Are there toxins on your fork?

Are There Toxic Cleaners on Your Fork?

You probably don’t think twice about your clean fork as you put it into your mouth. But could there be toxic cleaners still on it? Yes, indeed, if it was washed in an automatic dishwasher! You might have even seen little bits of dried detergent on a dish that didn’t get rinsed well in the cycle. Of course, you cleaned that off – but what about the toxins you can’t see?

Automatic dishwasher detergent is one of the most toxic cleaners in your kitchen. We use them to clean our dishes and then what do we do with our dishes? We eat off of them and put them in our mouths! There is something wrong with this picture.

Toxic Cleaners are Poisoning Our Children

In the pamphlet “Let’s Stop Poisoning Our Children!” by Richard M. Barry, three poisonings from toxic cleaners are cited. Here are two of them:

“When Peter was a year old, he crawled over to the dishwasher to watch his mother unloading it. Suddenly he put a finger into the detergent dispensing cup and ate a finger full of wet but undissolved detergent. In minutes his face was red and blistered, and the inside of his mouth and his tongue were burned white from the toxic cleaners he so innocently tasted. Because Peter made it to the hospital within minutes, he recovered within a few days.”

“A little girl in the same hospital wasn’t that lucky. She also ate some dishwasher detergent and required seven operations to reopen her scarred esophagus.”

Even though phosphates were banned from laundry detergents a long time ago, they are still allowed in dishwasher detergents. Also, dishwasher detergents typically include chlorine which can be a major cause of respiratory ailments. This is what happens: chlorine fumes are particularly volatile when heated during the drying cycle of your dishwasher. They are then vented into your kitchen air and if you open the door early, you get a toxic facial!

It is not just accidental poisonings from ingestion that we are concerned about. It is also the daily exposure to toxins in the air  that build up in our homes and come in contact with our skin from all our household toxic cleaners. Barry states that “In one study conducted over a fifteen-year period, women who worked at home had a 54% higher death rate from cancer than women who had jobs away from the home. The study concluded that the increased death rate in the women was due to daily exposure to the hazardous chemicals found in ordinary household products.”

Switch to Non Toxic Cleaners for Good Health

Many people are learning about the harmful chemicals in toxic cleaners and are switching to plant-based alternatives that are chlorine-free and just as effective. My favorite is Shaklee Get Clean Dishwasher Automatic Concentrate. All of the Shaklee Get Clean product line are non toxic and natural cleaning choices with no harmful fumes, phthalates, bisphenol-A, or 1,4-dioxane, so that you can be sure your home is the safest place in the world.

Check out the US Department of Health & Human Services Products Database to determine what harmful chemicals are in the products in your home and then take action to switch to non toxic cleaners.

Thanks for being committed to the health of your home! If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment and retweet it on your favorite social network connection. Here’s to your really clean forks and healthy home full of non toxic cleaners.

Disclaimer: This post is the opinion of the author and these statements have not been approved by the FDA. This information is not meant to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult your health professional for all your medical concerns and be sure to ask about how toxic cleaners affect you.