Coming Clean for Work Safety 

Today’s consumers and businesses use a vast array of different cleaning products, including dish soaps, laundry detergents, air fresheners, all-purpose cleaners, disinfectants, glass cleaners, stain removers and more.

Many people don’t know—and the labels won’t tell us—that chemicals found in some ordinary cleaning products are known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, asthma and other serious health effects. Biomonitoring studies show that many of these toxicants invade our bodies—they have been found in blood, urine and breast milk, as well as in the umbilical cord blood of newborns. [1]^,[2],[3]

Impact on workers:

• Workers such as janitors, maids and housekeepers are exposed to the chemicals in cleaning products every time they go to work. This can mean 40 hours of exposure to unknown, potentially toxic chemicals every week.
• While state workplace safety regulations provide some protection, they don’t go far enough and are difficult to enforce.
• People of color, particularly women, are disproportionately impacted by workplace exposures to cleaning products. About half of the nation’s janitors, maids and housekeepers are Latino or African American.[4] Women account for 9 out of 10 maids and housekeepers, and of those, a majority are Latina and African American. [5]   

Cleaning product ingredients may contain chemicals linked to serious health impacts, including:

• Cancer or reproductive harm: phthalates, styrene, synthetic musks, trichloroethylene, ethylbenzene, petroleum distillates, 2-butoxyethanol, and thiourea.

• Asthma: alkylphenol ethoxylates, quaternary ammonium compounds, and glutaraldehyde.

  • ​Asthma is much more prevalent in lower income communities.[6]

  • Fumes from some cleaning products can induce asthma in otherwise healthy individuals and exacerbate asthma in people who already have the disease.[7],[8],[9],[10]    

  • According to the U.S. EPA, cleaning products contribute to concentrations of many common pollutants that are 2 to 5 times higher inside homes than outside.[11]

All communities, especially those most vulnerable, deserve access to the information they need to find safe and affordable products.

• Ingredient transparency is the first step towards choosing safer, less toxic alternatives to household and industrial cleaners.

• Ingredient disclosure on product labels is mandatory for all food, cosmetics and drugs – but not cleaning products.

• Workplace safety regulations protect “employees,” but many workers affected are misclassified as “independent contractors” and thus not covered by these laws.

AB 708 would require cleaning product manufacturers to label ingredients on product labels and product websites.

• Labels: The first 20 ingredients by weight and hazardous chemicals on the DTSC’s Safer Consumer Products Program’s Candidate Chemicals list.

• Websites: All chemical ingredients and a link to an NIH database of chemicals.

• Not required: The exact formula or process used to make the product, which adequately protects trade secrets. 

For more information about AB 708, please contact:

• Nancy Buermeyer, Breast Cancer Fund: 415-321-2919, buermeyer@breastcancerfund.org

• Bill Allayaud, Environmental Working Group: 916-601-9280, bill@ewg.org

Take Action!

On January 20th, join the Breast Cancer Fund, the Environmental Working Group and other concerned citizens in support of our right-to-know about toxins in cleaning products. Folks are planning to rally and meet with California legislators in Sacramento to ask them to Come Clean and vote Yes on ingredient transparency with AB 708.

 

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References