Book Review: Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe and Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning

Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe & Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning by Jeffrey Hollender and Geoff Davis (New Society Publishers, 2006, $15.95)

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It's never been much of a secret at The Green Guide that conventional household cleaners pose numerous environmental and personal health threats. But sometimes it takes a book like Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe & Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning to really spell those dangers out for us.

Written by Jeffrey Hollender, president of Seventh Generation, and Geoff Davis, the editor of that company's Non-Toxic Times newsletter, the book is an in-depth resource for any consumer looking to limit her exposure to dangerous chemicals, sort of a Green Guide product report expanded to book size. It's an informative, detailed guide for living a cleaner life and addresses virtually every household concern from indoor air quality to antibacterials to Teflon.

The book's more illuminating chapters focus on how our homes become chemically contaminated in the first place, mainly through the lack of governmental regulations on cleaning-product manufacturing, labeling and testing for safety. For instance, if a product contains one chemical that would cause an acute reaction such as nausea if ingested and another ingredient that causes cancer given long-term exposure, the manufacturer would meet governmental safety labeling standards by the single warning phrase, "Do not take internally." Not only do governmental loopholes allow cleaning manufacturers to hide behind vague safety labeling, but they also allow manufacturers to interpret the results of animal safety studies as they see fit. If a scientific study shows that a chemical causes cancer in lab rats, it's up to the manufacturer's discretion to interpret how those results would translate to humans. All of which leads up to yet another of the book's cogent points: Cleaning product manufacturers are not required to have their products tested or evaluated by an unbiased, independent third party. While this isn't necessarily news to us, it is even more disturbing in context of the book's other revelations about the liberties given to corporations pushing their products on an unsuspecting public.

Along with elaborating on the serious dearth of government testing and regulations needed to keep these chemicals out of our homes, Naturally Clean points out how those chemicals can really do damage, noting rising asthma and cancer rates and especially how children's small bodies are susceptible. But it's not all doom and gloom. What follows is a room-by-room guide on choosing safer cleaners—including ways to make your own—and on simple steps you can take to cut down on the need to clean in the first place.