Four ways to join the radical transparency movement and uncover your home toxins

Dara O’Rourke is right. The Berkeley professor says we’ll discover something curious if we compare the ingredients labels on typical hand soap with the nastiest chemicals we can find in the house.
I started in the basement, with a bottle that lurks in a cobwebby corner, all skulls and crossbones in black and red. My landlord uses it when the sewer drain clogs. “Concentrated sulfuric acid,” is all it says.
On the way back upstairs, I asked my neighbor if I could read the label on his Tilex Fresh Shower Daily Shower Cleaner (we at Scorched Earth are letting our shower go green). I had to peer through the bottle to see the ingredients, which are listed on the back of a label that’s pasted to the front of the bottle. What’s that about? Here’s what the label says: “Nonionic surfectant and tetrapotassium EDTA.” That’s it for ingredients, but it does assure me that it “contains no phosphorous.” Is that all it doesn’t contain?
Then I got home and read the label on a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day liquid hand soap:
Geraniums, oh so pleasing to the eye on bright summer days, are said to uplift and soothe the mind with their refreshing floral scent. Peace of mind while you clean. You can bet on it!
Ingredients: Deionized Water, Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Glycerin, Lauramide DEA, Essential Oils of Geranium, Rose, and Clove, Fragrance*, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Aloe Barbadensis Gel, Olive Oil, Isostearimidopropyl Morpholine Lactate, Polyquaternium 7, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate, Tetrasodium EDTA, Sodium Chloride, Citric Acid
* More information on this ingredient is available in the Environmental and Safety section of Company Information.
Mrs. Meyers is more forthcoming than the law requires, probably because she knows people are more likely to scrutinize the stuff they’re putting on their hands than the stuff they’re pouring down the drain. Professor O’Rourke, who studies the environmental impact of the global supply chain, explains:
Historically, household chemical manufacturers in the US did not have to disclose their ingredients unless they fell within very specific parameters (e.g., active ingredients above a certain concentration that are known to be toxic). This means most chemicals do NOT have to be listed…. These companies had previously argued that their ingredient lists were confidential business information, and that they couldn’t disclose them because of a threat of lost market share. I believe these same companies are now realizing that the real threat to their sales and their brands is from being considered non-transparent. As they say, the cover-up is often worse than the crime in the US.
I’m not sure I agree with Professor O’Rourke about the cover up being worse than the crime in the U.S., unless he means that the victims of our crimes are usually overseas, but he is on to something else–a movement toward “radical transparency.”
It’s a movement that author Daniel Goleman believes is rising with a new generation, and that shows up in all sorts of places, including President Obama’s call for a “renewed commitment to honesty and transparency in government,” which haunts him every time he keeps a secret, but doesn’t keep him from imposing transparency on credit-card companies. The movement also appears in the controversial cartoon, The Story of Stuff, that tells kids the real story behind all the stuff we buy, use, and throw away.
Consumers can find out more about the products they use than the labels tell them by visiting these four sites at the forefront of radical transparency:
GoodGuide.com’s assessments of the lifecycle impact of products
The Environmental Working Group’s personal products safety database, Skin Deep
The Safe Cleaning Products Initiative of Women’s Voices for the Earth
Consumer Reports’ campaign to reveal the hidden toxins in household products and substances