HOUSEHOLD CHEMICAL SAFETY
(Posted 2011-01-12 14:54:34 by ArchPaladin)

As an addendum to the last post, here are some more resources for household
chemical information:

* Household Products Database [
http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/index.htm ] [nlm.nih.gov]

* MSDS & chemical information [ http://sciencelab.com/page/S/CTGY/10403 ]
[sciencelab.com], provided by Sciencelab.



Making a proper analysis of the safety of any household product requires a
sane grounding in chemistry, biology, and toxicology.  I don't claim to
have a comprehensive understanding of those three fields, but I do believe
I have enough of a grounding to understand some things.  Below is something
that I thought I would write and it effectively turned into a rant, so
proceed with caution.

As is commonly stated when explaining MSDSs, they are primarily intended to
give information about product safety in an occupational setting (ie. where
people will be exposed to compounds in large quantities).  As such, if you
want to evaluate how safe a product is with low exposure, you have to
determine how much of it you really are exposed to.

Toxicology information is most often concerned with how great an exposure
you need to effect some great disaster in a person - death, paralysis, etc.
 As it concerns the more insidious conditions (cancer being the most
commonly referenced), information is more often sparse to non-existent. 
And if anything is given, it's often what concentration was necessary to
induce cancer in some laboratory animal _at exposure levels found in
industrial settings_ rather than what is found around the home.  We don't
have data for these compounds around the home because running tests at the
levels average people are exposed to would take a lifetime to determine
results.  So basic safety information about a person's average use of (for
example) Tide basically doesn't exist apart from the things we already know
- ie. don't let your kids consume it.

Now when you bring up this point, the argument from proponents of
health-conscious chemical makers (eg. Melaleuca, which I use in my house)
tend to shift.  The new argument becomes, hey, we know there are chemicals
in the major brands people use that are carcinogenic in large quantities,
and any risk of exposure is too much, so it would be better to cut it out
entirely anyway.  This is not really a sound argument in the first place
(many foods have carcinogens), but the solution offered by our
health-conscious chemical makers is to release their own brand of chemicals
which are still engineered.  What's worse, these products have the same
limitation of the major brands: the product labeling information is
obscure, and the distributor is not required to post their complete product
list, omitting components that are in the product but less than a
significant concentration (0.1% by volume, I believe).

So the idea that we can use safer chemicals in the home by switching to a
similarly engineered brand is a hypocritical solution.  It's hypocritical
because of the complexity of human biology - a fact overlooked by both
major distributors and health-conscious chemical producers.  We may know
that some compounds in (going back to our example) Tide are carcinogenic or
fatal in large quantities, but how are we to assess the safety of the
compounds in other chemical brands when we don't have the full list of
ingredients?  If the argument is that any concentration of carcinogens is
too much, how do we know there aren't carcinogens in the alternative
brands?

I guess my general point in this whole rant is that _the idea of better
living through chemistry has no merit without evidence_.  If you're basing
your product purchasing decisions solely on their health impact, your best
bet is to go with products that are entirely organic and displayed with a
complete ingredient list.  Any claims that the product is perfectly healthy
without opening up all the data to back it up is marketing hype, nothing
more.

Just as a final note here, in case you think I am totally against
health-conscious chemical brands - I'm not.  I base my product purchasing
decisions based primarily on cost and only secondarily on health risk. 
Other than that, I try not to drink laundry detergent.

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