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Cleanlink News 2/18/2009

Cleaning Industry Targeted For Environmental Claims


As seen in the Los Angeles Times.

Environmental and health activists announced plans Tuesday for a lawsuit to make four major cleaning manufacturers reveal the chemical ingredients of their cleaning products and their research on the products' effects.

The suit, to be filed in New York, seeks to use a little-known 1976 New York law passed to combat phosphates in detergent.

The activists "say people deserve to know whether the products they use could be harmful," said New York lawyer Keri Powell, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest law firm.

The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of six state and national environmental and health groups, including the Sierra Club and American Lung Assn. in New York.

Responding to the lawsuit, the Soap and Detergent Association expressed disappointment that activist groups were "using an arcane New York state regulation as a way to disparage cleaning product formulators whose products are used safely and effectively by millions of people every day."

The industry plans a major push next year to make more information available about ingredients, said Michelle Radecki, general counsel of the Washington-based group. It represents 110 cleaning product manufacturers that together make more than 90 percent of U.S. cleaning products.

"The cleaning product industry is committed to providing more information than ever before on cleaning product ingredients," she said.

Last September, the coalition of groups sent letters to several manufacturers informing them of the New York law and its requirement that they file semiannual ingredient and research reports with the state's Department of Environmental Conservation. The letters asked the manufacturers to comply within 30 days.

"Eco-friendly" cleaning product manufacturers Method Products Inc., based in San Francisco, and Seventh Generation Inc., in Burlington, Vt., were among the companies that complied with the request. Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, New York-based Colgate-Palmolive and Princeton, N.J.-based Church & Dwight Co. all refused to comply; Britain-based Reckitt Benckiser Group did not respond.

The lawsuit seeks to invoke Article 35 of New York's Environmental Conservation Law — a statute that's seen little action since it was passed in 1976 to combat phosphates, a family of chemicals once widely used in detergents until they were associated with negative health effects.

In related news, the Soap and Detergent Association says the attacks on cleaning product safety is unfounded and promote fear, not facts. According to PRNewswire reports, the SDA says the claims lack legal standing and are not supported by state law. Further, the challenge ignores efforts to offer more information than ever before about cleaning products and their ingredients, says SDA, which represents the U.S. cleaning products industry.

Click here to read the full statement from the SDA. 


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