Coming Clean about Household Cleaning Chemicals
Do household cleaners contain ingredients linked to asthma, nerve damage and other health effects? Manufacturers aren’t telling, but Earthjustice attorney Keri Powell may have uncovered the key to their pursed lips.
While investigating a potential legal strategy, Keri found buried in the pages of a book of New York State statutes a long-forgotten law authorizing the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to require household cleaning product manufacturers to disclose their chemical ingredients and information about the health risks they pose. In other words, pay dirt.
State regulations issued in 1976 made these disclosures mandatory. Such laws are practically nonexistent in the United States, and the New York law has been altogether overlooked.
via Getting the Dirt on Household Cleaners | unEARTHED, the Earthjustice blog.
Just based on the fact that the Earthjustice attorney uncovered the law, some manufacturers have come clean and ponied up info about what’s in their products. But
Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Church and Dwight, and Reckitt-Bensicker stonewalled, and thus found themselves a few weeks ago across from Keri and her colleagues in a Manhattan courtroom as defendants in this first-of-its-kind lawsuit. They made it clear that their lips are sealed until authorities pry them open. As Health Campaigner Kathleen Sutcliffe wryly remarked last week, Mr. Clean went to court and pled the fifth.
What we need is a database of chemicals in products associated with health concerns, much like the open source database of chemicals in building materials published recently by Perkins + Will.
It’s amazing that professional cleaning services haven’t been clamoring for this information. I suspect the reason why not may have to do with issues of race and class: employees of such companies are hired on a piece-work basis and are poorly paid.
