Trade Group: Cleaning Products Fight Illness
Trade group: Cleaning products fight illness
By KEILA SZPALLER of the Missoulian
Household cleaning products prevent
illnesses - despite a Missoula nonprofit report warning that some
ingredients are health hazards, officials say.
“They (cleaners)
do the job and they do it quite well,” said Bill Lafield, vice
president of communications for the Consumer Specialty Products
Association.
Representing 260 cleaning, aerosol, pest management
and other consumer products companies, the association is dismissing a
study released earlier this summer by Women's Voices for the Earth.
The women-centered environmental health and social justice organization published “Household Hazards,” which describes links between chemicals in all-purpose cleaners and certain health conditions, such as asthma and birth defects.
Its report made national headlines but is also drawing high-level criticism from the Washington, D.C.-based group, which represents members such as Clorox Co. and Procter and Gamble Co. The association said all-purpose cleaners and disinfectants in fact reduce the causes of disease, infection and other health threats.
“We at CSPA take strong issue with the WVE report. It contains no new data to link consumer cleaning products to asthma or reproductive health,” says a CSPA news release.
Lafield said studies like WVE's don't consider how important the products are to cleaning up real health hazards, such as mold, mildew and cockroach droppings.
“These products do provide huge health benefits. Maybe in the home we're not as aware of them, but if you go into a restaurant, you certainly want to make sure their kitchen is clean and the table is disinfected,” he said.
He said before products ever appear on a grocery shelf, manufacturers make sure the cleaners are safe. They collectively spend tens of millions of dollars a year doing so. Consumers ultimately choose, and Lafield said he doesn't want them shying away from helpful cleaners.
The WVE study said the presence of damaging chemicals in people's daily lives is more pervasive than previously thought. The substances can harm a woman's chance to have a healthy baby and hurt an asthmatic child. Products from glass cleaners to detergents have potentially harmful ingredients.
Doug Fratz, vice president for scientific and technical affairs for CSPA, said any chemical can be toxic - but the companies making cleaning products use ingredients at anywhere from 10 to 100 times below a toxic level of exposure.
While WVE and CSPA differ when it comes to whether cleaners are safe, they may not be completely at odds when it comes to labeling products.
With a petition, WVE is asking manufacturers to label cleaners with ingredients, and CSPA spokespeople said a bill was introduced in California that would require revealing ingredients to customers.
“We haven't come out and supported it. We haven't come out and opposed it,” Lafield said.
He said the complicated ingredient names can make labeling difficult and sometimes even meaningless to a typical consumer. However, after much work, the cosmetics industry came up with a way to label items and he said cleaning manufacturers will work with California to see if they can find a meaningful way to do the same.
That was good news to the WVE researcher who authored the study on cleaning products.
“That's pretty exciting,” said Alexandra Gorman, director of science and research.
She also said WVE sticks by its study, which makes no definite claims that household products directly cause sickness. Rather, it notes that ingredients known to be damaging to workers in industrial settings are also present in the home.
“We're concerned about it, and we're allowed to be concerned about it,” Gorman said.