Household cleaners.

[brenbee]

great tip about vinegar. i've often wondered what it can b used 4. now I can look it up on the internet

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by brenbee

great tip about vinegar. i've often wondered what it can b used 4.

You can even put it on your chips!
;^)

Jim

[SilverLass]

Vinegar is great, I've a book entitled "1001 uses for vinegar"....fantastic. There are many, many natural products to use in cleaning and deodorising, I also use pure essential oils around the home. Lavender and tea tree are very good ( put a couple of drops on your vacuum cleaner bag to freshen the air).

I detest being subjected to smelly chemical air fresheners etc. Some of the toxic ingredients used have been shown to produce liver cancer.

Have a look at this link, there are many, many reports of the dangers which some of the manufacturers are turning a blind eye to !!!!


Laundry Fragrances, Air Fresheners May Have Dangerous Toxins

[Soupdragon]

Last year I came across a firm which sold cloths and related equpment (floor mops and window cleaner squeegies). Their claim is/was that you can clean anything (windows, floors, kitchen, pets, car, people etc. ) with just hot water and various packs of their (very expensive) cloths. I did get a car kit and I have found it really good, though I don't mind a muddy car, so haven't exactly worn it out. I use a similar set of cloths for the basins and bath and just use those & water, use vinegar & newspaper on the windows. Anything else, mostly it's Ecover or similar. Trouble is, I still have the various (unused) bottles of loo cleaner and so on I had before. I cant bear the thought of throwing them away now, much less chucking the stuff down the loo!

[Country lover]

Not sure if I'm allowed to post links yet but I blogged about this a couple of months ago because we have a septic tank .. there are some good links and the BBCgreen one is great because they have tested a few brands of eco-friendly cleaning products.

Household Cleaners and Septic Tanks

Instead of buying disinfectant sprays try making your own with essential oils and water (remember to shake each time before you use it), this kills most bacterias but doesn't have chemicals ... you need about 2% essential oil and my fav is eucalyptus.

[FungiJus]

Funnily enough I was having this discussion with a couple of colleagues during the week about the control of substances used in the workplace and their relative harm (or lack of it) when compared to household cleaners etc.

It prompted me search for the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for Cillit Bang (no reason to choose this particularly, other than it's heavily advertised) and what it returns will interest many a WAB member.

http://www.futures-supplies.co.uk/downloads/007.039.pdf

I'm not suggesting that this is particularly bad, and the MSDS sheets for even relatively benign things have alarming sounding statements in them relating to PPE etc. but it does make you think!

The MSDS sheets for most substances are available if you Google them (they have to be produced by the manufacturer by law).

Cheers.
J.

[Tormentil]

Interesting reading. It's seems that some of its ingredients are "Harmful to aquatic environment", but the Ecological Information states that it's "Not classified as an environmental hazardous substance" ?

Or have I mis-read/mis-understood ?

[FungiJus]

The MSDS sheets do take a bit of interpretation.
What they have included here is a key to all the risk phrases that may be applied to a product. In fact in this case, the risk phrases relating to environmental harm do not apply (R50, 51 and 52) - but there are many products out there where these phrases do apply - I frequently come across them at work - things like coolant oils, lubricants etc.

J.

[BloomingMarvellous]

Good old Elbow Grease never hurt anyone.

[Tormentil]

Except yer elbow.