From the University of Melbourne:
Hidden hazards found in green products
Dr. Anne Steinemann, Professor of Civil Engineering, and the Chair of Sustainable Cities, from the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, is a world expert on environmental pollutants, air quality, and health effects.
Professor Steinemann investigated and compared volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from 37 different products, such as air fresheners, cleaning products, laundry supplies, and personal care products, including those with certifications and claims of ‘green’ and ‘organic’. Both fragranced and fragrance-free products were tested.
The study, published in the journal Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health found 156 different VOCs emitted from the 37 products, with an average of 15 VOCs per product. Of these 156 VOCs, 42 are classified as toxic or hazardous under US federal laws, and each product emitted at least one of these chemicals.
Findings revealed that emissions of carcinogenic hazardous air pollutants from ‘green’ fragranced products were not significantly different from regular fragranced products.
In total, over 550 volatile ingredients were emitted from these products, but fewer than three percent were disclosed on any product label or material safety data sheet (MSDS).
“The paradox is that most of our exposure to air pollutants occurs indoors and a primary source is consumer products. But the public lacks full and accurate information on the ingredients in these products. Our indoor air environments are essentially unregulated and unmonitored,” Professor Steinemann said.
The most common chemicals in fragranced products were terpenes, which were not in fragrance-free versions. Terpenes readily react with ozone in the air to generate a range of additional pollutants, such as formaldehyde and ultrafine particles.
At this time, consumer products sold in Australia, the US and around the world are not required to list all ingredients, or any ingredients in a chemical mixture called ‘fragrance’.
“Given the lack of information, consumers may choose products with claims such as green, natural, or organic, but those claims are largely untested,” Professor Steinemann said.
Professor Steinemann will continue to investigate how and why we’re exposed to pollutants and ways to reduce risks and improve health.
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Additional Information:
- Products selected are commonly used in Australia, the US, and other countries in a range of environments (e.g., homes, schools, hospitals, workplaces, hotels, restaurants, stores, residential buildings, parks, child care and aged care facilities, gyms, homeless shelters, government buildings, airports, planes and public transport).
- Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) headspace analysis was used to identify VOCs emitted from 37 products, representing air fresheners and deodorizers (sprays, gels, solids, oils, and disks), laundry products (detergents, dryer sheets, and fabric softeners), cleaning supplies (all-purpose cleaners, window and surface cleaners, disinfectants, and dishwashing liquids), and personal care products (soaps, hand sanitisers, sunscreens, lotions, baby lotions, deodorants, shampoos, and baby shampoo).
- Ingredients in consumer products and in fragrance formulations, are exempt from full disclosure to the public.
- For laundry products, cleaning supplies, and air fresheners, labels do not need to list all ingredients, or the presence of a fragrance in the product.
- For personal care products and cosmetics, labels need to list ingredients, except the general term “fragrance” or “parfum” may be used instead of listing the individual ingredients in the fragrance.
- For all products, material safety data sheets do not need to list all ingredients.
- Fragrance ingredients are exempt from full disclosure in any product, not only in Australia and the US but also internationally.
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This study article is more good reason to eschew commercially prepared products of all sorts. Make your own cleaning products from your store of common chemicals that you understand. For instance, one of my favorites is hydrogen peroxide including that from sodium percarbonate
2Na2CO3.3H2O2 → 2Na2CO3 + 3H2O2 That 2Na2CO3 is washing soda sodium carbonate, itself an effective cleaning product.
Green is the new “moral majority”. It’s just a chance to say I am morally superior.
It is a way for them to tell you what is right for you to do because they know what s right to do and if you don’t know what is right to do they’ll try to get the government make you you do what they say is right to do.
If there is a hell it would include the moral majority and the greens having to share an apartment.
A Professor of Civil Engineering doing chemistry. Most peculiar.
Organic farming has its origins in the 1940s as a response to declining response to conventional fertilisers and a bewildering variety of new diseases that “required” inputs of expensive new chemical controls. The marketing of organic produce as such was still very much in its infancy when The Git started market gardening in the mid 1980s. Indeed, very little of what The Git grew was marketed as organic since he decided that the cost of organic certification was greater than any pecuniary benefit to be obtained.
It seems odd that if ever so many armchair pundits on this thread are correct, that organic farming was a scam thought up by farmers, that they waited more than 40 years to take advantage of the scam.
My sister is an environmental scientist (now retired) and ran such test equipment. Her comment on sensitivity was that “it could detect a single grain of salt in an Olympic sized pool.” So while I don’t doubt that such VOCs were detected, the question of “in what amounts” is very important. Especially in light of Dr. Steinemann’s even more frightening comment that:
I don’t want it regulated and if I feel there is a threat, I’ll take care of the monitoring – thank you very much. No government intervention required, requested, or desired.
Try reading Before Silent Spring by James Wharton (Princeton University Press 1974) then come back and instruct us with your wisdom.
The worst of all these Organic products, is Organic Agriculture itself. It is a luxury product to salve the conscience of gibbering liberals like Prince Charles. Yes, we could feed the world on organic produce, but you would need to cull 80% of the world’s population to do so.
I desperately hope that Charles immediatly abdicates, upon the death of his mother, and gives the throne to Harry.
R
why would you have to kill everyone? You would need a higher portion of the population involved in farming but we could do it organically just fine. Im not saying whether we should or shouldn’ t but we definitely could.
Silver Ralph, like very other gung-ho pro-agrichemical lobbyist in this thread is making stuff up. It is true that some very few crops are more expensive (labour-intensive) to produce, most are not. I gave the example of Uncle Toby’s Vita Brits elsewhere in this thread. Now there are two lines, one organic and one not, the price difference is less than 5% and is surely more to do with marketing than production cost.
The Git’s late friend and mentor, Bert Farquhar was the first Australian to spend more than $10,000,000 to purchase a farm (sheep & cattle-grazing property). He had noticed that the farm had no earthworms and decided with the aid of Mike Temple-Smith from the DPI to introduce earthworms to his farm and doubled its stock carrying capacity. Yet Zeke and his crew still insist that the prior regime of applying artificial fertilisers produces 5 times more than what Bert did. They are fantasists.
Bert’s story:
http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/legends/stories/13_2.htm
Thinking further on this, I recall Bert being shocked by his tour of the USA. Cattle and sheep farmers there were using helicopters rather than humans on horseback on far smaller acreages than Bert was managing. The cost of the helicopters was far greater than he was spending on horses and horsemen. He also reported employing far fewer men than was usual in the USA, eight on Wyambi/Rushy Lagoon IIRC.
All of us in California know everything is dangerous; in fact most is required to be posted as such by Prop 65.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(1986)#/media/File:Disneyland_Prop_65_Warning_crop.jpg
Tom,
I was looking to hire a secretary years ago. An applicant saw the Prop. 65 sign when it was first being used, and promptly skedaddled.
That signage has had exactly the opposite effect from what was intended. Since just about everything can maybe, possibly cause cancer, those signs are everywhere now. People don’t pay any attention to them any more. They’re just background noise.
It is not unknown for The Git to tease the Greens with the following logic. While there are few examples of correlation between pesticide use and cancer, there is a known correlation with stress. Thus the supposed relationship between cancer and pesticides is more likely to be due to the Greens scaring people than it is due to the actual material being used.
The Git was a member of the Aerial Spraying Implementation Group engaged by the Tasmanian Government to come up with new recommendations for reducing the impact of aerial spraying on the general public. We engaged the Menzies Centre to do a lit. search and all they could come up with was a slim correlation between the rather rare cancer non-Hodgkins lymphoma and farm workers who applied herbicides on more than four occasions per year.
Interestingly, both the pro and anti sides in the argument used Bruce Ames’ research to bolster their case. Happily, real research in the area of cancer has resumed over recent time with the discovery of several viral causes of particular cancers. Just a pity that this research was blocked by the Guardians at the Gate.
HIGHLY MISLEADING HEADLINE!
The headline: Study: Green household products have hidden toxic hazards
From the story: Findings revealed that emissions of carcinogenic hazardous air pollutants from ‘green’ fragranced products were not significantly different from regular fragranced products.
Scented “green” household cleaners are equally hazardous to indoor air quality when compared to scented “non-green” counterparts, according to the study. The headline strongly implies that “green” products are uniquely toxic, or more toxic, or have some “hidden” danger not present elsewhere.
An accurate headline: Study: Green household products no safer than the rest
Come on, Alan Watts. This is “Buzzfeed” style clickbait. You’re better than that.
p.s.: I buy whatever’s cheapest, as long as it works.
Alan Watts
Hint: If you want to communicate with Alan Watts, try prayer. He died in 1973.
Oops, my mistake
By the way: I pay next to zero attention to “green” household products, believing them to be a pointless scam. So many someone who does know more can tell me whether these things make claims to be less toxic. Also: Is air quality the only dimension of toxicity? Could the “green” products be less (or more) toxic in other dimensions?
If all we have to go on is the info in this article, all it says is that “green” and “not green” are alike when it comes to indoor air quality.
I would love to have a wattsup hub for good environmental products, technology, ideas, etc. Not endorsements… Just support for people with good ideas. Maybe you just have a deliberate category for the good, bad and everything in between having to do with companies, engineering, developments, products, etc.? Just a thought.
I always love you uncovering the baloney. I know most on here care about environmental issues. Weeding out the bad ideas is one-sided. You have an amazing platform for shaping and guiding culture to support real environmental causes, not just exposing he bad ones.
Cheers!
Somewhat amusingly, The Git has just opened a bottle of Viking Grand Shiraz to allow it to breathe before tonight’s repast of pickled pork and organic vegetables from The Git’s Garden. Amusingly, because the wine is made from biodynamically grown grapes that used to be sold to Penfolds for use in their world-famous Grange. While the Grange sells for several hundred dollars a bottle, the Viking costs The Git $AU20/bottle by the case. The 2009 Grange scores 97, but then the 2009 Viking scores 94. At that level, the thousands of dollars saved by purchasing organic versus conventional outweighs any points difference between the two wines. Of course when drinking the Viking you don’t get to wank on about a “backdrop of high cocoa, dark chocolate, its hints of coal steam and its definitive, monumental intensity” as you do when you drink Grange, but The Git can live with that 🙂
Back in the 90s I was serving on a submarine which has continuously running air quality monitors. One day the alarms started going off and the entire crew had to don breathing masks. After several hours the cause was finally found: the new “green” cleaning solution had just started being used. The fumes were much worse than the prior “industrial strength” cleaner. Of course the remainder got locked up for the rest of our patrol and was banned from being brought on board on future supply stops.
Janice, ever thought ’bout vasectonomy?
re awakening to the real world.
mod, i see your problem.
exhausted / bored – Hans
[Might be difficult, performing a vasectomy on a woman. .mod]
vasectomy, vasectonomy – that academic ‘be better off I know.’
ghastly.
Janice, ever thought ’bout
vasectomy?
re awakening to the real
world.
mod, i see your problem.
exhausted / bored – Hans
Hi Johann!
We might be having a slight language problem… ☹
You could very well be correct. It seems highly unlikely that Janice would ever contemplate a vasectomy, both on the grounds of her sex and somewhat up-front spiritual beliefs 🙂
“Hidden toxic hazards”? Beg your pardon? If they have remained hidden until this study, I seriously doubt whether the effects are either toxic or hazardous. Unsuspectng users of hazardous toxins (or rather their their surviving relatives) generally quickly notice the effect without having to spend extra money doing a study like this one….
Another study, which also cites Steinemann et al. (2011).
Endocrine Disruptors and Asthma-associated Chemicals in Consumer Products
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/767012