Conserve Energy

Reduce Toxins

Reduce Waste

THE REAL DIRT ON CLEAN

Are you living in a healthy home?

You know that good, healthy feeling you get when you've just cleaned house? Sorry to spoil it, but you may have just made your home dirtier.

Think of it this way. You wouldn't let your kids play with toxic chemicals, so why would you let the baby crawl over a floor that's just been wiped with them? That's much more dangerous than the orange juice that was just there.

How dangerous? Just take a look at these statistics.

• Over 90% of poison exposures happen at home.
• Common bleach is the #1 household chemical involved in poisoning.
• Organic pollutants, found in many common cleaners and even air fresheners, are 2 to 5 times higher inside your home than out.
• A person who spends 15 minutes cleaning scale off shower walls could inhale three times the "acute one-hour exposure limit" for glycol ether-containing products set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
• Common cleaners give off fumes that have been linked to increasing the risk of your kids developing asthma, the most common serious chronic childhood disease.
• 1 in 13 school-aged children has asthma. Rates in children under five have increased more than 160% from 1980 – 1994.
• Children are highly vulnerable to chemical toxicants. Pound for pound of body weight, children drink more water, eat more food and breathe more air than adults. The implication of this is that children will have substantially heavier exposures than adults to any toxicants that are present in water, food or air.
• If your home is anything like the average U.S. home, you generate more than 20 pounds of household hazardous waste each year (the EPA designates toilet cleaners, tub and tile cleaners, oven cleaners, and bleach as hazardous waste).

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Sodium Laureth Sulfate

While SLS is a known irritant, some evidence and research suggest that SLES can also cause irritation after extended exposure.

Products containing these substances can affect those prone to eczema and other irritants. These substances provide a foaming quality to the product, allowing for better distribution of the product while washing hair or skin and while brushing teeth. When rinsed off, the product will have cleaned the area but will have taken moisture from the top layers of skin. In people with sensitive skin (prone to dermatitis, acne, eczema, psoriasis and chemical sensitivity), the drying property of these type of detergents can cause flare-ups of skin conditions or may worsen existing conditions.

The Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) and the American Cancer Society stated that the common belief that SLES is a carcinogen is an urban legend. However, the Environmental Working Group has claimed in their Skin Deep Report that SLES may possibly be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane. SLES and SLS have been known to become contaminated with 1,4-dioxane.[8] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers 1,4-dioxane to be a probable carcinogen. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration encourages manufacturers to remove this contaminant, it is not currently required by federal law.

This inexpensive detergent is commonly used in cosmetic cleansers, hair shampoos, bath and shower gels, bubble baths, etc. - It is probably the most dangerous ingredient used in skin and hair-care products. In the cleaning industry SLS is used in garage floor cleaners, engine degreasers, car-wash soaps, etc. It is very corrosive and readily attacks greasy surfaces.

Sodium lauryl sulfate is used throughout the world for clinical testing as a primary skin irritant. Laboratories use it to irritate skin on test animals and humans so that they may then test healing agents to see how effective they are on the irritated skin.

A study at the University of Georgia Medical College, indicated that SLS penetrated into the eyes as well as brain, heart, liver, etc., and showed long-term retention in the tissues. The study also indicated that SLS penetrated young children's eyes and prevented them from developing properly and caused cataracts to develop In adults.

May cause hair loss by attacking the follicle. Classified as a drug in bubble baths because it eats away skin protection and causes rashes and infection to occur.

Is potentially harmful to skin and hair. Cleans by corrosion. Dries skin by stripping the protective lipids from the surface so it can't effectively regulate moisture.

Another extremely serious problem is the connection of SLS with nitrate contamination. SLS reacts with many types of ingredients used in skin products and forms nitrosomines (nitrates). Nitrates are potential cancer-causing carcinogenics.

Because of the alarming penetrating power of SLS, large amounts of these known carcinogens are absorbed through the skin into the body. A variation of SLS is SODIUM LAURETH SULFATE (Sodium Lauryl Ether Sulfate- SLES). It exhibits many of the same characteristics and is a higher-foaming variation of SLS.

A Snopes article says SLS doesn't cause cancer but can cause skin irritation and diarhea. What about if this substance gets into water supplies even at such dilution will it affect fish?

Phosphates
Phosphates are often used in laundry detergent as a water softener, but, because of algae boom-bust cycles tied to emission of phosphates into watersheds, phosphate detergent sale or usage is restricted in some areas.

Component of fertilizers
Surface runoff of phosphates from excessively fertilized land can be a cause of phosphate pollution leading to eutrophication (nutrient enrichment), algal bloom and consequent oxygen deficit. This can lead to anoxia for fish and other aquatic organisms in the same manner as phosphate-based detergents.