Image courtesy of Keerati/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Do I have good news for you! At the end of last year, the Environmental Working Group released a Guide to Healthy Cleaning – including a database to check the safety of cleaning products.
If you’ve been following my safer personal care products series over the past six weeks, you know how much I rely on the Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetic Safety Database. You can only imagine how happy a cleaning product guide has made me. I’ll explore this cleaning guide often with you over the next eight weeks as I delve into safe ways to clean your home.
This winter I was surprised with how the safety of deodorants, shampoos, styling products, and toothpastes had greatly improved. I am now equally surprised with how dangerous cleaning products are.
This week we’ll talk about laundry.
Surprising results
Laundry detergents can be filled with a variety of hazardous ingredients. Surfactants can harm aquatic life (this is a reasonable concern, since water from your washing machine will end up in the environment again as treated wastewater). And bleach is just nasty – sodium hypochlorite that’s found in bleach will harm developmental and endocrine systems, affect respiration and organs, and potentially cause cancer.
Six-hundred thirty-eight products were tested by the EWG and a whopping eighty percent received a grade of a D or F. Eighty percent! (Four percent received an A, four percent received a B, and twelve percent received a C.)
Some of the brands that received Ds and Fs included Seventh Generation, Trader Joe’s, method, Whole Foods, Green Works, GrabGreen, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, The Honest Co., Charlie’s Soap, Caldrea, Attitude, J.R. Watkins, and Dreft. (Most other commercial brands like Tide, Era, Cheer, Gain, Clorox, Downy, and Snuggle received Ds and Fs.)
What’s next?
Tomorrow I’ll share some of my personal laundry product shockers, thanks to what I learned on the EWG’s ratings. And on Wednesday, I’ll issue a Reduce, Reuse & Recycle Laundry Challenge. You can probably guess that I’ll have you check your own laundry products. (You can wait until Wednesday, or get an early start now.)
Disclosure: Accidentally Green will receive a modest commission from products ordered through this post.
Today, I’m linking up with Time Warp Wife, The Better Mom and Women Living Well.
Latest posts by Hilary Kimes Bernstein (see all)
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- The Day I Learned I Could Cook Real Food - July 13, 2015
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