Is it Spring yet?

It's the middle of March, Spring Break for many (although it was snowing today in Bloomington).  Do you have the itch to open your windows and let in some fresh air?  Me too!  Spring is also a time when many of us do a little "spring cleaning."  But before you do, take a good look at the products that you are using.

The real dirt on clean.
You know that good, healthy feeling you get when you’ve just  cleaned house? Sorry to spoil it, but you may have just made your home dirtier.

Think of it this way. You wouldn’t let your kids play with toxic chemicals, so why would you let the baby crawl over a floor that’s just been wiped with them? That’s much more dangerous than the orange juice that was just there.

How dangerous? Just take a look at these statistics.

• Over 90% of poison exposures happen at home.

• Common chlorine bleach is the #1 household chemical involved in poisoning.

• Organic pollutants, found in many common cleaners and even air fresheners, are found at levels 2 to 5 times higher inside your home than out.

• A person who spends 15 minutes cleaning scale off shower walls could inhale three times the “acute one-hour exposure limit” for glycol ether-containing products set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

• Common cleaners give off fumes that can potentially increase the risk of kids developing asthma, the most common chronic childhood disease.

• 1 in 13 school-aged children has asthma. Rates in children under five have increased more than 160% from 1980 – 1994.

• Children are highly vulnerable to chemical toxicants. Pound for pound of body weight, children drink more water, eat more food, and breathe more air than adults. The implication of this is that children will have substantially heavier exposures than adults to any toxicants that are present in water, food, or air.

• If your home is anything like the average U.S. home, you generate more than 20 pounds of household hazardous waste each year (the EPA designates toilet cleaners, tub and tile cleaners, oven cleaners, and bleach as hazardous waste).

          ("The Real Dirt on Clean" is a resource of The Shaklee Corporation)



Kyle did HazMat training as a part of his last job - it opened his eyes to the dangers of general cleaning products. There is a special code in the hazardous materials regulations in the US for things that would be classified as hazardous (i.e. toxic, corrosive or things like that) but if they are packaged for consumer consumption, they get a different label. They are classified as “Other Regulated Materials- Domestic” or ORM-D. Walk around your local store when they are stocking cleaners – look at the labels on the boxes. If you see the letters ORM-D on the outer box or a diamond with black and white diagonal striping and the number 9, that cleaner has been shipped as HazMat, and would be classified as flammable, toxic, or corrosive if they had shipped it in a 50 gallon drum. BUT- because they put it in a plastic spray bottle and put a brand name and a label on it, they can ship it under a different code and sell it to you. Would you buy a cleaner for your house if it had a label on it that said “Toxic” and had a skull and crossbones on it? Of course not… yet most of the cleaning products sold in stores have the ORM-D label so that they don’t scare the consumer. So be aware and informed… or use something safer…

Check out our website for a kit to really GET CLEAN in your home!

Kits start at $46.20, retail price, but join now as a member and you can save 15%!