Writing in favor
Lee Senter

Recently, I visited with a long-time customer and talked to him at length about the changes in my company, and, more specifically, about how we use safer cleaning chemicals on a day-by-day basis.

It turns out that my customer was very knowledgeable about cleaning chemistry, and that he knew 10 years ago that what I used to clean with harmful.

In fact, he said that the chemical I was using was probably slowly killing me.

It truly amazes me at how naïve I had been in nearly 20 years of cleaning carpet.

I had no knowledge of the Workplace Hazardous Material Information System (WHMIS), even though it was the law.

In the United States, the equivalent is the Hazard Communication Program.

No other carpet cleaner I knew had any knowledge of these laws.

Here we were using chemicals with prominent warning signs on the jugs, and we were telling all our customers that these chemicals were safe for kids and pets no problem!

Times have changed.

I have been cured of a serious liver disease and have a bit more of a clue about the effects of chemicals.

I now know how to read a material safety data sheet (MSDS) and, more importantly, how to understand the data contained on the MSDS of cleaners, deodorizers and protectors. I ve got to tell you, it isn't pretty.

Many of the ingredients in the carpet cleaners arsenal are considered hazardous.

This is a fact. If you are one man show, you should be concerned about the short term (acute) and the long term (chronic) effects of these chemicals.

If you have any employees, even one part-time helper, you must, by law, have a written Hazard Communication Program.

This program must explain the hazards present, what the actual hazards are, what effects they may cause, what an MSDS is, how to read an MSDS, where they are kept and, most importantly, how to safely deal with these hazards.

This is the law in all of North America. When I actively carry out our program, I can't help but think, is it really that bright to be using this stuff all day, every day?

As I continue my research, I always come up with the same type of information.

Asthma is on the increase, and there are a substantial number of people in our population who are chemically sensitive.

Most estimates say 15 percent of the population are hypersensitive individuals. The major triggers for the onset of asthma are: Cleaning chemicals, perfumes and tobacco smoke.

I looked for safer chemistry. I found several green cleaners. But the ads for these cleaners all said the same thing: Trust me, I'm safe. 

I had my liver to worry about, so I researched.

Green cleaners can basically be grouped into three categories: Safe for humans, safe for the environment, and products that are environmentally conscious.

Some environmentally-conscious products can get certified by some organizations simply for using recycled plastic for its container, or using a renewal resource.

This is a step in the right direction, but it's not what I am looking for.

Safe for human cleaning chemistry is available.

It should actually be a boom industry.

In Europe and Canada, there is a mad scramble to find new cleaners that will conform to proposed legislation.

Admittedly, all of the greener chemicals don't have the firepower of some of the products with hazardous ingredients on the market now.

My experience finds that there are safe for human  cleaners out there that will take care of 90 percent of residential situations, and more than half of commercial situations.

I don't believe that it is necessary to use firepower to clean every carpet. In my opinion, to go clean a carpet in a baby's room with a cleaner with butyl or some similar ingredient is akin to shooting a squirrel with a bazooka.

People do get sensitized to chemicals. This means that a body sometimes can only deal with some things up to a point, and then it no longer can.

Exposure after this point means trouble for that person's body and/or organs.

Then we have young children who breathe twice as fast as the rest of us, and are therefore exposed much more than the rest of us.

We have older people who can no longer fight hazardous influences like the majority of the population.

We have the immuno-suppressed, the hyper-sensitive, and we have those who have a lot of exposure to these hazardous chemicals.

There is a place for firepower chemicals. But whenever we can, we usesafe for human green chemicals.

It's a matter of conscience. It's also a great marketing tool, as more and more consumers are conscious of the chemicals they use.

Industry, and especially government, is increasingly insisting onsafe for human green chemicals.

Because of my interest on this subject, I have had the opportunity to try the newsafe for human chemicals coming out on the marketplace.

They are extremely effective carpet cleaners.

Maybe the day will come soon that the heavy-duty presprays will only be used for heavy-duty traffic lanes.

One other aspect of chemistry I'm concerned with is the use of solvent-based fabric protectors.

Applying a protector that uses a solvent as a carrier would add a huge amount of VOCs to the immediate environment of both the end user and the person applying the product.

If any part of a product evaporates into the air, you should assume that it becomes a part of yourbody burden .

The evaporation of water as compared to odorless mineral spirits (OMS) on a health and safety scale is dramatically different.

Our earth and our bodies are predominantly water. I would venture to say that water vapor is expected in our lives and not that harmful to our bodies.

I just can t fathom why we would want to add VOCs to our environment when it is not necessary.

I have read the MSDS of a solvent protector that stated vapors may travel along at ground level for extended distances, and possibly ignite from ignition sources.

I will not use these products and see no reason why someone would want to if they were truly aware of the hazards.

Rebuttal
Larry Cobb

Lee, I appreciate your concern for toxicity and your desire to fully understand MSDS. I make decisions frequently on the types of chemicals used at our manufacturing plant.

You mention hypersensitive individuals and list cleaning chemicals and tobacco smoke as major triggers. I would suggest that you compare risk from cleaning chemicals to other common risks in our daily routine.

I have studied both of these extensively, and testing has shown tobacco smoke polyaromatic hydrocarbons are more than 30 times more toxic than the chemicals commonly used in carpet cleaning formulations.

It has been classified as a Group A carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Bernard L. Cohen, professor emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, has done several studies on lifetime risk factors.

Drinking alcohol and male smoking both have several times more health risk than all cancers combined.

Then, you must compare the cancer risk from food components versus cleaning compounds.

Here is an interesting discovery: Natural chemicals pose greater carcinogenic hazards than synthetic chemicals.

Most cancer researchers agree that our risk from natural food carcinogens far exceeds our risk from synthetic chemical carcinogens.

The risk from carpet cleaning compounds is very small and can be made even smaller by following directions on product data sheets and MSDS.

You state that green cleaners should be a boom industry. At least five years ago, we brought out a line of cleaners designed to have no hazardous ingredients.

It was designed to outperformless green products .

The first lesson we found was that customer perception far outweighed the lack of toxicity.

One of the green solvents used in the prespray had an odor that customers perceived as undesirable, even though it was non-toxic. That product had to be reformulated.

If you look at carpet cleaning industry product sales, you will find that green products are less than 15 percent of the total market, and most of those purchases are driven by customer specs like the Green Seal GS-37.

Another concern is that environmental issues may eliminate effective cleaning ingredients.

Green Seal is proposing that all ingredients over 0.1 percent biodegrade in 28 days or less.

While this information is available for some popular surfactants, it is not provided for most builders and other cleaning aids.

Most manufacturers will face the choice of expensive testing or less usage of their product.

A chemical rep from a well-known company was shocked that their builder product used in cleaners, foods and prescriptions will not be allowed under the new proposed GS-37 standards.

Even the new, safer solvents they developed will be effectively eliminated by the same standard.

d-Limonene, the active ingredient in most citrus cleaners, was also disallowed. Even the respected European Eco-Label allows 10 percent solvent in products meeting the criteria.

Only recently did polymer manufacturers finally obtain exclusion for their product used in encapsulation products. Without that exclusion, commercial carpet cleaning would have reverted back to the old resoiling products of five years ago.

You state that you have been testing new and improvedgreen cleaners. Yet even those products are only suitable for 50 percent of commercial situations you face.

This failure is not acceptable to those commercial cleaners who are faced with cleaning challenges each day.

As a formulator, I am forced to use less effective raw materials just to satisfy ill-conceived standards.

Those standards are trying to satisfy all of the three categories you stated:

1. Safe for humans
2. Safe for the environment
3. Environmentally conscious

You cannot have all three of these to the degree that new standards are requiring without increasing costs and eliminating many raw materials.

Another aspect we need to address is solvent-based versus water-based fluorochemicals.

First of all, the highest risk factor from spraying any fluorochemical is breathing the small respirable particles of the fluorochemical itself.

This is the factor of which applicators must be aware.

Wear a respirator for both types of product and apply the spray close to the carpet or fabric.

Non-flammable solvent-based fluorochemical protectors have been on the market for over 10 years, although thesafest for human solvent was taken off the market by ozone concerns.

Always be aware of chemical risks, but put them in perspective!

Writing in opposition
Larry Cobb

I have been in the carpet cleaning industry for more than 25 years and formulating carpet cleaning products for over 15 years. Several of our current cleaning products meet the definition generally accepted forgreen cleaners .

I am, however, shocked at the definitions of what now constitutes agreen chemical.

Several of our customers have requirements forgreen cleaners.

Several of them have requested products to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for building environments.

The LEED system is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings and schools.

LEED has specified Green Seal GS-37 specs for cleaners used in these buildings, and contractors are required to use those cleaners.

The only problem is that Green Seal has no criteria of their own for carpet cleaning products.

They instead have used the California CARB standards.

This is unfortunate for the carpet cleaning industry, as it limits VOC content for carpet cleaners to one-tenth of 1 percent.

This is a prime example of the thoughtless process for setting standards that the carpet cleaning industry must adhere to.

In late December of 2004, Green Seal published comments on their proposed new standards for carpet cleaning products.

These are their responses:

1. Use nationally-recognized cleaning efficiency and resoiling methods from the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) methods testing, Carpet & Rug Institute (CRI), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Association of American Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) and WoolSafe. (Some of these are acceptable in part.)
2. They believe 50 degree Fahrenheit cold water is acceptable and adequate for carpet cleaning, over several objections that it would require more cleaning product.
3. Although California allows 2 percent VOCs for fragrance use, Green Seal does not allow that exemption for their GS-37 specification.
4. Several commonly used builders, water softeners and surfactants in carpet cleaning products would not be allowed. Some of these products are not allowed because of insufficient data.

So what would be the result of this green cleaner proposal?

It would be a cold water carpet cleaner with poor builders, no solvents to break down grease, and no fragrance to assure customers.

Solvent-based protectors would be eliminated.

These same solvents have been used in our industry for years with no adverse health effects.

As a formulator, I know that these types of green cleaners would be a step backwards for our industry.

I think that cleaning effectiveness must be weighed against environmental concerns.

One cleaner may be much more effective than a greener cleaner.

The total environmental impact may be less with the more efficient product even though it has VOCs or builders not allowed.

If these definitions are accepted, the cost of the products to meet them will have to increase.

If there were no price or efficiency drawbacks forgreen cleaners, then they would be dominating the market right now.

First, we had California setting unrealistic carpet cleaning product standards.

Now, Green Seal is trying to force product standards that are even more out of touch with the real world.

Rebuttal
Lee Senter

Larry you obviously know more about chemicals than I do.

This makes me that much more confused why you would be shocked at the definitions of what now constitutes a green chemical. 

After all, you must be making MSDS for the products you formulate.

You must be making the recommendations for the safe use of the hazardous chemicals that are contained in your products. Why are you shocked?

I am not a chemist; however, I do know that if any part of a product evaporates into the air, one would assume that it would become part of your body burden when it s inhaled.

VOCs are the part of the product that evaporates into the air waiting to be breathed.

That's where all the newspaper stories come from about chemicals being in mothers breast milk and traces of chemicals in people thousands of miles away.

I'd bet this is why the leading edge (California law) is sayingno to VOCs.

I know they have a ton of research backing up why it is the law now.

I just don't buy the argument that these non-green products work better, so disregard the hazards associated with them.

Nobody really likes governmental regulations, so why wait until they have to step in? The evidence is mounting very quickly these chemicals aren t safe.

The reason why there are not a lot of safe chemicals is that this part of the industry is in its infancy.

The more of a demand there is for thesafe for human cleaning chemicals, the more the formulators will be in their labs trying to make them.

I believe the problem in our industry is that so many of us are, or were,mom and pop shops.

We did not start our companies with a basic understanding of health and safety programs.

Many of us do not have hazard communication programs or written respirator programs.

We do not understand that health and safety revolves around engineering controls, administrative controls and work practices.

These are the methods of making a safe work environment.

Most of us use personal protective equipment (PPE) as a health and safety measure; PPE is supposed to be used as a last resort, after all other measures have been attempted and implemented or as a final safeguard.

The primary engineering controls used in all industries is something calledsubstitution .

A truly safe work environment is constantly performing a job hazard analysis on each task they perform.

While looking at your tasks and looking at the hazards, the primary way of making it safer is to saycan I use something safer? 

I believe in this day and age that humans are not as resilient to the common hazards we face.

We fill ourselves with junk food. We sit behind computers and video games rather than be physically active.

As a result, people don t get enough fresh air and more people are not physically fit.

This might explain the increase in asthma and sensitized people. Like it or not, these are the people and conditions in which carpet cleaners must work with and we have to be able to accommodate.

This is why VOCs and fragrances are under the microscope.

They just add to an increasing problem and are creating major problems for a percentage of the population.

These chemicals are also slowly building up in our bodies to the point of causing body burdens that we can t cope with.

I hope that all formulators will start to spend as much time on researching new cleaners as they do defending their old ways.

The newest cleaners that are made from food ingredients and botanical products are extremely effective.

It's this kind of innovation that is needed for a safer world.

Larry Cobb is involved in carpet cleaning research with his firm, Cobb Carpet Supply, Dallas.