Green cleaning made easy
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

Canada is a nation of cleaners. Almost 54 kilotons of general-purpose cleaners are sprayed, scrubbed and wiped in Canadian homes every year. There are cleaners for every surface in our homes and ones that disinfect, reduce odours and leave streak-free shines.

But the number of household cleaners stocked on store shelves isn't the only thing that leaves some consumers feeling dizzy. While commercial cleaners make our whites whiter and our bathroom tiles sparkle, many irritate our eyes, skin and lungs. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the air inside our homes can become two to five times more polluted than the outside air, largely because of household cleaners. What's worse, many cleaning products contain cancer-causing ingredients or are harmful to the environment.

If household cleaners are making you sick, read on to find how you can get your house clean and still stay green.

Going green
For Allison Sletcher, the decision to clean her home with eco-friendly cleaners was easy as environmental sensitivities cause her to suffer acute allergic reactions to heavy-duty chemicals and fragrances. In 1995 she founded Earth Concerns Cleaning Services, a Toronto-based company that delivers green cleaning solutions to homeowners.

"It's quite common that people are looking for alternatives," says Sletcher. "They're concerned about the environment, the health effects of chemicals in their cleaning products and their children's [exposure]."

It's not only obscure (and unpronounceable) chemicals such as monoethanolamine and ethoxylated nonyl phenol that can be hazardous. Sodium hypochlorite, or bleach, is a known eye, skin and respiratory irritant and a suspected neurotoxin and toxin to the liver. When you combine ammonia, a severe eye and respiratory irritant that can cause kidney and liver damage, with bleach, it forms poisonous chlorine gas.  Formaldehyde, found in furniture polish and many aerosols, is a recognized carcinogen and a suspected central nervous system depressant.

While industry groups argue there is little risk to consumers using these chemicals in small doses, questions remain about the long-term and cumulative effects of toxic exposure. We know to keep cleaners locked away from our children, but what might these cleaners be doing to our own bodies?

"More and [more] information is coming out that a number of ingredients in cleaning products [contribute to] an increased risk of cancer, can trigger asthma attacks and create reproductive problems or birth defects," says Barbara Harris, co-author of the Less Toxic Guide, published by the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia.

Reduce the risk
"It's important to try to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals as much as possible," says Sarah Winterton, program director at Environmental Defence. "It's important to challenge the dependency that we've created on toxic chemicals to make our lives 'safe' or 'clean.'"

Cleaning is big business. Canadians spent more than $275 million on household cleaning products last year. While cleaning chores were once accomplished using relatively safe ingredients, today's marketing campaigns push specially formulated products and prey on consumers' fears of germs, dirt and infection. One cleaner promises to "kill 99.9 percent of germs in 30 seconds, remove dirt and cut grease," all with a fresh fragrance. Another promises to "simplify your life and deliver a clean you can trust."

There's also the promise that cleaning is easy, a huge appeal for today's time-pressed consumers. "With some of those heavy chemicals, you still have to use elbow grease," says Sletcher. "It is about cleaning technique, not about how many chemicals you put in the product." And if these cleaners remove tough dirt, grease and grime effortlessly, perhaps we should be asking ourselves how they do it.

False sense of security
"Most people assume that if something is on the shelf, then it's been vetted as being safe for us and that's not true," says Harris. "There are a lot of serious problems with ingredients in most of our household cleaners. But, the ingredients aren't listed in the labels, so we're not actually permitted to be informed consumers."

Under the Hazardous Products Act, household cleaners must be properly labeled as corrosive, flammable, explosive or poisonous, but the ingredient list is protected as a trade secret. There's no requirement to list chemicals that could cause long-term health effects.

Deciphering labels is made even trickier because of the problem of "greenwashing"-- when corporations try to make themselves appear more environmentally friendly than they really are. Terms such as "green", "natural" and "botanical" can be found on many product labels, but there are no legal definitions or regulations surrounding the use of these words. The word "organic" may be part of the product's logo, while the cleaner is anything but. Natural isn't always non-toxic either. Pine oil, for example, is natural but it can be toxic in high concentrations.

Do your homework
Discovering whether a particular cleaner is safe might take some investigative work on your part. If there are no ingredients listed on the label, check to see if the manufacturer provides a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for the product. (Visit the company's website or enter the product name and MSDS in your Internet search engine.) These sheets provide a list of the more toxic chemical ingredients that can be cross-referenced with a chemical profile database such as Scorecard.org.

The good news is there are a growing number of manufacturers such as Simply Clean and Nature Clean that produce environmentally friendly cleaners that clean as well as the more toxic cleaners.

However, the simplest solution might be this: The next time you reach for a commercial cleaner, try visiting your kitchen cupboards instead. Mix white vinegar with water for an effective glass cleaner, or use baking soda, salt and hot water for a great oven cleaner. The Less Toxic Guide provides dozens of homemade suggestions for everything from air fresheners to upholstery cleaners. (If you do decide to ditch the commercial cleaners in favour of homegrown recipes, be sure to dispose of them properly. Check for a household hazardous waste collection program in your municipality.)

Safe, simple ingredients can go a long way to get your home sparkling clean without any harmful side effects. "Go with simplicity -- you at least know what's in the product," says Winterton. "Ask yourself the question, does this cleaning job require a toxic chemical solution? I would say in most homes, the answer would be no."

Fiona Wagner is a freelance writer in Georgetown, Ont.