Tide detergent contains cancer-causing chemical dioxane

I just found out why this dioxane is not on any product labels.
It is created during the wash cycle so therefore the big guys don't list it or it's terrible consequences......HMMMMM
Link below
www.naturalnews.com...

Enjoy and Regards, Iwinder

www.youtube.com...
ETA another interesting link indeed.

reply to post by Iwinder

I just found out why this dioxane is not on any product labels.
It is created during the wash cycle so therefore the big guys don't list it or it's terrible consequences......HMMMMM

I think you misread the information at the link you supplied -- 1,4-dioxane is not created during the wash cycle, it's created during the ethoxylation process i.e. before the material ever makes it to your washer. From your link:

When cleaning products and detergents are processed using ethoxylation, a cheap technique that lessens the severity of the harsher ingredients, 1,4-dioxane is created. Since it is considered a byproduct of ethylene oxide reacting with other ingredients, 1,4-dioxane is technically considered a contaminant and thus does not have to be included on product labeling. As a result, consumers are largely unaware of its presence in major household products.

An example of the "cleaning products and detergents" they're talking about would be sodium lauryl sulfate. During the process of ethoxylating it and turning it into sodium laureth sulfate, 1,4-dioxane is generated. It's present in the material before it's even added to the bottle, much less before you use it.

Lol I very rarely wash my clothes. Either I'm lazy, I hate the idea of detergent being harsh on waste water treatment and now this!

Thank you for posting this thread, now Google AdSense is sending us Tide advertisements!!
--

My main concern is how probable is it to get said chemical into the system enough to cause cancer? Is it really a threat even if it contains harmful chemicals?

Various other household products contain harmful chemicals but we tend to do just fine using them. :/

reply to post by Iwinder


I never understood why people buy name brand items anyway. It seems all the name brand goods are always the ones with largest amounts of poisons and chemicals.

I used Tide once and my clothes smelled like horse urine after the wash was done. Vowed to never use it again. I never had that problem with the no name or cheap detergents.

reply to post by iterationzero


Thanks very much for the correction, but still considering your quote then more or less we are in the black as far as what is actually in our laundry detergent.
"When cleaning products and detergents are processed using ethoxylation, a cheap technique that lessens the severity of the harsher ingredients, 1,4-dioxane is created. Since it is considered a byproduct of ethylene oxide reacting with other ingredients, 1,4-dioxane is technically considered a contaminant and thus does not have to be included on product labeling. As a result, consumers are largely unaware of its presence in major household products."

Please do post some more as your knowledge is a great addition to this thread and I mean that!

They certainly are not offering this information straight up as far as I can see and read here.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by ahnggk
Lol I very rarely wash my clothes. Either I'm lazy, I hate the idea of detergent being harsh on waste water treatment and now this!

You are correct in saying and now this, what is next in the chemical killing of us here?
It's all about shareholders and profit.
Just to let you know we own shares in Exon Mobile/ Imperial Oil here.
I hate what the money flow does to regular people.
Thanks for your input.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by TheBloodRed
Thank you for posting this thread, now Google AdSense is sending us Tide advertisements!!

--

My main concern is how probable is it to get said chemical into the system enough to cause cancer? Is it really a threat even if it contains harmful chemicals?

Various other household products contain harmful chemicals but we tend to do just fine using them. :/

Well considering that everybody will be in contact with this toxin day in and day out for their whole lives and not even know that it exists that is a concern for sure.

If you are a strict nudist then no worries here at all:-)

Your comment about various household products is very valid, do they list the bad stuff too?
I have no idea but I suspect there is a lot of goodies in there that if we knew about them would be gone yesterday.

I appreciate your reply.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by MaryStillToe
reply to post by Iwinder

 

I never understood why people buy name brand items anyway. It seems all the name brand goods are always the ones with largest amounts of poisons and chemicals.

I used Tide once and my clothes smelled like horse urine after the wash was done. Vowed to never use it again. I never had that problem with the no name or cheap detergents.

I agree as does the wife, If you look up a few posts we are making our own laundry detergent now and it smells like a breath of fresh air.

The link to the recipe is on the first page I believe.
Thanks very much for your input.
Regards, Iwinder

reply to post by Iwinder

I'd still steer clear from borax for your homemade detergent if you have environmental concerns. You may want to look into a dry percarbonate as a replacement -- it has some of the same properties as borax with the added benefit of being a peroxide generator for that little bit of extra whitening. It's the key component in the Oxiclean brand of products, but that particular brand often has the kind of surfactants we've been talking about blended into them and I'm not sure if they're using 1,4-dioxane free surfactants or not.

Originally posted by iterationzero
reply to post by Iwinder

 

I'd still steer clear from borax for your homemade detergent if you have environmental concerns. You may want to look into a dry percarbonate as a replacement -- it has some of the same properties as borax with the added benefit of being a peroxide generator for that little bit of extra whitening. It's the key component in the Oxiclean brand of products, but that particular brand often has the kind of surfactants we've been talking about blended into them and I'm not sure if they're using 1,4-dioxane free surfactants or not.

Thanks and we will look into it here for sure, but do you think that the Borax is the lesser of two evils here right now?
Just picking your brain and not picking a battle here.
Regards, Iwinder

reply to post by Iwinder

Thanks and we will look into it here for sure, but do you think that the Borax is the lesser of two evils here right now? Just picking your brain and not picking a battle here.

It's a fair question. Personally? No. I'd argue that, based FDA imposed limits on 1,4-dioxane in consumer products and the EPA imposed limits on it in groundwater, using off-the-shelf products that happen to contain it is no more dangerous than your homemade laundry detergent that contains borax. Don't fall into the trap that just because something is familiar to you and has been around a long time, it's somehow safer than the latest "molecule of doom" featured on Natural News.

reply to post by YogaGinns


To follow up on my testing of the homemade dry laundry soap, I did a similar load this week using a mustard stained face cloth and a load of whites done with my usual detergent.

"Using Sunlight liquid He laundry soap in a hot wash/cold rinse, heavy cycle on a high efficiency, front load washer. I did add the Clorox as that is how I usually do this type of load. My tester was a white wash cloth with mustard smeared on it fairly thick, and left to set for about an hour. It came out of the wash with a faint ghost of the original stain--now I did mention before that it is not recommended to use alkaline bleach on mustard as it can make the stain set--but to keep the test true I needed to repeat the wash exactly as before, only changing the detergent."

The two wash cloths came out equally clean and with only a very faint yellow mark where the stain was. I am not sure if the bleach played a roll in preventing the mustard from being completely removed, but I am satisfied that the homemade cleanser is just as good as a commercial laundry product. The difference being it is homemade is a fraction of the cost of the Sunlight. I would need to run both tests again "without the bleach" to see if the entire stain would be removed. Will decide later whether or not to do so.

Very happy with my homemade soap,
YogaGinns

Originally posted by YogaGinns

Originally posted by Iwinder
reply to post by YogaGinns

 

Hey sweetheart hows it going?
I must let everyone know here in this thread that YogaGinns is my wife and she did go out and buy the stuff for homemade laundry detergent and she did make it today and she did do one load for a tester.
I will let her tell the rest when she posts here.
We have the same IP but she is on her wireless laptop and I am on the desktop here.
Just to clarify we hardly ever have crossed paths here on ATS but this is one of them.
Thanks for the post YogaGinns.
Regards, Iwinder

Thanks for the introduction Iwinder.

The Sunlight, liquid high efficiency soap I just bought was $15.99 for "64 loads" $0.25 per load. I did not include the 13% tax in my calculations, just used the purchase price of all items.

I did go out and buy the ingredients and made a batch of the "dry" laundry soap. The cost breakdown is as follows:

Arm & Hammer washing soda $6.49 (about 11 1/2 cups) = $0.56/cup
Borax 20 mule team booster $5.99 (about 9 cups) = $0.67/cup
Sunlight pure soap 2 bar/pkg $2.99 (used only 1 bar) = $1.50/bar
I followed the directions in Soulshn's link (please thank your wife) and it made about 46 Tbsp of powdered detergent. Worked out to $0.06 per Tbsp.

www.diynatural.com...

I used one Tbsp to do a load of whites*. Hot wash/cold rinse, heavy cycle on a high efficiency, front load washer. I did add the Clorox as that is how I usually do this type of load. My tester was a white wash cloth with mustard smeared on it fairly thick, and left to set for about an hour. It came out of the wash with a faint ghost of the original stain. Now I did look up removing mustard stains in my handy dandy resource book and found that it did not recommend using alkaline bleach on mustard. Grrrr, should have checked that out first. So now I will need to do another test using my regular detergent and bleach as a marker for comparison. So my testing will continue.

*NOTE: with the front load machine I think less could be used as there were plenty of suds

On the other side I did offer Iwinder two pairs of sweat socks and asked which one he would rather wear. His choice was the pair washed in our new "homemade" detergent as they were softer and had a cleaner smell. So far I'm sold on this do-it-yourself detergent. Will need to test if further, but at almost $0.20 per load savings I'm sold.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

* UPDATE *

Well it is now October 21st and my first batch of the dry laundry detergent just ran out. Almost 6 months of washing for about $3.00 ($2.79 before tax). Now with only two of us in the house we only do 3 or 4 loads per week in a high efficiency front load machine. I honesty can't see any difference in the effectiveness of this homemade product. It seems almost laughable to put about half a tablespoon of soap in the washer.

This batch lasted almost twice as long as I originally figured it would, makes you wonder how much filler the brand name product manufacturers put in and charge us for. Looks like I'm gonna be making another batch up this week. Pays to do a little extra work yourself.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

My own update and we are still using the homemade detergent and never ever looking back now.
It is so cheap it is almost free compared to the boxed brands and it does a super job compared to a lackluster job that comes from the super market.

Please give it a try because to do the dry version is so cheap you won't miss the money if you don't care for it.

Regards, Iwinder

I remember what a revelation it was when I noticed that in the first superman movie superman's earth mother washed his super suit in "tide".
i honestly think that was the exact moment I became a conspiracy factist
"detergent" is a dirty word

for those not able for any reason to follow the excellent homemade instructions above and want real soap too
or want the real soap as a base ingredient
here are two companies I like and i picked one north and south of the line
buy local

www.greatcanadiansoap.com...
www.calbenpuresoap.com...

eta
later on when i worked on a movie, Molson's gave us 200 cases of beer to only show their products in the bar scenes.
idea placement it's called...

re borax

Borax Has Issues; You Have Alternatives

www.motherearthnews.com...

also people tend to forget an old fashioned cleaning technique
UV - as in drying on the line
sadly not a good thing in our civilization with its dirty air
a nice breeze snaps the wrinkles out too
just a day on the line without washing will pretty much restore a sleeping bag to a fresh clean state

i restored a moldy old down comforter ( a really nice one ) with vineger in the rinse
left over night...then after a rinse with just water..i ran a baking soda rinse
then line dryed on a very bright hi UV day
its now my linus blanket

in general:
vinegar in the rinse gets the left over residue out
(soap scum..geez..scum?...really?)
vinegar and borax can be mixed apparently so vinegar dissolves it
betcha that will reduce the borax threat

originally posted by: Danbones
I remember what a revelation it was when I noticed that in the first superman movie superman's earth mother washed his super suit in "tide".
i honestly think that was the exact moment I became a conspiracy factist
"detergent" is a dirty word

for those not able for any reason to follow the excellent homemade instructions above and want real soap too
or want the real soap as a base ingredient
here are two companies I like and i picked one north and south of the line
buy local

www.greatcanadiansoap.com...
www.calbenpuresoap.com...

eta
later on when i worked on a movie, Molson's gave us 200 cases of beer to only show their products in the bar scenes.
idea placement it's called...

Dan, thanks for the links you so kindly provided......the Queen (YogaGinns) was sharpening her visa card reading those.
Off topic what movie did you work on? And I like the idea of 200 cases of Beer, I used to slog that stuff for the Beer Store way back in my working days.

Regards, Iwinder

originally posted by: Danbones
re borax

Borax Has Issues; You Have Alternatives

www.motherearthnews.com...

also people tend to forget an old fashioned cleaning technique
UV - as in drying on the line
sadly not a good thing in our civilization with its dirty air
a nice breeze snaps the wrinkles out too
just a day on the line without washing will pretty much restore a sleeping bag to a fresh clean state

i restored a moldy old down comforter ( a really nice one ) with vineger in the rinse
left over night...then after a rinse with just water..i ran a baking soda rinse
then line dryed on a very bright hi UV day
its now my linus blanket

in general:
vinegar in the rinse gets the left over residue out
(soap scum..geez..scum?...really?)
vinegar and borax can be mixed apparently so vinegar dissolves it
betcha that will reduce the borax threat

Bad news on the Borax angle but good news is your personal stories on how to remove smells and stains.
Yep we do the close line thing as well but as you mentioned above the air stinks now and its hard to find a good day for hanging laundry out anymore.

Regards, Iwinder