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Nanny Fraser Home Daycare Contents
Parent Handbook
Additional Info
C. Fraser © 2008,
Fraser Service Group. All Rights Reserved. |
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Cleaning Products
There is a lot of confusion about which cleaning products
are safe to use around children and which can be hazardous. Companies that
promote the sale of their products are quick to claim (or in the case of Lysol,
advertise) that their products are safe when used as directed. However, it is
important to know that some products and chemical ingredients can be very
dangerous, even deadly, to young children. In addition, mixing or using some of
these
products in combination can have equally hazardous results.
There are a number of websites
that list a variety of chemical cleaners in which they claim is carcinogenic or
contain deadly materials. They list these dangerous ingredients next to the product
name. However, upon reviewing some of these products by reading both the
product label and the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) I have found some of
these claims to be exaggerated, or the way in which
the information is presented can be misleading. For example, this
website claims the following:
“Tide & Cheer Detergent: Detergent: Can cause
temporary respiratory tract irritation. Symptoms include stinging, swelling, or
redness. Sodium Silicate: Can be corrosive. Can cause
burns to the eyes and tissue damage to the skin, as well as cause burns to the
mouth, throat, and stomach if swallowed. Sodium Sulfate: Corrosive, Severe eye,
skin, and respiratory irritant. Can cause asthma attacks.
Trisodium Nitrilotriacetate:
Carcinogen.”
All that sounds very ominous
indeed. I
spent a week trying to find an alternate detergent that doesn’t
contain any of the above ingredients, until I realized this information can
only be found on an MSDS. But which Tide and Cheer
detergent product were they referring to? Is it a liquid or granular mixture?
What source was used to discover this information, and
most importantly, when was this information found?
As a former JHSC Co-chair and workplace hazard inspector,
I am accustomed to reading MSDS’s. They can look complicated at first, but if
you read each heading, it becomes a little more clear.
You can learn to read MSDS both in OSHA
and WHMIS
versions (which are almost identical).
Here are a list of Procter
and Gamble MSDS’s. Those that I read are accurate to 2007.
Tide granular. You can compare
this to the 2004
version.
Cheer
Free and Gentle (granular)
Cheer
Colour Guard (granular)*
*I was unable to locate a MSDS for a liquid version.
Although sodium silicate and sodium sulfate are found in the MSDS for both Tide and Cheer granular
formulas, they do not list trisodium nitrilotriacitate. In addition, the liquid formulas seem to
have less chemicals and known irritants than the
granular versions, therefore the liquid formulas are likely to pose less of a
health risk.
It may be a safe to assume that other detergents may be
made of similar chemical compositions. Therefore, if you’re
concerned about exposure to chemicals, opt for a liquid detergent instead of a
granular detergent, and find the MSDS on these products before you buy them.
Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot can contact their MSDS providers
(often 3E) to get you the data while you wait. However, most MSDS’s can be found online. Simply run a search on the product
name, followed by the term “MSDS”.
Many websites that make lists of hazardous materials in
known consumer products may be out of date or may have questionable sources.
You can’t trust product labels to give you the full
scope of what its ingredients are. You also can’t
trust commercials or product placement, since they can be very misleading (one
Lysol commercial, for example, showed a woman cleaning her baby’s highchair
with Lysol, then immediately feeding the baby a banana). In addition, you may
not understand the chemicals or resulting health conditions that are listed on the label or MSDS. If you run a search on the
chemical name, chances are you will find an awful lot of information on health
and toxilogical consequences. Then you can make an
informed decision whether or not to buy the product (also base your decision on
the amount of the chemical found in the product, since some exposures may be
harmless under normal usage).
So which products are unsafe for children? Let’s take a look…