What Procter & Gamble Doesn’t Want You To Know

For what it's worth, I looked into those "laundry disks" that purport to clean laundry without detergent. They're fake, but in the process I read some studies that showed you don't need ANY soap to wash clothes (except for greasy stuff). Plain water did just as well as laundry detergent. So now I only use soap in loads that need it.

It sounds as if anonomous works for one of the same companies that don’t want to reveal their product information. The discussion of one having to have a keen understanding of chemistry to understand the labeling on these products is absurd. Look at how many people use the labeling in food products. An extremely low percentage of these people have chemistry or nutritional backgrounds. Yet, many people have LEARNED to use this information for their betterment. Due to laws passed by various (local, state, federal) government levels, places that utilized chemicals are required to have an MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) available to ALL employees who may encounter each of these chemicals. Granted, water and some “office supplies” (pens, pencils, etc.) are usually not included. {grin} Those chemicals that are of most concern are those that may cause harm. Sometimes they may cause harm only to pregnant women but are still listed for all. Yet, the law requires these MSDS sheets to be available to all. If one knows of a specific chemical or compound, they can go online and get accurate information concerning safety and health on that chemical through an MSDS system. Few of these workers have chemical backgrounds, yet these MSDS’s provide information that most people understand. As the number of workers become familiar with the MSDS system, the information is easily propagated to their families. Therefore, there are a lot of people who already know how to find information about chemicals through the MSDS program and understand what hazards any particular chemical poses. Of course, many companies like to utilize “compounds” (under their own name) in their listing so that it masks what they are using. These compounds will also be listed in the MSDS program and will be available to people explaining the hazards they may have as a compound. Provided these companies list the chemicals utilized in their products, as this lawsuit suggests, consumers could obtain MSDS information online and understand more about the product. One of the issues of these companies is that when they start listing the chemicals utilized, they must also provide an MSDS of that chemical to anyone who request one from them (even though they are online). Many companies ship a copy of an MSDS along with the item (most often industrial uses). People do not have to have enough “chemical” knowledge to understand what is listed. The MSDS program takes the technical information and posts useful information as to safe handling and any hazards that the item may possess. I say “bring it on”, the public has been entitled to this information for years!

On one hand, yes, we want to know what is in it, because there are some terrible things in some cleaning products (for example, endocrine disrupters like NPE's). On the other, does it really help the mom (or dad) with an internet connection if she/he hasn't had a basic chemistry course somewhere along the line? The internet is filled with all sorts of incorrect information, hysteria, and competing companies trying to discredit others. Rather than wondering if any one particular company has self-interest in saying what they're claiming about other manufacturers, people swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Seriously, people still believe that SLS in detergents and personal care products at any amount is "dangerous" or "toxic." This is a great example. The SLS scare was launched by a manufacturer who used ALS instead, and hired a PR group to manufacture a scare in order to attack his competitors and gain market share for himself. Well, it worked. Even though snopes.com (the urban legends site) and even the American Cancer Society discredited it, it lives on. Even supposed "consumer" environmental sites are guilty of perpetuating these sorts of untruths, partially because they truly do not understand chemistry, or they pick and choose what they want to believe out of scientific reports, and finally because they do not understand the toxological principle of "the dose is the poison." (While this can be an excuse, most of the time it is not. Sprinkle some table salt on your food, you're OK. Ingest half a cup of table salt in one sitting and you might die. Things are usually neither good nor bad, toxic nor non-toxic: it depends on how much you're exposed to and how often, and if it biodegrades or persists in your body or in the environment.) So when people have such a lack of basic scientific knowledge such that they only want to use "things that have no chemicals in them" (EVERYTHING on the face of the earth is a chemical); or they think "sodium chloride" is a way to hide chlorine in a formula and they get angry and tell everyone on their blog not to buy the product; or they say "sodium bicarbonate sounds like trisodium phosphate, and I know that is dangerous stuff!", no wonder manufacturers are hesitant to list ingredients. (Sodium chloride is table salt; sodium bicarbonate is baking soda, the same thing in your kitchen you bake with. Perhaps manufacturers could just say "salt" and that would satisfy most everyone. Except anyone who has taken chemistry - they know that there are a whole lotta very dangerous chemicals that are classified as "salts"!)