Eco Friendly Living

Just last week, the temperature in Northeast Ohio reached 60 degrees, allowing many of us to open our windows to circulate the stagnant air in our homes.  In an effort to be more energy efficient, our homes are air tight, preventing any circulation to occur during the cold winter months.  According to the EPA, the indoor air quality is 5 times worse than the outside air. 

It’s funny, when we bring our baby home, we do everything we can to protect that baby.  We make sure the car seat is properly secured, lock all our cabinets that contain cleaners, put the gates up, plug every electrical outlet, etc.  Yet, we don’t seem to think about the fact that there are household toxins in the air that the baby is breathing.  Since WWII, more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals have been invented to be used in chemical warfare.  And only 20% of those chemicals have been tested for toxicity.  Yet these chemical toxins have been added to our food, water and cleaning supplies.  According to the Poison Control Center, over 10% of all toxic exposures reported were related to household cleaners.  Surprisingly, #1 cause of household poisoning is dish detergent.  Making it even more disturbing, the government does not require the manufacturers to list the ingredients.  I naturally did some digging in the NIH (National Institute of Health) website and came up with some of the most commonly used ingredients in our every day products. 

Lye-Potassium Hydroxide is harmful if swallowed or inhaled, can cause severe eye and skin burns, severe respiratory and digestive burns, and repeated contact can cause dermatitis.  This ingredient can be found in Cascade products, Murphy’s Oil Soap, Lysol products, most of the oven cleaners Pantene Pro V hair products, Oil of Olay products, Roundup pesticides, and many more. 

Hydrochloric Acid can cause severe damage to skin and eyes, throat irritation even when exposed briefly at low level, and linked to reactive airways dysfunction syndrome.  Some of the products that contain this ingredient are all brands of toilet bowl cleaners and Febreze Laundry Odor Eliminator (ironically, their slogan is “Breath of Fresh Air”). 

Sodium Hydroxide is an ingredient that can be found in most of the cleaning and personal care products.  According to NIH, Sodium Hydroxide can causes 75% of all caustic injury to the esophagus of kids under 5, can cause burns in tissues, chronic skin irritation, irritation to the respiratory tract, and liver & kidney damage.  This ingredient can be found in Clorox cleaners, Cascade, Dawn Dish Detergent, Drano, Comet, Palmolive, Tide, Woolite, Bug B Gone, Easy Off Oven Cleaner, and Tilex to name a few.  This ingredient is also included in personal care products such as Softsoap products, after shaves, Colgate, Crest, Aquafresh, Crest Teeth Whitening Strips, Oil of Olay, Dove, Oil of Olay and many more.  

I just listed some of the ingredients found in our everyday products that we use.  Most Air Freshners have formaldehyde, carcinogens, and phenol as their ingredients.  Chlorine (labeled as sodium hypochlorite) is the very first agent used in chemical warfare, yet it is found in just about every cleaning product as well as in our drinking water.  And let me not get started on the window cleaners. 

After trying chemical free cleaning method of using baking soda and vinegar as my main cleaning ingredients, I tried three other cleaning products.  Shaklee makes a large variety of cleaning and household products that are plant-based, no phosphate, biodegradable, nontoxic, hypoallergenic, etc.  The best part is that their products are super concentrated.  For example, Basic H2, an Organic Super Cleaning Concentrate that can be made to various different cleaners based on how you dilute it.  You can make an all purpose cleaner by mixing ¼ teaspoon of the concentrate with 16 ounces of water, 2 DROPS of the concentrate with 16 ounces of water for window cleaner, 1 ½ tsp of concentrate with 16 ounces of water for degreaser, etc.  There are so many recipes for different cleaners based on the dilution.  The variety of the products that they carry is quite large.  I’ve tried every single one of the household products from Shaklee and I have to say, they all work great.  As for the environmental issue, Shaklee trumps all other products as they are very concentrated and require far less packaging.  Imagine the number of plastic bottles you are saving from the landfill by reusing the same spray bottles to mix your own cleaners.  The only caveat of Shaklee is that you have to purchase through a distributor or online.  This means that you will always be paying shipping in order to buy the products.

My other product experience is with Seventh Generation.  This is one company that takes their corporate responsibility very seriously.  They list all their ingredient right on all their bottles.  Seventh Generation makes wide range of products from household cleaners to household paper supplies, baby products, feminine care, etc.  These products are available in stores such as Target, but I haven’t been able to find all the products.   The few that I’ve tried, I really liked.  However, none of the products are concentrated.  Therefore, you do have to buy far more frequently and the cleaning supplies do take up more cabinet space in your kitchen.  I did find several websites that carry this brand, but since they are not concentrated and are rather heavy and bulky, the shipping cost was very high. 

I’ve also tried a brand called Method.  All I have to say about this product is that each time I used their window cleaner, I was suffering from a terrible headache.  I never tried any other product from this line after that. 

I haven’t tried any other cleaning products besides the three above.  And since Shaklee and Seventh Generation work so well for me, I didn’t find the need to venture out any further.  I shared Basic H2 from Shaklee to some of my friends and each and every time, I hear, “I can’t smell if my house is clean.”  My rebuttal question is, if your house is indeed clean, why should you be smelling anything? 

If you’ve tried any other products or have other product experience, please share with me and other readers by commenting below.  We can always learn something new.

Future Topics: Certified Organic products, chemical free cleaning, chemical toxins, eco friendly living, eco friendly products, environment friendly home, food toxins, household toxins, organic living, and tips for living green.