Instead of reiterating the news article about this acid spill on a Pennsylvania interstate I simply want to point out the facts that are screaming for us Americans to wake up & smell the chems in our everyday lives.The over turned truck was carrying 33,ooo pounds of corrosive hydrofluoric acid causing an area evacuation of 944 households including their animals. The cleaning crews had to wear full protection suits (even when it was down to a drip from the tanker) and the driver was treated at the local hospital. This acid which was spilled has the following health warning: "Hydrofluoric acid, even in low doses, can irritate the eyes, nose and respiratory tract, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. In higher doses, exposure can cause severe burns, chronic lung disease or even death, the CDC says."
Which maybe doesn't mean that much to most of us since we didn't have to be exposed to it at the spill, except that what this liquid acid is being wastefully transported across the US in a gas guzzling tanker, only to be an ingredient in household detergent.
That means a component of detergent can cause lung disease and irritate your eyes while being worn in your clothing & slept in 24/7 year after year (meaning continuous long term exposure) against one of our most sensitive organs - the skin, which regularly absorbs what we put against it into our body.
Not cool detergent makers!
Why don't you guys start releasing your ingredient lists and tell us all about each one, so the consumers of this nation can make educated choices rather then blind choices.
This story points to the hidden costs and problems of putting toxic chems in household products: the transportation, storage, and manufacturing issues. People who work along that chain of production are all exposed to dangerous chemicals.
ReplyDeleteI recently received an email from a woman who used to work at Procter and Gamble, and in the building where she worked there were pilot plants that made Downy, Bounce, Bar and Liquid Soaps, Perfumes and Household Cleaners - she says all the chemicals were in the air and were dumped into the sewers. She's now retired, but has a letter from her doctor saying that these chemicals in the air affected her health. Three people in her building got MS and she has leukemia.