Additional Facts about Household Chemicals

The Average American Uses about 25 Gallons of toxic, hazardous chemical products per year in their home...A major portion of these can be found in household cleaning products.
—"Prosperity Without Pollution," by Joel S. Hirschorn and Kirsten V. Oldenburg, 1991

More than 32 million pounds of household cleaning products are poured down the drain each day nationwide. The toxic substances found in many of these are not adequately removed by sewage treatment plants. Guess what happens when these are returned to the rivers from which cities draw their drinking water?
—Spring 2002 Edition of CCA Newsletter Partners "Cleaning Without Toxic Chemicals"

The toxic chemicals in household cleaners are three times more likely to cause cancer than air pollution.
– Environmental Protection Agency report in 1985

Cancer rates have increased since 1901 from only 1 in 8,000 Americans, to 1 in 3 today! By the year 2010, this disease will afflict 1 of every 2 individuals!
—American Cancer Society

 Cancer rates have continued to increase every year since 1970. Brain cancer in children is up 40% in 20 years. Toxic chemicals are largely to blame.
—NY Times, September 29, 1997

 According to the National Research Council, no toxic information is available for more than 80% of the chemicals in everyday-use products.  Only 1% of toxins are required to be listed on labels, because companies classify their formulas as "trade secrets."
—Lorie Dwornick, researcher, educator and activist, 2002

Unregulated air pollution has caused one in six children in the Central Valley of California to suffer from asthma. More than 5000 children in the San Joaquin Valley Air District are hospitalized each year for asthma. The death rate from respiratory diseases in the Imperial Valley -- at times more than double that of the rest of the state. Up to 2.2 million Californians suffer from asthma.
—California's State Department of Health Services

Nationwide, air pollution causes between 50,000 and 100,000 premature deaths per year – and soot accounts for a majority of these. Soot is the most deadly air pollutant, accounting for more deaths than homicides or automobile accidents. According to the California Air Resources Board, diesel soot accounts for 70 percent of the cancer risk from toxic air pollution statewide.
—Earthjustice

The Washington (state) Department of Health discovered that one fourth of tested farm workers handling pesticides were overexposed to extremely hazardous chemicals. Carbamates or organophosphates can cause dizziness, breathing problems, muscle twitching, and paralysis.

Scientists are discovering a whole universe of health effects associated with the products of our industrial age with profound implications for public health and regulatory policy. The continuous appearance of toxic effects at lower and lower levels of exposure is especially troubling since low-level exposure to some chemicals is practically universal.
—The 2050 Project Newsletter, Fall 1994; State of the World 1994, Worldwatch Institute

· More than 75,000 chemicals are licensed for commercial use.

· More than 2,000 new synthetic chemicals are registered every year.

· The EPA tallied close to 10,000 chemical ingredients in cosmetics, food and consumer products. Very few of these chemicals were in our environment or our bodies just 75 years ago.

· In 1998, U.S. industries manufactured 6.5 trillion pounds of 9,000 different chemicals.

· In 2000, major American companies dumped 7.1 billion pounds of 650 different industrial chemicals into our air and water.

· Except in the case of foods, drugs or pesticides, companies are under no legal or regulatory obligation to concern themselves with how their products might harm human health.
—Alexandra Rome, Co-director of the Sustainable Futures Group at Commonweal, a nonprofit health and environmental research institute, until 2000.

· More than 1.4 million Americans exposed to household chemicals were referred to poison control centers in 2001. Of these, 824,000 were children under 6 years.

· A New York sanitation worker was killed in 1998 when a hazardous liquid in household trash sprayed his face and clothes.

· At any given time, there is 3.36 million tons of household hazardous waste to contend with in our country.
—Chec's HealtheHouse, the resource for Environmental  Health Risks Affecting Your Children

· In 1990, more than 4,000 toddlers under age four were admitted to hospital emergency rooms as a result of household cleaner-related injuries. That same year, three-fourths of the 18,000 pesticide-related hospital emergency room admissions were children.

· Over 80 percent of adults and 90 percent of children in the United States have residues of one or more harmful pesticides in their bodies.