Do you know what is in your product? Do you look at the SDS?

Newline Matt

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Matthew Hill
I just wanted to know how many cleaners actually look at the SDS for the products that they used. I'm always amazed at what some people use (or expose themselves to daily) Would you use a product if it was made with raw materials that are suspected of causing cancer?
 

Andy

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Doesn't Matter
I do, but many of them anymore just state what to do in case of emergency and don't list the chemicals involved.
 

The Great Oz

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You should check the SDS on anything and default to the safer product when you can. Use protective gear if you choose to use the products that come with a DANGER rating. (Section 2)

That said, you have to use a little common sense to see what the danger component is and how much of that component is in the product. The SDS for bathtub caulk might say DANGER, and, "may cause cancer" due to silica and titanium dioxide content. The amounts are tiny, and so unlikely to get into your system, that there are no precautions to take when using it.
 

Tom Forsythe

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Dec 19, 2006
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We do not use any prop 65 ingredients in our chemicals. If you do then a warning should be on the product label as well as the SDS. California's list is the most extensive in terms of potential carcinogens. However, when California puts coffee on the prop 65 list, then it loses a lot of credibility, but generally I agree with their listing of cleaning raw materials.

The SDS only requires the listing of the ingredients, which cause the greatest danger in any particular area of hazard: eyes, skin, breathing, ingestion, fire, etc. Sodium Metasilicate, for example, irritates skin and eyes more than sodium carbonate so only the sodium metasilicate would need to be listed. Some solvents create a low flash point while others do not requiring only the one most volatile solvent to be listed. Even though you may have 10 ingredients in the formula it often happens that one or two ingredients are the most significant reasons for all of hazards. In an emergency situation it is better for a doctor to be able to quickly isolate the greatest hazards rather than looking up each individual ingredient.

Remember that the SDS defines the hazard in the bottle. We have provided for many of our products a ready to use SDS which reflects any hazards that the cleaner or consumer are actually exposed to in the course of cleaning. One adage that I have heard often is that "the solution to the pollution is dilution." Arsenic is in a lot of our water supplies, but its presence has been highly diluted.
 

The Great Oz

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Dilution works if the dilution reduces the corrosive effect of a strong acid, alkaline or some other reactive property. Cleaners that use a diluted product, but use it all of the time, can still have problems if the irritating chemical accumulates in their system. Diluted butyl will still allow you to develop the "butyl hack" that so many cleaner have, and constant exposure to some products can create a forever sensitivity to that product.

Most of the stuff made specifically for the carpet cleaning industry and sold by shops that specialize in selling to carpet pros is pretty safe, it's the tile and grout products that require more caution.


One adage that I have heard often is that "the solution to the pollution is dilution."
Pardon my "sensitivity" to that phrase. As a child of the 70s I knew it as a spin phrase coined by the chemical pollution giants as they tried to convince people that dumping millions of gallons of toxic waste from a quarter-mile pipe full of little holes would pollute less than dumping millions of gallons of toxic waste out of one large hole. Even Superfunds later, I still can't bring myself to eat bottom feeders after studying Boston Harbor.
 
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