It’s time for spring cleaning in my house, and my roommates have already begun to break out the all-purpose cleaners, the disinfectant wipes, and the bleach. The excitement of ridding our house of dust, crumbs, and stains is intoxicating–perhaps literally. This spring, as we prepare for a deep clean. I find myself wondering what compounds and chemicals we are leaving in place of the dust, crumbs, and stains.<\/p>\n
Here is a detailed “critique” of a Lysol all-purpose, multi-surface cleaner<\/a> that is probably a very common cleaner in the US. I know I saw it while growing up, whether it was in my own house or that of a friend. This critique lists all the ingredients in the cleaner (the tab for the ingredients list is on the left hand sidebar) and rates each with a letter grade. It gives a short description of each ingredient as well. I realized, while looking at this critique, that I suddenly became much more concerned about the chemicals in the cleaner than I was about the toast crumbs on the counter! In addition to ingredients, the website linked above also allows one to browse the Lysol product’s label, health concerns, environmental impacts, and other measurements.<\/p>\n In Week 2’s readings,\u00a0Norah MacKendrick and Lindsay M. Stevens provide a great article that examines perceptions of chemical exposure in our country. I found myself identifying with one or two individuals in particular, and I’m sure those who are reading this had come to similar realizations. I encourage all others who are preparing for spring cleaning to reflect on their products as well as MacKendrick and Stevens’s findings to answer the question of: how clean are we really getting?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s time for spring cleaning in my house, and my roommates have already begun to break out the all-purpose cleaners, the disinfectant wipes, and the bleach. The excitement of ridding our house of dust, crumbs, and stains is intoxicating–perhaps literally. This spring, as we prepare for a deep clean. I find myself wondering what compounds and chemicals we are leaving… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,13],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","category-public-health","tag-takeaways"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}