many areas. It is estimated that the vast Ogallala Aquifer in the American west, which runs from North Dakota to Texas, will be pumped dry within decades if current irrigation practices aren’t drastically changed.
We protect the atmosphere and improve air quality when we go green at home.
Air Pollution
Global warming has gotten a lot of attention in recent years for good reason. Cleaning products certainly produce their fair share of greenhouse gases during their production.
Petroleum-based products are particularly energy-intensive. Turning black crude oil into pretty pink dish soap is a complex process. In addition to greenhouse gases, many other toxins can be released into the air. For instance, one method of creating chlorine can discharge mercury into the air.
And let’s not forget indoor air pollution. The air in today’s homes is more polluted than outdoors—even in cities that are notoriously polluted. Cleaning products play a significant role in indoor air pollution because many of them contain ingredients that are VOCs. These compounds are “volatile” because they easily become vapors or gases. These vapors and gases leave your cleaning solution and drift into the air, where they can be absorbed into your lungs.
Habitat Destruction
Raw materials for cleaning products—minerals, plants, and crude oil—need to be extracted from the earth. Land is cleared for crops, earth is mined for minerals, and oil wells and pipelines are constructed, all of which disrupt native animal, bird, and plant species. The debate over drilling oil in Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge illustrates how the extraction of raw materials can be detrimental.
Water Pollution
Both mining and farm operations,