Maybe Chlorine Isn't Green After All

Chlorine is an ingredient in many cleaning products that accounts for about 40,000 reported incidents to the Poison Control Center. It is also ranked first in industrial injuries and deaths according to OSHA. However, industry loves this product because of its low cost and universal application of this product makes it hard to discard.

Since chlorine is made from salt, it is cheap to manufacture and readily accessible for everyone. We associate the smell of chlorine with the clean and antiseptic smell drawing upon the long history of this ingredient to kill bacteria and viruses. But, did you know that Chlorine was listed in the 1990 Clean Air Act as a hazard air pollutant impacting the ozone layer? In 1993 the American Public Health Association passed a resolution urging manufactures to eliminate the use of chlorine in consumer products.

Chlorine is the prime ingredient in hypochlorite, sodium chlorite, sodium dichloroisocyanurate, hydrogen chloride, and hydrochloric acid. If you recall the national scare over PCB in coolants, add to this that it is a chlorine byproduct. Vinyl chloride is the flammable gas created when making PVC for plastic applications. Even Dioxin comes from the break down of organochlorines flushed into the environment.

On a more personal level chlorine bleach is the household version of this chemical, and these products cause more than their share of children accidents.

If you like bright, white paper, tissue, or towels, chlorine is used to bleach these products to their more sanitary-looking color. The trouble is that all that chlorine has to go somewhere. Paper is a wood product that is normally not white, so we bleach it. Frankly, brown (unbleached paper) does the job just as well as the white or pastel versions.

Like sugar in nearly every food, chlorine is in far more products than you might imagine. Look for products that are "Chlorine Free" because consumer demand drives the market. There are alternatives to the bleach and chlorine products that will protect your family as well as the environment. When you consider that these products have a lifespan beyond your regular use, the combined output of homes and industrial waste water creates a cycle of disease and death that we should end.

Chlorine is in our drinking water, our cleaning products, our paper products, our manufacturing processes, laundry products, and in the products we handle. Even the day uses bleach to sanitize the facilities to prevent the spread of disease. The question is, "Can we find a better solution?" To read more on this subject go to Green Clean Institute and get our FREE REPORT on Chlorine and investigate solutions that will protect your family and the rest of us.