Green Cleaning Products For Your Home

Avoid Volatile Organic Compounds - Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs are fumes that can be toxic when emitted from certain solids or liquids. According to the EPA, concentrations of many VOCs are consistently higher indoors (up to ten times higher) than outdoors. This is because of the lack of ventilation of the VOCs that are off-gassed from many common products used at home. Health-harming VOCs in the home come from cleaning supplies, paint and paint removers, air fresheners, dry cleaned clothing, and plywood.

VOCs cause short and long-term harm to your health, such as dizziness, headache, eye irritation, flu-like symptoms, triggering asthma, and even life-threatening conditions like cancer. Pregnant and nursing women, babies and children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems are even more susceptible to the negative effects of breathing VOCs, so it is important to take steps to reduce VOCs in your home environment for everyone's sake.

If you are like most people starting to learn about this subject, you could go to where you store your cleaning supplies right now and you would find that every product emits Volatile Organic Compounds. Unless you already buy pH neutral and biodegradable, the cleaners you use for your floors, tubs, carpets, countertops, grill, and windows all produce Volatile Organic Compounds. You know now that using them produces these fumes that last for hours, but even sitting there, unused, they emit gasses.

Neutral pH - Current common cleaning products come with extensive instructions about where and what to use them on and even more importantly, where not to use them. This relates to their pH level, either acidic, below 7.0, ranging to such levels as battery acid, to greater than 7.0, the alkaline side, inclusive of bleach. A neutral pH, that of 7.0, means the product is non-reactive environmentally when combining with water, not damaging to surfaces, and not harmful to your skin.

In your home you may have many surfaces that require careful cleaning, such as marble and certain tiles. These surfaces won't be harmed by neutral pH green cleaning product. Even more important, this type of product will not damage your skin.

No Solvents - If you knew something was toxic and carcinogenic to the environment and the people who used them, you probably would avoid use. Common household products often contain solvents such as Ethylene Glycol Ethers (EGEs), alcohols, esthers, and Propylene Glycol Ethers (PGEs). You won't be surprised to learn these are corrosive chemical ingredients.

Biodegradable - Our environment gets exposed to everything we wash down the drain. Cleaning chemicals commonly pollute our environment instead of dissipating into non-harmful co-factors, but even the amount of time it takes biodegrade makes some cleaning product superior over the others.

It's easy to see that the small adjustment of swapping out toxic cleaning products for ones that are beneficial to people, your home, and the environment is the right road to travel. Most all natural multipurpose cleaning products offer value beyond the hygienic. Better air to breath, no harsh residue, and virtually no environmental impact make commercial green cleaning products superior in every way!