What's in your detergent?

Groups to sue cleaning product makers for ingredient disclosure

Environmental and health activists want lists and research results from such firms as Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.

By Susan Carpenter
Los Angeles Times
February 18, 2009

The makers of Tide, Ajax and other common household cleansers are being asked to come clean about their ingredients.

Environmental and health activists announced plans Tuesday for a lawsuit to make Procter & Gamble Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co. and two other major firms reveal the chemical ingredients of their cleaning products and their research on the products' effects.

The suit, to be filed today in New York, seeks to use a little-known 1976 New York law passed to combat phosphates in detergent.

The activists "say people deserve to know whether the products they use to wash their dishes and clean their homes could be harmful," said New York lawyer Keri Powell, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest law firm.

The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of six state and national environmental and health groups, including the Sierra Club and American Lung Assn. in New York.

(More here.)