Are Amway cleaners safe?

Lori from Australia asks through The Green Guide website:

I am considering joining Quixtar (formerly Amway) as an Independent Business Owner. They tellme that their core cleaning products are all recommended and used by the UN, environmental groups, including using LOC to dispel oil spills. Can you tell me anything about these products, and whether or not the information I've been given is true?

The Green Guide's Research Editor, Allison Sloan, replies:

Thanks for your query re. the Quixtar/Amway cleaning product line. It may be true that some Amway products are used by some environmental groups -- it's not easy to verify or disprove a claim like that -- but after glancing through the ingredients listed on some of the material safety data sheets on their website, I concluded that most Quixtar products would not qualify for a recommendation as either eco-friendly or nontoxic from The Green Guide. While they may be no worse than many of the conventional cleaning products on the market, they are not any better.

Some complaints, in brief:

• The Dish Drops automatic dishwasher detergents contain phosphates, which contribute to algal blooms when they enter water from wastewater treatment plants. Phosphates were once widely used in laundry detergents here in the US, but most states have banned its use in laundry detergents due to water pollution. There is a loophole that permits phosphates in dishwashing detergent, but the truly eco companies do not take advantage of this loophole, instead creating detergents that are phosphate-free. Quixtar's SA8 Plus Premium Laundry Compound/Concentrate still contains a phosphate detergent as well.
• The Leather and Vinyl cleaner and the SA8 Solutions Pre-Wash Liquid contain mineral spirits, which can depress the central nervous system when inhaled, leading to dizziness, nausea, and headache.
• A number of the cleaning products contain diethanolamine and ethoxylated alcohols, both of which are easily contaminated with carcinogens -- DEA with the nitrosamine n-nitrosodiethanolamine, and ethoxylated alcohols with 1,4-dioxane. Here's an FDA notice about those ingredients (in cosmetics, in this case): www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cos-210.html. You can read more about the contaminants in the National Toxicology Program's 9th Report on Carcinogens: ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/toc9.html

Most of the cleaning products also contain chemicals that can cause eye, skin, or respiratory irritation during use.

Here is the page with links to MSDSs (Material Safety Data Sheets) for Quixtar products: www.quixtar.com/010-en/sh/b2b/MSDS_B2B.asp

It should also be noted that Amway was awarded by the UN for its commitment to promoting environmental education, not for the quality of its products. The United Nations Environment Program award that Amway received makes no mention of the environmental attributes of Amway products, and it should not be interpreted as a UN recommendation.