It isn’t easy being a green shopper. Just after you start looking for words like “eco-friendly” and “organic” in the stuff you buy, a report comes out saying bad things about these very products you sought out. The latest culprit: “green” household and personal care products. Turns out that many self-described green cleaners and lotions and shampoos contain 1,4-Dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency has declared a probable human carcinogen because it causes cancer in lab animals.

That finding comes courtesy of Organic Consumers Association, a consumer advocacy group that works to keep organic standards strong. The OCA tested 100 “green” products, to find that 47 had detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane (Here’s the entire list in a PDF). The scary thing’s that all these brand were self-marketed as green — and in fact include some well-known “green” grand names such as Alba, JASON, Kiss My Face, and Seventh Generation. [Note: Not ALL products by these companies contain 1,4-dioxane, but SOME of these companies products definitely do.]

Unfortunately, you won’t find 1,4-dioxane in an ingredient list, mainly because the stuff’s not added to products on purpose, but gets in there as a byproduct of petrochemicals used in a process to soften detergents. According to the L.A. Times, 1,4-dioxane is “formed when foaming agents, or surfactants, are processed with ethylene oxide or similar petrochemicals.” Thus, even Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database — which gives personal care products hazard scores to help you make the safest choice — doesn’t have any products that note 1,4-dioxane as an ingredient.

But before you throw your hands up in the air, give up on green living, and go back to your Windex: Lemme first remind you that even if you find a green product you bought on the bad list, most of those products still contain fewer carcinogens and toxic chemicals than the conventional stuff. And while it’s disappointing that almost half the “green” products contained 1,4-dioxane, you can imagine how much higher that percentage would be for conventional products.

More to the point: You can still find products without this dreaded 1,4-dioxane. For one, all USDA Certified brands — that means the products with the little USDA seal (left), not just with the word “organic” somewhere on the package — passed the 1,4-Dioxane-free test. Some of these are much beloved brands, like Dr. Bronner’s and Terressentials. In addition, all German Natural “BDIH” Certified brands — such as Aubrey Organics and Dr. Hauschka — were 1,4-Dioxane-free.

The OCA gives consumers 3-step advice: 1) Opt for products with the organic seal, 2) Avoid products with these suffixes or words in their ingredient list: myreth, oleth, laureth, ceteareth, any other eth, PEG, polyethylene, polyethylene glycol, polyoxyethylene, or oxynol, and 3) Avoid products with unpronounceable ingredients in general. That advice, however, seems a tad difficult to follow. The list of words or word-parts is difficult to memorize and the number of organic certified products not plentiful. Plus, not all products that lack the organic seal or have difficult-to-pronounce ingredients are bad.

This is my solution: Just opt for the products ranked “low hazard” in the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database. While Skin Deep doesn’t list the non-ingredient that is 1,4-dioxane, the database accounts for the ingredients that would create 1,4-dioxane, thereby pushing the products likely to contain the carcinogen into the “high risk” range. You’ll likely even find that some of the companies named-and-shamed on the OCA’s list do make SOME products that are very safe (often, these safe products are then used to promote the entire company’s product line as being green and organic, but that’s a post for another day).

Find products on that lowest-scoring list at your nearest Whole Foods or other store that carries eco-products, and see how you like it. If you don’t like how that one works, don’t write off all green products; after all, many conventional products don’t work all that well either. Just try another one on the good list. Yes, that might sound a bit tedious — but it’s only the initial discovery part that’s difficult.

Once you find, say, a shampoo you really like, you’ll never have to research eco-friendly shampoos again. That’s how I found my awesome EO Shampoo, from which I’m never going back. I picked out the shampoo before I read this whole 1,4-Dioxane hit the news — and I was pleased but not surprised to see that EO was on the good list of products that are free and clear of this carcinogen. [Update, 4/4/08: A prob with the EO shampoo -- the ranking's ranking suddenly changed --]

The named-and-shamed companies’ reactions, BTW, run the gamut, according to the L.A. Times. Some say they’re going to get rid of this 1,4-Dioxane stuff ASAP; others — including, surprisingly, Seventh Generation — say they can’t make good products that are 1,4-Dioxane-free and that they believe their products to be perfectly safe. Hmmm…. Did these companies miss the whole “probable human carcinogen” part?

Seventh Generation and Kiss My Face may be among the companies sued by the OCA and Dr. Bronner’s come Sept. 1, if claims at being natural and organic are not removed from the labels. (via adpulp) Method, a company that’s often been hailed as making green hip, likely won’t be hit with the lawsuit because its labels don’t say natural or organic — though they do say “naturally-derived.”

Beware the “naturally-derived” product? Women bloggers are getting more serious about the green products they buy:

* Amanda of Enviroblog cautions that Baby products and anti-aging products have some of the highest levels of 1,4-Dioxane.

* Madeline Holler of Strollerderby advises you to check the labels of your body and dishsoaps.

* Jennifer Lance of Really Natural brags that her Dr. Hauschka Normalizing Day Oil helps normalize her complexion AND is 1,4-Dioxane free.

Hopefully the green household and personal care product companies will take note.

[crossposted on BlogHer]

Update, 9/13/08: Clorox’s eco-friendly line Green Works put a new dishwashing liquid on the market that contains no 1,4-dioxane.

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