Well, it’s been an interesting week. Environmental Working Group just released their brand new Guide to Healthy Cleaning and it’s freaking some folks out big time.
First the basics
EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning contains information and safety assessments for more than 2,000 cleaning products, 197 brands and more than 1,000 ingredients. The guide rates popular household cleaning products with grades A through F based on both what’s inside that bottle and about the information the company is willing to disclose about their products.
To grade products, EWG staff scientists spent 14 months reading product labels, digging through company websites and technical documents, researching ingredients and contaminants and more.
Some results
EWG notes that…
- Just 7% of all cleaners managed to adequately disclose their ingredients.
- Some 53% of cleaning products assessed by EWG contain ingredients known to harm the lungs.
- 22% contain chemicals reported to cause asthma.
- Most manufacturers did provide some ingredient information on their official websites but package label data was lacking. In many cases, companies offered minimum value and often-vague information about what they put in their products.
Read more about the results of this guide AND scoring facts at EWG.
Green cleaning product reviews
EWG has a worst of the worst “Hall of Shame” cleaning product list you can look at to see the top most dangerous cleaning products. To see safer products takes a bit more work. You can search by product name, brand name, or simply browse EWG categories, like “kitchen cleaners,” “bathroom cleaners,” and all-purpose cleaners'” among others.
How reliable are the ratings?
Well some people are frightfully upset because their favorite green cleaners scored Fs or Ds on the EWG list. Method was a biggie. A lot of folks use Method and are very upset because overall, Method products scored horribly on the EWG list. None of Method’s products scored an A or B and most got well below a C, mostly due to “non-specific ingredient ingredient disclosure” info.
If you’re a Method fan, you may want to read my friend Beth’s post because she got a statement from the company about their sadly low scores.
Other people were even more upset. Like say, The Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA) who released a press release super fast, telling consumers not to panic after reading the EWG guide. CSPA notes, “The “Healthy Cleaning Guide” that was recently released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) contains reviews and assigns grades that reflect incorrect and incomplete information. Unfortunately, EWG is misleading consumers about cleaning products that are used safely by millions of consumers every day.”
Not that I agree with CSPS. It’s their job to represent all cleaners – toxic or not. However, I did personally question some of the ratings on the EWG list and thought the list had some other cons as well.
What I think of the EWG scoring system
I try to make homemade cleaners, but sometimes do go with store-bought green cleaners, so I decided to look up a bunch of stuff I’ve used and rated here at Growing a Green Family.
My favorite store-bought toilet cleaner is Seventh Generation Toilet Bowl Cleaner, Emerald Cypress & Fir Scent
Other stuff I like and use and yes, even recommend here, got extremely poor scores. For example, my favorite laundry soap, Biokleen, got a flat out D due to high concerns about “acute aquatic toxicity.” The other concerns were all moderate or low, yet it scored a D. In fact it was rated the same as Tide laundry detergent and insanely Biokleen got the SAME score as Clorox Commercial Solutions Bleach. Seriously? Biokleen and Bleach are 100% the same?
Oh and by the way, the EWG list notes that bleach carries little environmental concerns and only some or moderate concerns when it comes to human health. Really? Let me direct you to one of my favorite old-school posts on the dangers of bleach – which notes much the same as other bleach research by the way.
What scored lower than bleach on the EWG list? Well…
- Earth Friendly Products Baby Laundry Soap
- Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwashing Gel
- Biokleen Dishwash Liquid, Lemon Thyme
- BabyGanics The Grime Fighter All Purpose Cleaner, Fragrance Free
- Almost every single Method product.
- Almost every single Mrs. Meyer’s product.
- Planet Ultra Powdered Laundry Detergent, Hypo-Allergenic
- And lots more.
What exactly are they scoring?
Apparently, EWG’s scoring process, as noted by them, goes something like this…
“Available information on the toxicity or safety of substances in cleaning products was collected and organized. EWG considered the credibility of the data source, the comprehensiveness of the information and the severity of the health and environmental effects associated with the substances under evaluation.” This information was combined using EWG-developed scoring algorithms to produce a hazard/safety score for each ingredient in the database. Finally, the scores for each substance in a product were combined to give an overall ingredient hazard/safety score for that cleaner.”
A final score for a product was then calculated by using the following tactics…
- “First, the overall ingredient hazard/safety score was combined with a “disclosure” score. Disclosure is the amount of information the manufacturer provides to consumers about the ingredients in a product.
- After the ingredient hazard/safety and disclosure scores were combined, additional modifications were sometimes made to the score based on specific criteria. For example, a product with a very low or high pH (and therefore corrosive), or that violated a regulation, received additional demerits.
- A product that was certified as “green” by an EWG-reviewed and approved program received an improved score.
- The final product score for a cleaner was then translated into a letter grade. A letter grade of “A” indicates very low toxicity to health and the environment with robust disclosure of ingredients, while a grade of “F” signifies that the product is highly toxic or provides little to no ingredient disclosure. A “C” score indicates an average cleaner that poses no overt hazards and provides some disclosure of ingredients. “
Huh?
The rating system is hyper confusing. Call me crazy, but I’m hard pressed to believe that Earth Friendly Products baby laundry soap, made with “Vegetable and coconut based soap, earth salt, coconut based fabric softener, N.O.P. certified chamomile and lavender essentials oils and water” and made by a company with some major eco-perks is more deadly and lame than Clorox bleach.
I’m really, really not getting the rating system used here.
No use reviews or ease of use included
This EWG guide is missing a seriously important piece of the puzzle – if products work or not AND ease of the normal consumer getting their hands on said products. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that NO ONE will re-buy a green cleaner that sucks and also green cleaners MUST be as easy to get as regular cleaners.
EWG has just four safe dish washing detergent listed (meaning that got an A), which is all good and fine, if the top three of the top four didn’t create issues for some people.
Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwasher Detergent Concentrated Pacs, Free & Clear made the top, which was nice, because that’s what I use. However, the other three that got top scores include…
- Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwasher Powder, Free & Clear – which is terrible and doesn’t work. Try it, you’ll see.
- The Honest Co. honest auto dishwasher gel, free & clear – which is not available in stores, but only by mail order and for ($5.95 shipping), thus creating emissions, higher prices and more work for parents.
- Green Shield Organic Squeez Automatic Dishwasher Liquid Detergent, Lemongrass- which I’ve never, not once seen in a store near me and I’ve read some scathing reviews about how this doesn’t work at all.
So above, you’ve got one decent green dish detergent choice along with three that don’t work and/or are expensive or hard to find. Expensive + doesn’t work + hard to find = no one wants to use it = not the most useful guide ever.
So… what to do?
You know, I really love EWG. I like Skin Deep, I like their Dirty Dozen guide and I even kind of liked their sunscreen guide, though, as you may remember I took issue with some of their sunscreen rating system. However, I’m seriously just confused by their new healthy cleaning guide. Especially since it doesn’t at all take into account how a product actually works. Plus, I can’t get over how wonky it is that toxic bleach comes out ahead of many zero-bleach products.
Overall, I need to spend more time with the list before I make a total judgment call. But, in case you trust EWG 100% check out this list of their best, most highly recommended cleaners.
What do you think of the EWG Healthy Cleaners Guide?
Honestly, with all this confusion, maybe you should just skip the store-bought cleaners and make your own.