Do You Know What’s in Your Detergent? Activists Sue to Find Out
Environmental groups will sue Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and two other chemical cleaner manufacturers later today to demand that they release the ingredients to their products.
Attorneys from EarthJustice will file the suit on behalf the Sierra Club and American Lung Association and four other groups. The lawsuit will be filed in New York to take advantage of a seldom-used 1976 law against using phosphates in soaps.
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The groups requested ingredient disclosure from the four companies and many others last September, citing the New York law, but these four refused to comply. On the other hand, Method Based and Seventh Generation, both companies that specialize in non-polluting cleansers, obliged the request and disclosed their ingredients.
The activists contend that some chemicals in detergents may cause asthma and skin problems for humans, and some may affect fish and marine mammal health. In the end, however, it comes down to the fact that people deserve to at least know what is inside the product they are buying.
Via: LA Times Photo Credit: Barkdog on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
I work in a large hotel. What could we do with all of the little bars of soap that we have been throwing out after guests use them once?
brownsquare: Encourage them to keep the soap as a little souvenir/gift?
Detergent should be scrutanized.
As for the soap, it can be recycled
I always bring a baggie when I travel and take the soap with me and use it at home. Free is free.lol
These companies should make sure that a list of all ingredients in their products are available to the consumers. These large corporations need to be accountable for what they are selling to the public.
I get headaches when I wear clothes that were washed using traditional laundry detergents according to their directions… in fact, even using about half what they suggest. Now I use about 15% as much as suggested and it is better but I sure would like to know why they were giving me adverse reactions when I was using them at the recommended amount. Once I finish my current laundry detergent (which I’ve had for about a year) I am going with 7th Gen or something comparable.
This is great news. I’m sensitive to fragrance, and this may possibly help me out.
It’s about time somebody did this- it is amazing to me that any company gets to keep their product’s ingredients secret now-a-days… it’s really just a way to get away with using chemicals that don’t belong onour skin. Our bodies are equipped to filter out alot of junk, but i totally think this is why we have so many more chronic diseases, allergies, cancer, etc - there’s a chem overload on our bodies, in our food chain, on the planet.
There is a site that I think you may all find very valuable… I go to it before I try any new products! http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/ This is a fantastic resource for all personal products, and how they rate on a danger-scale for toxic chemicals.
I wonder if they have organic detergent? I bet they do to keep us from the chemicals.